Saving the stables

The Griffintown Horse Palace has enjoyed its status as a legendary holdover from a less tech-minded age. But as creeping modernity and age take their toll, a few locals are hoping that a few dollars and a lot of goodwill will both keep the stables and the memory of the Griffintown that was alive.

Landscape architect Juliette Patterson is the president of the Griffintown Horse Palace Foundation, a registered charity hoping to buy the stables and ancient townhouses around it. Her goal is both preservation and education, by turning one of the townhouses into a museum similar to the Tenement Museum in New York. They figure they need about a million dollars to buy and renovate the buildings.

“There is a window of opportunity for the next few years as the real estate market remains depressed,” says Patterson. “Because we know that when the market rebounds, there will be pressure to develop and develop quickly.”

Patterson is hoping the museum acts as a catalyst to spur small-scale, organic revitalization, as opposed to mall developer Devimco’s now-stalled mega-project that threatened to destroy the neighbourhood. The Foundation had a launch party last night, Wednesday, Nov. 25, but will host more in the upcoming months. For more info, see griffintown.org/horsepalace.

PATRICK LEJTENYI

AIDS Day movies

With World AIDS Day upon us this Dec. 1, a collective of young Montreal filmmakers has chosen to mark the occasion by sponsoring a film festival over the weekend featuring works exclusively devoted to the issue of HIV/AIDS. The festival, VIHsion, gets underway at 5 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 28 at Comité social Centre-Sud (1710 Beaudry) and continues through Sunday night, featuring films and videos created primarily by local artists.

“We kept asking ourselves why there were no film festivals devoted to HIV/AIDS, so we finally just decided to build our own,” says festival spokesperson Kim Simard, whose own film, Turning Twenty, celebrating the 20-year history of AIDS Community Care Montreal (ACCM), will be one of the shorts on offer Saturday night. “The idea is to both educate people about the realities of HIV/AIDS while promoting the filmmakers whose work we’ll be screening. Some of the films are more experimental, others documentaries, but they all link to the subject of AIDS/HIV, sometimes obviously, other times demanding a little more interpretation.”

Simard is particularly excited to announce that noted gay media academic/historian Thomas Waugh will be on hand Saturday night to present a retrospective on HIV and cinema from the 1980s until today.

For full schedule information, go to vihsion.com.

CHRIS BARRY

Txt svp

Patrick Drouin wants all francophone texters to forward him their messages. The linguist at the Université de Montréal is leading a cross-Canadian study examining the language and variations of text messaging and requires input from the countless banal messages sent every day. Does a francophone Montrealer text the same way as someone from, say, Quebec City? From Trois-Rivières? The Gaspé? Manitoba? Will regional codes and quirks show up in text messages?

A similar study in Europe revealed that they do, even in the pidgin language of text messaging. And while Drouin admits that there are preconceived notions when it comes to the language of texting, as a good scientist he wants to “start with the quality of the messages. We want to observe and describe the language.”

In order for the study to work, he needs the public’s cooperation, so he is asking texters to forward him their messages at 202202. He guarantees anonymity—but participants still have to pay the annoying 15 cents per message. “Unfortunately, we weren’t able to get the cooperation of the big cell phone giants,” he says.

He’ll be gathering data until next April, and hopes to present some initial findings by the summer. An English-language study will begin next year.

PATRICK LEJTENYI

Wallets unwanted

While the world’s poor may unwittingly observe Buy Nothing Day 365 times a year, the annual anti-consumerist holiday challenges those with spending power to rethink their consumptive choices this Friday, Nov. 27.

On Sunday, Nov. 29, NDG’s Co-op de la Maison Verte (5785 Sherbrooke W.) will mark the day in its usual congenial manner. The Co-op will close its cash and staff will treat guests to free refreshments, musical performances, square dancing and a kids’ puppet show.

Celebrating its ninth birthday the same day, event co-organizer Juniper Belshaw says BND is “a celebration of non-consumption.

“It’s interesting that it’s a political act to not sell things,” continues Belshaw. “People are surprised when we say that we want to give them stuff.” For more info, see cooplamaisonverte.com.

On Friday, meanwhile, Optative Theatrical Laboratories will protest in solidarity with the Lower Main’s red-light crowd with their annual BND protest. The time and location of the demonstration will remain undisclosed to prevent a security-guard ambush. Those wishing to get involved may contact otl@optative.net.

Giveaways continue this Monday, Nov. 30, as Überculture Concordia hosts a clothes swap from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on the 7th floor of the Hall Building (1455 de Maisonneuve W.).

DAVID LEVITZ

Rear-view mirror

16 YEARS AGO - NOV. 25–DEC. 2 1993

On the cover: Wrestlers, for a WWF event at the Forum. Three articles examine the sport, including one by local “entertainment historian” John “the Mountain” Woods. Modern stars like the Undertaker, Doink the Clown, Yokozuna and Lex Luger “could never shine the wrestling boots of grapplers like Lou Thesz, Don Leo Jonathan, Killer Kowalksi or Ed Carpentier. Or, for that matter, Gorgeous George and Bobo Brazil,” writes Wood.
• CDs reviewed: Bob Dylan’s World Gone Wrong (“great”), Tom Waits’s The Black Rider (“brilliant but way, way out there”) and, as the Disc of the Week, Les Thugs’s As Happy As Possible (“65-minute Maginot Line of white boy’s noise”).
• In Australian skinhead flick Romper Stomper, “Whenever the Asians or police beat up one of these mindless Nazis, they fulfill the audience’s wishes…. [Writer/director Geoffrey] Wright has constructed a wrenchingly manipulative film,” reads the review.
• “I’ve never set out to shock people,” says Scottish novelist Iain Banks. “But I thought with Complicity, maybe I would just for the sheer hell of it.”

Angel >> Canadian whistle-blowing diplomat Richard Colvin The long-simmering scandal surrounding Canadian soldiers turning Afghan detainees over to local authorities and eventual torture sank deeper into sleaze this past week. Defence Minister Peter MacKay dismissed the allegations as hearsay and effectively called Colvin a stooge of Taliban propaganda. A retired general scoffed and said he would never allow it and would be shocked if anyone did. But with the Conservatives rushing Colvin’s former boss back home from China to defend the government, opposition parties are crying foul, saying they need more time to prepare questions. This whole sorry saga has now become a political football. As these things usually do.

Insect >> Manulife Financial Anyone who thinks only American insurance companies are a nest of greedy vipers should consider the strange case of Nathalie Blanchard. The 29-year-old Quebec woman had been suffering from severe depression and was on medical leave for over a year and a half when her insurance company cut her off. A Manulife agent told her that, because her Facebook page contained photos of her looking decidedly undepressed— on a beach, at a Chippendales bar, at her birthday party— she was faking it. She says she was following doctor’s orders to cheer up and is suing the company for $275,000. There’s likely more to this story, but this bizarre tale of Facebook snooping does nothing to improve the insurance industry’s reputation as a bunch of leeching gargoyles.