Quote of the week

“He effectively defeated himself in making that move, by producing a lot of the three-way splits we’re seeing.” —Pollster Greg Lyle, on Stéphane Dion supporting Green Party leader Elizabeth May’s participation in the leadership debate. Increasing the Green’s visibility probably drew away Liberal support in tight ridings on Tuesday, says Lyle.

Target: Longue-Pointe

With questions once again swirling around Canada’s military mission in Afghanistan, this time centering on the costs of the mission and recent comments by a British general that the Taliban can’t be defeated militarily, anti-war activists across the country hit the streets again this Saturday, Oct. 18, for a “pan-Canadian day of action”.

“Our intention is to denounce Canada’s intervention in Afghanistan, but also to put the role played by Canadian military bases into context,” says Raymond Legault of the Collectif Échec à la guerre.

“[Bases like] CFB Longue-Pointe have a lot to do with the repair and construction of the armoured vehicles that are being used in Afghanistan.”

Here in Montreal, marchers will gather at 1 p.m. at metro Radisson before heading out for CFB Longue-Pointe, where organizers will attempt to form a symbolic human chain.

“The intention is not to climb over the fence or to block the entrance,” says Legault. “The base has several entrances and there’s no way that we can have the chain all around it, [but] we’re going to spread out along the perimeter and hold activities there.”

For more info, visit www.aqoci.qc.ca/ceg.

Natives say no thanks

Last week’s police attacks on Algonquin protesters at Lac Barrière, about two and a half hours northwest of Montreal, helped underscore why “Thanksgiving” may not be a mutually appreciated holiday among Natives and non-Natives in this country. Accusations of excessive force were levelled against the Sûreté du Québec after they laid in on a blockade of Highway 117, using tear gas to disperse a crowd that included children.

“This really touches the fundamental injustice of what makes up Canada,” says QPIRG Concordia activist Jaggi Singh.

The incident at Lac Barrière is just one of the recent First Nations struggles that will be celebrated at QPIRG Concordia’s Anti-Colonial Thanksgiving this Friday, Oct. 17 at 6 p.m. at the Native Friendship Centre (2001 St-Laurent).

“Thanksgiving is really a whitewashing of Canadian history,” says Singh. “We want to try to counter the skewed way that settler-Native relations are portrayed.”

The event features a multimedia presentation about the events at Lac Barrière, a presentation about recent struggles in Kahnawake and a film about immigrant workers in Quebec’s agricultural industry. A free dinner will be served, but “it probably won’t be turkey,” acknowledges Singh.

See www.qpirgconcordia.org for details.

by Matt Jones

Green homes ahead

If you’ve been thinking about renovating your digs to be more energy efficient, or are considering having a new home built for you, you should probably check out this thing that Écohabitation.com, La Presse and La Maison du 21e siècle magazine are co-sponsoring Saturday, Oct. 18, in four regions of Quebec: La Journée annuelle des maisons vertes.

The idea is to escort the general public to a series of “green homes” around their respective regions to demonstrate that building green makes sense on a number of levels, not just for the obvious economic and environmental reasons.

“This is going to be an annual event specifically dedicated to informing the public that green homes are now accessible, affordable, comfortable and not strange-looking or anything like that,” says media spokesperson Andrew Gellert. “Owning a green home—a healthy, energy efficient or eco-energy space—is something very do-able for everybody now, not just for people with $750,000 to do something high-tech with. This way, people won’t be visiting some laboratory, they’ll actually be visiting real homes with real owners, getting first-hand information from them.”

Admission is $20 and space is limited. For more information go to www.journeemaisonsvertes.org.

by Chris Barry

Kitty fixers open

Perhaps you’ve noticed cat armies assembling in the Plateau and Southwest boroughs—quick and dirty encounters in dark Montreal alleyways have left the city with an out-of-control cat population. According to the SPCA’s estimates, there’d still be strays roaming the streets if every Montrealer took in no fewer than eight cats. And so the SPCA and partner Steri-Animal have teamed up to extract kitties’ baby-makin’ parts, free of charge for low-income households.

“It’s not because someone is low-income that they don’t care about their pets,” says Louise Allard of the SPCA —but the cost of sterilizing Fluffy can represent a significant financial burden when you’re making minimum wage. The hope is that this service will have broke Montrealers clambering to get their kitties fixed.

“If this would have been done 10 years ago, we wouldn’t have the overpopulation problem,” says Alanna Devine, also of the SPCA.

The first clinic is on Oct. 18, with more to be announced. The SPCA is currently working to create partnerships with vets around the city, with the goal of organizing regular free sterilization clinics.

The sterilization clinic is not drop-in; leave a message at (514) 409-2037 to make an appointment. For more info, visit www.spcamontreal.com

by Tracey Lindeman

Rear-view mirror

12 YEARS AGO - OCT. 17–24, 1996

On the cover: Bruce McDonald’s new punk rock road movie, Hard Core Logo. “We just had a premiere in Vancouver and [punk scene veteran] Art Bergmann saw it and said, ‘This is my fucking life.’ That was great, because he’s not the kind of guy who gets effervescent about things.”
•“For people like Raymond Villeneuve and Jacques Parizeau, the big fight of their life is almost lost,” says Esther Delisle, author of The Traitor and the Jew. “So instead of facing the fact that they failed to convince French-Canadians that sovereignty could succeed, they blame the Jews.”
•Discussing living in Newfoundland, Billy Bragg says he goes there for the humpback whales. He goes out in little boats “and we harpoon their fucking brains out! No, we watch them, yeah…. For God’s sake, I’m not Ozzy Osbourne.”
•Access, the Mirror’s techno ’zine written by Emru Townsend, rails against Internet trendiness in the form of Navigator, a recently launched fragrance line.
• A large mohawk encroaches on the logo, so there is nothing under the logo.

Angel >>Blocking a Harper majority The good news is, it could have been worse. Tuesday’s election, with a historically dismal turnout, resulted in another Conservative government, true, but it remains a minority, so some of their wilder schemes will likely be blocked. The Conservatives were also generally shut out of the big cities, and lost a seat in Quebec, so they remain unpopular here (although they did do well in and around Quebec City). But the sad fact remains the party did pick up seats elsewhere in the country and are stronger than before this useless, costly waste of time of an election was called.

Insect >>The Gazette, for turning students into scabs Irate Gazette reporters have been withholding their bylines for the past two weeks in a labour dispute over corporate parent CanWest’s plan to centralize layout work in a non-unionized shop in Hamilton. Fearing a full-blown strike, CanWest management has turned to Concordia journalism students, asking if they want to fill in (i.e. cross the picket line). It’s a underhanded tactic, and byline-hungry budding journos, perhaps still under the impression that being a scab will lead to a full-time job, might be tempted to do it without realizing what the long-term ramifications are. Not the best way to plug the ever-shrinking Gazette newshole.