Quote of the week

“No comment; it’s too bizarre to acknowledge.” —a spokeswoman for Stavros Dimas, the European Union Environment Commissioner, on Governor General Michaëlle Jean’s publicly eating a raw seal heart on Monday. Jean was showing solidarity with Inuit who feel threatened by the EU’s recent ban on Canadian seal products.

Squatting southwest

A massive squat for the Centre Social Auto-géré’s new digs tomorrow will send an anti-gentrification message to Pointe St-Charles’s private developers. The CSA, an autonomous, self-managed collective, is without a physical location since its inception in 2008. The action will try to put an end to that, says the CSA, though the actual spot is in a purposely top-secret location “in the Point.”

“What we’re doing on Friday is a citizen’s re-appropriation. We are residents of the neighbourhood and we’re going to take over a building abandoned by owners who have no use for it,” says CSA spokesperson Ivan D. Grandmaison (an alias used to avoid arrest). “Developers only understand the language of money and profit, and we’re fighting against that.”

The CSA requested a building in the CN yards during public consultations in October—land covering about 14 hectares—but the developers refused.

Grandmaison says arrest or expulsion from the building is not at the forefront of the takeover, but admits there is a risk of police reaction. “We’re not going there to fight with police, really not. We’re doing a community event.”

The squat begins Friday, May 29 at 5:30 p.m. Meeting point at Parc St-Gabriel, two blocks south of Charlevoix metro. Contact the CSA at centresocialautogere.org.

LINA HARPER

Village
walks again

Not that anybody was expecting to motor from point A to point B in downtown Montreal this summer without finding the inevitable road work, gridlock and endless street closings making them want to kill somebody out of frustration, but once again this summer, Ste-Catherine E., from Berri to Papineau, will be transformed into a pedestrian mall.

And with the exception of maybe a few delivery drivers and the odd group of confused South Shore adolescents who’ll no longer be able to cruise the strip in muscle cars looking for trannies to gawk at, most people are thrilled with the news.

“We had no significant traffic problems resulting from the pedestrian mall last year,” says Bernard Plante, executive director of the Société de Développement Commercial du Village.

“In fact, many businesses in our community estimated their sales were up by as much as 40 per cent from the summer before, so it’s really a win-win situation for everyone.”

As a result of the increased commercial activity the area enjoyed last summer, the strip will be closed to motorized vehicles for one extra month this year, stretching from today, Thursday, May 28 until Tuesday, Sept. 8.

CHRIS BARRY

Green cities at Parc

Les Tours La Cité is a place that allows you to live, shop and watch all the art house movies you’d like, all without the inconvenience of going outside. But before the complex was constructed in 1974, this behemoth of urban living had its eye on the entire Milton-Park neighbourhood, which would have made it Canada’s largest construction project.

“Because of the mobilization of residents and community groups, the plans [to raze the whole area] had to be changed to protect a part of the neighbourhood,” says Stéphane Burelle from Cinéma du Parc (3575 Parc), which is housed in the La Cité complex. The cinema pays homage to its ’hood this week with the film Tout le monde en parlait, which documents the struggle to save Milton-Park. Activists from the era will be on site to answer questions afterwards.

The event is part of eco-film fest The Environment and the City (Friday, May 29–Sunday, May 31), which also includes e2, a series that looks at how various U.S. cities have gone green.

“The idea is that people can see what kinds of innovations have been put in place elsewhere so they can eventually be applied in Montreal,” says Burelle.

Details at cinemaduparc.com.

MATT JONES

Walk to
the Stone

In 1857, while completing work on the Victoria Bridge in Pointe St-Charles, construction workers stumbled upon some bones—which turned out to be the unmarked remains of Irish people, 6,000 in total, who had come to Canada in 1847 during the Irish Famine, but were either dead or dying from typhus by the time they reached Montreal. The company marked the grave with a 30-ton black stone.

“These people were originally quarantined at Grosse Isle, but they were thought to be healthy, and so they were allowed to continue down the St. Lawrence,” says Victor Boyle, the national president of the Ancient Order of Hibernians— adding that there are another 5,424 Irish buried on the island.

During the famine, landlords opted to ship people out of Ireland rather than feed them, and an estimated 100,000 were sent to Canada. On the ships “there were no bunks, no bathroom, no food, no water,” says Boyle.

On Sunday, May 31, the Irish community will gather to mark the 150th anniversary of the dedication of the Stone, and to commemorate the victims. Mass will be held at 10:30 a.m. at St. Gabriel’s Parish (2157 Centre), followed by the annual walk to the Stone on Bridge Street. For more information, contact the Ancient Order of Hibernians at (514) 928-7196.

HEATHER ROBB

Rear-view mirror

12 YEARS AGO - MAY 29–JUNE 5, 1997

On the cover: Funny money, adorned with federal leaders’ heads, as the Mirror looks into their campaign job promises, with help from Concordia Keynesian economist Harold Chorney and McGill neoclassical economist Tom Velk. Published is a two-page, five-box spread on the parties and their plans, full of charts, graphs and pithy commentary.
•Reviewing Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Twenty, (“celebrating everything Caucasian and stupid”), Johnson Cummins wrote that he “waved the rebel flag, knocked out my front teeth with a bottle of Jack Daniels and asked my sister out on a date.” Unfortunately, “these shit-kicking rednecks should have called it a day when their plane went down 20 years ago. 3/10”
•According to one (female) caller, Rant Line™ “editor” Al South “gives bad, bad, bad head.”
•The Street, a doc examining three of Montreal’s homeless by Daniel Cross, makes its Montreal premiere at the International Festival of Cinema and New Media. Since Cross finished filming, one of the men died from an overdose, another was killed when walking drunk into traffic and a third has disappeared.

Angel >>Kiboshing the Villanueva inquest After months of wrangling and debate, the long-anticipated coroner’s inquest into the Fredy Villanueva shooting last August in Montreal North finally opened, then closed, on Monday. Judge Robert Sansfaçon decided that, without the participation of the Villanueva family and two other teenagers injured by police bullets in the same incident, the inquest was pointless. At issue is both legal representation for the Villanueva family and the two boys—they can’t afford any, while the police have seven lawyers on their side—and the inquest’s narrow focus on events surrounding the shooting. Sansfaçon is resisting calls by Quebec Public Security Minister Jacques Dupuis to get the case rolling again, saying the inquest has lost its credibility. A proper inquest into the shooting is obviously needed, one that is more fair than this one.

Insect >>The new medical marijuana bill The feds introduced a new medical marijuana bill this week, but advocates are already fuming. The bill actually doubles the number of users federally licensed growers can supply—all the way up to two, from one. The previous one-to-one ratio was deemed unconstitutional, arbitrary and overly restrictive by a Federal Court judge in January 2008, and the Conservatives have been fighting it since (the Supreme Court refused to hear their case in April). Even for the current Conservative government, these new regulations are spiteful and mean-spirited—it’s not like anyone wants to be in a position to be forced to use medical marijuana, and making their lives harder is as callous as it is stupid.