Quote of the week

“I hope that Mr. Harper will once again plagiarize Mr. Howard when he gives his concession speech." —Green leader Elizabeth May, following the revelation on Tuesday that Stephen Harper gave a speech advocating the invasion of Iraq in 2003, parts of which had been delivered two days previously to the Australian Parliament by then-PM John Howard. Owen Lippert, the Conservative staffer who “wrote” Harper’s speech, has since resigned.

United against Tory-think

His new collection of warm and fuzzy sweaters notwithstanding, Stephen Harper and the Conservatives continue to have a hard time making political inroads in Quebec. Harper’s recent campaign pledge to get tough on young offenders and his comments denigrating government funding for the arts seem to have struck a particularly negative chord with Quebecers, prompting an outcry from youth advocates and artists alike.

This Sunday, Oct. 5, a coalition of local groups including housing activists FRAPRU, the Union des artistes and the Fédération des travailleurs du Québec add their voices to the fray with a demonstration denouncing the Conservatives and their right-wing agenda.

“We want to say in the most forceful way possible that we don’t agree with the Conservatives,” says François Saillant, coordinator of FRAPRU. “We want to present another vision of society, whether concerning poverty, women’s rights, the war in Afghanistan or cuts to culture.”

The march begins at 12:30 p.m. at Dorchester Square (corner Peel and René-Lévesque W.) and finishes up at Place des Arts where there will be live music and entertainment. For more information, call (514) 522-1010 or visit www.frapru.qc.ca.

Where’s Omar?

As Americans prepare to say a teary goodbye to their beloved 43rd president, the irrepressible George Walker Bush, one sorry-assed Canadian ex-child soldier still languishes in a Gitmo prison cell as a direct result of the great man’s policy initiatives.

Omar Khadr was all of 15 years old when rounded up on an Afghan battlefield and sent to sunny Cuba to serve an indeterminate, possibly endless prison sentence as an official enemy combatant—essentially possessing no rights whatsoever, including the one some people consider vaguely important that has to do with it supposedly being bad to torture children who get sent to jail.

“Amazingly, even though Omar has been tortured at Guantanamo, the Canadian government is doing absolutely nothing to have him repatriated,” according to activist Mary Foster, who in concert with Torture Canada and the Coalition to Repatriate Omar Khadr, has organized a demonstration that will take place at Phillips Square on Monday, Oct. 6, at 5:30 p.m. to bring attention to Khadr’s plight. “It’s extraordinary. Not only has Harper’s government not done a thing, but he’s outright stated that they’ve no plans to bring this Canadian citizen home either. I mean, even the Liberals have called for Khadr’s repatriation.”

Info: www.bringomarhome.ca.

by Chris Barry

Demos and demolitions

After a roving demonstration through the neighbourhood this weekend protesting the coming demolition of the Turcot interchange, citizens of the city’s southwest neighbourhoods, specifically St-Henri and Côte St-Paul, are planning their next move. Mobilisation Turcot, the umbrella group of various southwest community groups, has been the megaphone for residents’ concerns surrounding the mega-project and will meet again this Thursday, Oct. 2 (75 Sir G. Etienne Cartier, #118, near St-Henri metro, 6:30 p.m.).

Besides worsening air quality in a neighbourhood that doesn’t have the best in the first place, one concern is the proposed demolition of a number of low-cost rental units, says Karina Montambeault, a community organizer at POPIR, a housing organization.

“If the people who live in [the low-cost apartments] have to move, they will have to pay higher rents,” she says. “We’re not necessarily for or against the Turcot project, but we certainly don’t want to lose more rental units in St-Henri.”

Montambeault says nothing will be done to the interchange before hearings at Bureau d’audiences publiques sur l’environnement (BAPE) are held. The BAPE talks are scheduled for next year, having been moved back from this autumn.

For more info, see www.mobilisation-turcot.info.

by Patrick Lejtenyi

Montreal tree city

Know your poplar from your hazelnut? How about your silver from your Norwegian maple? Gingko from linden? Is all of the above totally above your head? Even if it isn’t, nature lovers can discover the unusual variety of trees in Montreal with Bronwyn Chester’s weekly tours of woody Montreal.

This Saturday, Oct. 4, at 10 a.m., Chester will lead her group on a tour of Parc Lafontaine, an area she says is rich not only for the different varieties, but also what they say about Montreal’s history.

“It has an interesting botanical history,” she says. “Originally, it was a farm, then it was used for military exercises, and then, around the same time Mount Royal was turned into a park, it was leased to the city.”

Still, “I try to keep the focus on the trees, and what the trees tell us about our history.”

Chester, who writes the Tree Tuesday column at Spacingmontreal.ca, has noticed since she started her weekly tours this past spring that, as much as people love trees, they don’t know much about them—not even their names.

To learn them, visit www.foretmontreal.com. Tours are usually bilingual, cost $10 and last a couple of hours.

by Patrick Lejtenyi

Rear-view mirror

10 YEARS AGO - OCT. 1–8, 1998

On the cover: Handguns. While firearm-related deaths are on the decline in Montreal, guns aren’t. Shorty, a dealer with biker connections, tells Carl Amabili, “I could get you one tomorrow if you really needed one, for, let’s say, $500.”
•Under the logo: “Fully loaded.”
•In a confusing interview with Adam Gollner, Man or Astroman? “clone-band” member Tweety-Tone says, “All I remember is waking up in a laboratory somewhere in Georgia. They put a guitar in my mouth to teeth on.”
•Lolita director Adrian Lyne says that, despite the film’s many legal, financial and critical difficulties, “I got great e-mails from people who watched. People who’d been molested as children and felt that the movie had helped them.”
• Advice to men, from Sasha: “When you feel like you’re going to come, you either apply strong pressure to the head of the penis, with the thumb on the frenum, or you squeeze the base of the penis. You give yourself a 30-second break and start up again.”

Angel >> A sane homeless policy Lost amid the hullabaloo of this election, that election, bailouts and a melting economy has been any mention of the homeless. Odd, given that the first ever provincial commission on homelessness in Quebec opened in Montreal on Monday. With a splashy soup kitchen set up in Berri Square by homeless advocates, commissioners inside the Hotel Gouverneur Place Dupuis this week heard tales of government indifference and mismanagement: no one, for instance, knows how many homeless people there are in Montreal (the last estimate, in 1997, said around 28,000), and government agencies aren’t working together in any cohesive manner. A report is due in November, giving politicians at least a working document on preparing some coherent plan.


Insect >>The CBC Our public broadcasting corporation has never had a surcharge of testosterone, but recent developments suggest that the CBC could perhaps do with growing a pair of balls. On Sept. 5, online freelance columnist Heather Mallick wrote a nasty attack piece on Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin (she “has a toned down version of the porn actress look”), the people who will vote for her (“sexual inadequates”) and so on. Right-wing commentators on FOX went berserk, and after an initial feeble defence, the CBC wet itself and pulled the offending article off its site. If the CBC is going to hire a loudmouth, the least they could do is stand up for her.