Quote of the week

“They will bunk down in the middle of -50 C. I mean, they have got 40 blankets.” —Old Brewery Mission worker Richard Burke, predicting that despite the shelter’s best efforts, many homeless will remain outdoors even as temperatures plummet this week.

First Nations school fears

With students returning to class for the new year, First Nations communities are ramping up efforts to protect their post-secondary education funding in the face of a federal review.

Indian and Northern Affairs Canada remain tight-lipped about the status of their review—a spokesperson said it was in its preliminary stages—but First Nations advocates worry that $314-million in student grants will be transferred over to the Canada Student Loans Program, which is administered by the provinces.

“It’s a positive program that’s had a positive impact, so why leave us hanging in the belief that you’re going to take it away?” asks Chief Gilbert Whiteduck of the Anishinabeg Algonquin First Nation community of Kitigan Zibi, about 130 kilometres north of Ottawa/Hull.

Although the gap between graduation rates of First Nation students and other Canadians may not be closing, Whiteduck says the grant program has been a major success. “Until that gap is literally closed, the options opened to us should remain status quo,” Whiteduck says.

Whiteduck launched a petition in November, and hopes to garner over 20,000 signatures to present to the House of Commons after it reconvenes on Jan. 26.

The petition is available online at cepn-fnec.com/petition/petition_e.aspx

Mile-End makeover cafés

As it stands now, St-Viateur E., in Mile-End, will never win any beauty prizes, but for the past decade or so, a growing number of students, artists, journalists and other near-broke types have called it home. But with a vacant lot nearby and a development-hungry borough at the reins, the rump end of the street will be getting a major facelift in the coming months and years. And while that isn’t in and of itself bad, according to Mile-End resident groups, there are some questions that need to be asked.

Starting next Monday, Jan. 19, a series of Citizens’ Cafés will be held to discuss the area’s newest new look project. Hosted and organized by the Mile-End Citizens’ Committee, Memories of Mile-End and the Friends of St-Laurent Boulevard—all volunteer-run residents’ groups—the soirées will be an opportunity to learn more about the project and discuss lifestyle-related questions ranging from transportation to housing to culture to environment.

“The Plateau borough has developed a master plan, and it looks like it’s on the right track, but we want to avoid what happened to Griffintown,” says organizer Susan Bronson.

The first meeting will be held at Cagibi (5490 St-Laurent, corner St-Viateur) at 7 p.m. For more info, see rvdd.qc.ca.

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

Braceros 2009

If you thought living in Haiti, the poorest country on the continent, was tough, try being from that country and living illegally somewhere else. Over 500,000 Haitians currently live without status working on sugar cane plantations in the neighbouring Dominican Republic, where they face working conditions tantamount to slavery, says the Comité québécois pour la reconnaissance des droits des travailleurs Haïtiens en République Dominicaine.

“They live in shanty towns, they have no social rights, they are paid very little and sometimes not at all, yet their work forms the basis of the Dominican economy,” says Pérard Joseph of the committee. “But the situation right now in Haiti is so bad that people continue to cross the border. Some of these people have been in the country for four generations. They’re neither Haitian nor Dominican; they’re stateless.”

For the second year, the committee is hoping to draw attention to their plight with the release of a calendar featuring images of sugar cane workers (“braceros”) by Montreal photographer Jean-François Leblanc as well as four paintings by braceros themselves.

“When we think of the Dominican Republic, we think of the beach. Well, beyond the beach is slavery,” says Joseph.

The calendar costs $5. To get a copy, visit multimania.com/cqrdthrd.

by MATT JONES

Clothes
make the cause

Who says fashionistas are nothing more than vapid, inward-looking simpletons clueless to all except the latest designer duds from Zellers? Not so the gang over at Fashion for Cause, four friends/fashion fanatics who’ve organized a handful of charity events recently in support of the Bantwana Initiative.

“All the money we raise goes to Bantwana, who help Zulu children and tribes in Africa that are really poor and have lots of problems like malnutrition and AIDS,” says Fashion for Cause public relations specialist Sophie Lee. “We believe the best way to bring attention to important issues is through the world’s two most influential mediums, fashion and music, so that’s why we’re doing this Red Label event this weekend. It’s going to be a designer-studded fashion show emphasizing the extraordinary relationship between fashion and music. We see it as another way to help out and make more people aware of the problems in the world.”

The Red Label Fashion show gets underway at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 17 at the Bonsecours Market (350 St-Paul E.) with the afterparty scheduled to go down at Club Opera (32 Ste-Catherine W.) at 11 p.m.

Tickets are $25 for the fashion show and $20 for the party. For full details, go to fashionforcause.net.

by CHRIS BARRY

Rear-view mirror

10 YEARS AGO - JAN. 14–21, 1999

On the cover: HIV-positive S&M performance artist Ron Athey, appearing at Concordia’s HIV Lecture Series. “The people who are usually disappointed with my act are usually the proper S&M people,” he says. “They think it’s going to be a titillating S&M scene, and instead it’s sad and funny and ridiculous and all these other things, and too costumey for them.”
•The strange case of gay amnesiac Matthew Honeycutt, aka James Brighton, comes to an end with his arrest by Montreal police on charges of mischief, with a Hard Copy camera crew in tow. He will likely return to Tennessee, where he worked at a gospel TV station. “We’re trying to find a support group of gay friends for him down there,” says his roommate.
•Adam Gollner reports from December’s Montreal International Air Guitar Championship at Café Campus. Present as judges were “members of B.A.R.F., Groovy Aardvark and Voivod,” along with Bonhomme Carnaval.
•With The Thin Red Line, director Terrence Malick’s “reputation as a brilliant nut has been enhanced.”

Angel >>Romeo Dallaire Those who witnessed barbarism first-hand are often the best ones to understand and denounce it, and the former Canadian Forces general and current senator fits the bill. This week, Dallaire and hundreds of other human rights activists urged Barack Obama to release Omar Khadr from Guantanamo, held there since being captured in Afghanistan in 2002. Aged 15 at the time, he may be the first child soldier ever charged with a war crime. Although Obama has pledged to close the illegal detention centre within the year, Dallaire has given up trying to get Stephen Harper on board, but, with luck, maybe he can get somewhere with a leader who is sympathetic to basic human rights.

Insect >>The financially strapped 2010 Olympics Having learned apparently nothing from Montreal’s fiasco, Vancouver is now heading to the provincial government cap in hand for an emergency $458-million bail-out to cover its Olympic village spending. The construction of the village has been controversial for its closed-door approach since the beginning, but the reported cost is now estimated at being $125-million over budget. The timing also stinks: with a recession, rising unemployment and hard times all around, spending another half-a-billion dollars on a two-week feel-good sports bash seems at best frivolous, at worst gob-smackingly arrogant.