Quote of the week

“The reality is that aliens have been visiting Earth for decades and probably millennia and have contributed considerably to our knowledge.” —Former Trudeau cabinet minister Paul Hellyer, disputing Stephen Hawking’s warning that nomadic aliens may in fact be intent on devouring us all, on Sunday.

Homeless planless

Anyone who’s been shopping around Montreal for an apartment this spring shouldn’t be surprised to learn that the issue of homelessness remains as big a problem as it ever was. With area rents having increased as dramatically as they have this past decade, the number of people living on the street is multiplying while the provincial government, according to Pierre Gaudreau, coordinator for Réseau d’aide aux personnes seules et itinérantes de Montréal (RAPSIM), is still dragging its feet putting together a comprehensive plan to address the issue.

To keep the pressure on, RAPSIM and Réseau Solidarité Itinérance du Québec (RSIQ) have organized a march that will be leaving just west of city hall (275 Notre-Dame E.) on Monday, May 10, at 10 a.m., making its way through the city before settling down for a good old fashioned soup kitchen at Agence de la santé et des services sociaux (3725 St-Denis).

“We demand action from the government to stop the spread of homelessness,” says Gaudreau. “Again this winter, we saw the number of people coming to shelters increasing. While we need more resources for the people working directly with the homeless, more important is the need for a comprehensive global policy that will prevent homelessness in the first place.”

CHRIS BARRY

Main chittingchatting

An informal conversation about the past, present and future of the Main will take place at the SAT (1195 St-Laurent) this Friday, May 7.

St-Laurent’s future, between Sherbrooke and René-Lévesque, has been in the throes of a contentious debate since a revitalization deal was struck with the city and developers, excluding the “seedier” businesses in the neighbourhood.

SAT’s Pecha Kucha, a series of interactive two-minute talks by cultural producers, will feature invited guests and city reps addressing the public (Pecha Kucha, according to Wikipedia, is the “onomatopoeic Japanese word for the sound of conversation. The equivalent English term is ‘chit-chat.’”). It’s a night fetish party Club Sin’s organizer Eric Paradis says will hopefully lead the city and developers to include them in their plans.

“We want fair treatment and inclusion for people who want to be part of the Quartier des Spectacles,” says Paradis. “And that includes Johnny [Zoumboulakis, owner of strip bar Café Cleopatra], the artists, etc. We should be treated fairly. [Cleopatra] is the oldest counter culture landmark, but the building isn’t as important as the value inside it.”

Free, doors at 7:20 p.m.

LINA HARPER

Garden for freedom!

A community-managed garden by the canal is getting its annual facelift this Saturday, May 8. The land, owned by the city of Montreal, was neglected for several years until a local group took over—without asking for permission.

The Jardin de la liberté, a flowering garden best described as wild, is currently supported by plant and flower donations from Pointe St-Charles citizens. La Pointe-Libertaire, an activist group and media collective in the Point, say they took over the maintenance of the garden when they noticed its deplorable appearance and lack of upkeep.

“We wanted to show that we could manage the land without the help of hierarchical state powers—the city, in this case,” says Pascal Lebrun, collective member with Pointe-Libertaire.

Already in its fourth year, the garden had a tumultuous start. “The first year, they wanted us to raze the terrain but the city backed off,” he says. Lebrun guesses this was probably due to elections and changes in the borough’s municipal government. The city has not interfered with their gardening since then.

Gardening is from 1–4 p.m. Meeting is at the intersection of Island St. and the Lachine canal bike path. Donations of plants are welcome.

LINA HARPER

Mile End meadow life

Mile End residents will take what little green space their neighbourhood has. And even if it’s a weed-filled, garbage-strewn unused lot at the far east end of St-Viateur, it can become something worth saving.

Emily Rose Michaud and her friends at the Champ des possibles committee say revitalizing the field bordered by the CP tracks, Henri-Julien, Maguire and de Gaspé—known as the CP Field, the Maguire Meadow, the Champ Maguire or just the Field—would add some community space to an area sorely lacking it. So on Sunday, May 9, the committee will be hosting a clean-up party with live music and a documentary filmmaking crew in tow. “Sunday will be about kick-starting activity in the park and encouraging the community to take it over,” she says.

The committee has been meeting with the borough council to speed up the field’s revitalization, but like any bureaucratic undertaking, progress is slow. They are working on installing garbage cans and benches, and awaiting the results of soil samples to see if decontamination is necessary.

In the meantime, however, all are welcome to come by on Sunday and toast a touch of green in Mile-End. See emilyrosemichaud.com or lechampdespossibles.tumblr.com for more info.

PATRICK LEJTENYI

Rear-view mirror

15 YEARS AGO - MAY 4–11, 1995

On the cover: “Biker/poet” Denis Vanier, for an article about the biker war. The article suggests the bikers’ influence on crime is on the wane, thanks mostly to internal problems and police attention. “You can never trust anybody because any one of them would stool on you to police,” says ex-Rock Machiner Pierre. “It’s a real psych ward, full of madmen, psychopaths and drug addicts.”

• From the Streetseen column: “What’s more fun: massaging your mind with scrap metal or listening to Phÿcus’s new CD, Brainmower?”

• Jimi Hendrix’s Voodoo Soup gets 8/10.

• The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts’s expansion may have doomed it, writes Henry Lehmann, since it left it with “larger maintenance costs and greater dependence on government subsidies. Hence, the MMFA was encouraged to go for ever bigger crowds, and this meant blockbusters relating to popular culture, like the hideous Snoopy show.”

• The Mirror apologizes for an editing error that dropped the “Best Pizza” results from the Best of Montreal issue. The winners: Pizzédélic, Pizza Hut, Mike’s.

Angel >>Green streets on the Plateau Everyone’s favourite artsy, left-wing hipster enclave is about to get more so, now that the borough administration has declared all out war on cars. This week, Projet Montréal borough mayor Luc Ferrandez announced that St-Dominique, between Laurier and St-Joseph, will be closed to traffic permanently as of next month. The street will be painted green and on June 17, a farmer’s market will be installed on Thursdays, with all goods produced locally and organically. Plateau residents will feel even more virtuous when the borough administration closes another 10 to 15 streets by the end of the year.

Insect >> Conservatives and their big mouths Vancouver area MP James Moore was probably just being a typical jock hoser when he tweeted about his hometown Canucks being “Canada’s team” over the weekend. But being the federal Heritage Minister and all, it sparked a predictable uproar and charges of Conservative bias for the West (as if that wasn’t already obvious), not to mention concern about how clumsy the party is when it comes to not saying stupid things in public. Which brings us to Nancy Ruth. The Conservative Senator told women’s groups to “shut the fuck up” when it came to abortion and women’s health care leading up to the G8 meeting, given Canada’s decision not to fund groups that advocate abortion. Now that’s advice her party could use.