Quote of the week

“I feel like a young kid again.” —39-year-old San José Shark Jeremy Roenick, on playing with a recently re-signed 43-year-old Claude Lemieux, who played his first NHL game on Tuesday, Jan. 20, after a five-year hiatus. Lemieux was originally drafted by the Montreal Canadiens in 1983, and won a Stanley Cup here in 1986.

Demo still marching

Despite a shaky ceasefire in place as of press time, organizers of a demonstration in support of the Palestinians of Gaza say their march will go ahead as planned this Sunday, Jan. 25. “The ceasefire doesn’t address any of the problems that caused this crisis,” says Aaron Lakoff of Lebanese social justice collective Tadamon!

Organizers are calling on the Harper government to speak out forcefully against the Israeli offensive, and for Quebec to cancel a bilateral economic agreement signed with Israel last fall. “We want the Canadian government to denounce the actions of Israel, and beyond that to follow the examples of countries like Bolivia and Venezuela, which are cutting [diplomatic] ties with Israel,” Lakoff says.

In three weeks of fighting, over 1,300 Palestinians were killed, including an estimated 400 or more children, and up to 6,000 wounded. Thirteen Israelis were also killed. United Nations officials and aid workers have called for an investigation into alleged war crimes committed by the Israeli army, including repeated attacks against UN facilities that killed dozens of civilians seeking refuge.

The march begins at 1 p.m. from Cabot Square (corner Ste-Catherine W. and Atwater). For more info, visit tadamon.ca.

Yoga mag’s last stretch

Montreal-based yoga magazine ascent will be going the way of much print-based media when it officially publishes its final issue in April.

Although it’s a small, non-profit niche publication, ascent has its share of admirers, winning two Utne Independent Press Awards in 2003 and 2005 for best spiritual coverage. Contributors included Yann Martel, Arundhati Roy, Alice Coltrane and David Suzuki.

“We spent the last year looking at what sustainability meant to us,” says executive publisher Vanessa Reid. “We found that the funding was changing; government funding was under review, especially postage subsidies and small magazine grants that came from the Department of Canadian Heritage.” The magazine intentionally stayed away from mass advertising, although Reid says “a great group of really loyal advertisers” helped keep it afloat.

Despite the imminent shuttering, Reid is not shedding any tears. She considers the move, following 10 years of publishing, “a natural end to this cycle,” and will consider the best manner for ascent to return. The good news is that the rad’a yoga studio downstairs from the office will remain open.

Reid is asking for donations to cover costs of printing the latest issue, which can be made via ascentmagazine.com. They are also planning a farewell bash in April.

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

Poverty primer

Social housing advocacy group FRAPRU has just released their 2009 Black Paper on Housing and Poverty in Quebec and, according to spokesperson François Saillant, there isn’t a whole lot in the report to be happy about. Apparently, Quebecers living in rented dwellings are poorer than they were 25 years ago, with the median income of Montrealers declining 15.9 per cent while median rents have shot up by more than 11 per cent.

“And remember,” cautions Saillant, “these are figures taken from the 2006 census, during a period of economic prosperity. But even in this age of prosperity, the affordable housing situation in Quebec not only didn’t improve, it actually deteriorated. Now, as we move towards an economic crisis, even more people will be finding themselves spending that much more of their income on housing. It’s simply unacceptable.”

But hey, the news isn’t all bad. According to the census, these days only 6.3 per cent of Quebec tenants pay a whopping 80 per cent of their earnings on housing—back in 2001, that figure was slightly higher at nine per cent.

“Obviously, we still have a huge problem with respect to the shortage of affordable housing here,” says Saillant. To read the full report, go to rapru.qc.ca.

by CHRIS BARRY

Seeing Uganda

War-torn Acholiland, the northern provinces of Uganda, is a region trying to come to terms with 22 years of civil war. But it’s one of the least talked about conflict zones in the world, say Devin Wells and Matthew Hood, two Concordia photography students who spent eight weeks documenting life at the Unyama Internally Displaced Persons Camp. Limbo, an exhibition of their work, opens Monday, Jan. 26 at 6 p.m. at Concordia’s McConnell Library Atrium (1400 de Maisonneuve W.).

Hood, who’s been to the region three times, says the photos give a personalized account of a situation that affects 1.6 million people living in 145 camps.

“I asked a woman who had founded an organization to help victims of land mines to bring me to a camp so I could meet a survivor. She started telling me about the survivors; I didn’t realize was that she was speaking of her own experience,” says Hood. Photos of the woman at the site where she stepped on the mine will be on display.

A silent auction will be held to help Wells return to set up projects in the camp, such as daycare, sports and recreation, music and drama clubs.

“Kids really bear the brunt of the suffering, since there’s no public education,” says Wells.

by MATT JONES

Rear-view mirror

11 YEARS AGO - JAN. 22–29, 1998

On the cover: A girl holding a box of “cheesy poofs,” for the Mirror’s “first annual junk food taste test.” Among the items sampled are: chicken gravy-flavoured chips (“Tastes like sweat”), Time Savours mini-loaves (“Sticky. Goopy. Oogy”), Ficello-Pizza-flavoured stringable cheese sticks (“From flavour to texture, absolutely appalling”) and Powerade-Arctic extreme (“Tastes like antifreeze, and I should know”).
•The ice storm ruins hydroponic pot. “As a result [of power outages], Montreal streets are about to be flooded by a tidal wave of less-than-spectacular ganja.”
•Upside/Downside’s Highs: “Flu: Id judtht thucks.” Lows: “Spice Girls on Letterman: Very, very bad. And fat, too.”
•Media Circus interviews local Zack Taylor, art director of “glossy geek fanzine” Star Trek Communicator, who this month has “the duty to airbrush away, ever so carefully, the prominent nipples of cover girl Jeri Ryan, otherwise known as the voluptuous Borg Seven of Nine.”
•A classified: “When life becomes a BATTLEGROUND, YOUR MIND IS your best weapon. Read Dianetics. Order your copy today, only $13.99 all incl.”

Angel >>Patrick McGoohan The veteran British television and stage actor who passed away aged 80 last week will probably best be remembered for his bizarre 1960s cult show The Prisoner, about a former secret agent imprisoned on a beautiful but brutal island prison (quick, which soon to be closed detention centre does that remind you of?). Isolated and alone, his escapes constantly foiled, he memorably asserted his individuality and identity with the plaintive cry, “I am not a number, I am a free man!” Perhaps the former U.S. president’s goons got the Guantanamo idea from the show, perhaps not, but McGoohan, The Prisoner’s writer/producer/director, gave us a glimpse of something that would be not only more sinister, but in many ways weirder. Be seeing you.

Insect >>Banning masks at demos At the behest of city police, the Tremblay administration is passing a bylaw that would make illegal masks, hoods and other disguises at demonstrations. Besides being a nasty attack on basic civil rights, it’s also hypocritical: more often than not, baton-wielding riot cops remove their own nametags and badge numbers at demonstrations, so when they bash someone across the back or in the head or gut, there are no comebacks for them. While the bylaw is supposedly to be enforced at police discretion, the force has a warranted reputation for being truncheon-swinging-happy—not that they have much to fear, since no one can identify individual officers anyway.