Quote of the week

“We came here two months after the fact and we still don’t know why we were arrested. And we won’t know for another two months.” —Karine Théorêt, arrested at the Toronto G20 Summit, on being told Monday that her court hearing would be postponed for another two months. Many former detainees are still waiting for any evidence to be presented.

Welcome to St-Z!

If you’re a Petite Patrie/Little Italy resident who actually likes your neighbours and appreciates how much more livable an area is when there’s a semblance of genuine community involved, be sure to mark Sunday, Aug. 29 off on your kitchen calendar, the date when the first annual St-Zotique Carnival will be taking place.

“We wanted to do something to promote the merchants of St-Zotique street,” says Melanie Lallouz of Lallouz Café & Kebaberie, who helped organize the event. “So we figured it’d be fun to do this retro, old school family-style carnival in the park showcasing all the merchants who’ve been here for years while at the same time welcoming all these new residents who arrived here July 1, on moving day. We want to bridge the gap with them, welcome them to our neighbourhood and tighten the sense of community around here.”

The Carnival gets going at 10 a.m. in Saint-Jean-de-la-Croix park (corner St-Dominique and St-Zotique), and Lallouz promises there’ll be entertainment going down throughout the day. “We’ve got tons of musicians stopping by to play, some great carny acts, lots of cool photo-op things. And it’s all people from the area showing off their wares and talents.”

CHRIS BARRY

Welcome Tamils!

The boatload of 492 Tamil refugees who fled their war-torn Sri Lanka for B.C. earlier this month were greeted with a shock course in Canada’s changing immigration practices. Instead of a safe haven, they found themselves escorted to a detention centre by the Navy amid government and media accusations that they are terrorists, bogus refugees and queue jumpers. Those are rumours that Montreal-based group Friends of Tamil Refugees, an ad-hoc group opposing the treatment of the migrants, is keen to dispel.

“The Tamil migrants are asylum seekers and have rights under international law that aren’t being respected,” says Friends rep Taylor Lewis, calling some of the accusations racist. “It’s as if being a Tamil and being a refugee was enough to make someone a terrorist and have to be incarcerated. The burden is being put on the migrants to prove that they’re legitimate, but when other people come here they’re not assumed to be criminals or terrorists.”

This week will see actions demanding the migrants be allowed to stay across the country. A picket in Montreal takes place today, Thursday Aug. 26 from noon to 2 p.m., in front of the Immigration and Refugee Board offices (200 René Lévesque).

MATT JONES

Mud does good

If you find that charity events too often devolve into sycophantic spectacles to stroke the egos of the moneyed while they put on their best humanitarian faces for a heartwarming dip into their wallets, not to worry: that’s a demeanor that’s hard to keep up when you’re getting your face pile-driven into a pool of beige sludge by a lycra-clad Mexican bandit. Such is the idea behind Mud Wrestling for Relief, which holds its second event at the Centre St-Ambroise (5080 St-Ambroise) this Sunday, Aug. 29 at 5 p.m.

“We’re a very civilized society and people behave themselves and we don’t condone violence,” muses organizer Heather Lou, who admits she was amazed at the primal frenzy that overtook the crowd at the last event. “One of my best friends, who’s very conservative and meek, was screaming, pulling her hair out, throwing beer at me. People were losing their minds.”

The funds come from the participants, who pay to wrestle, and spectators who bet on who will win. Proceeds will be split between earthquake relief in Haiti and flood relief for Pakistan.

Aspiring wrestlers, preferably with spectacular, absurd costumes, should e-mail mudwrestling4relief@gmail.com to sign up.

MATT JONES

Iron veggies

It’s hard to imagine a much more worthwhile cause to support than Santropol Roulant’s Meals on Wheels program, but to do that while having yourself a rollicking good ol’ time, well, it’s about as win/win a situation as you’re ever going to find.

This year the good folk over at Santropol Roulant are organizing an “Iron-Chef Cook-Off” fundraiser set for Thursday, Sept. 2, where five teams, one from Santropol Roulant and four from local restaurants—Lola Rosa, Serafim, Fuschia and Crudessence—will be given one hour to harvest vegetables and herbs from Santropol Roulant’s community garden and cook a meal up on the spot for a panel of judges.

“The Cook-Off event is meant to highlight local food production and urban agriculture but also, of course, to raise money for our projects,” notes Santropol Roulant’s director of sustainability Tim Murphy. “After a hard summer growing veggies in our garden, we want to celebrate with the community and hopefully raise a bit of money for the garden next year.”

The competition gets underway at 5 p.m. outside Burnside Hall on McGill campus, with bands, a corn roast, food and plenty of beer on hand to keep things interesting.

CHRIS BARRY

Rear-view mirror

15 YEARS AGO - AUG. 24–31, 1995

On the cover:Ed Burns, for The Brothers McMullen. The indie rom-com, he says, is a deliberate counter-point to the current Hollywood crop. “They always involve an actress in her late 20s who falls for someone like Sean Connery,” he says. “He’s old enough to be my grandfather.”

• Sasha investigates circumcision. She argues that foreskin is in fact a valuable asset, protecting the sensitive glans and thus increasing sensation, and that it facilitates masturbation and “shares lubricating responsibilities during sex.” Some circumcised men she spoke to “snorted when I suggested they’d be been cheated. ‘If my cock worked any better, I’d die,’ more than one guy said.”

• Afrika Bambaataa shares his unusual beliefs during a 3:30 a.m. Monday morning interview. He claims movies like Demolition Man, The Net and Virtuosity are preparing humankind for “microchips in your head; about the mark of the Beast, which is the bar code. And they’re getting ready to show you the aliens, too,” referring to the popularity of ET, Close Encounters, Species, Predator and The X-Files.

Angel >> Weed car What an exciting couple of weeks in the alternative fuel industry! First, we get a car that could run on human excrement (see Angel, “Piece of shit car,” Aug. 12). Now comes an electric car made of hemp, courtesy of Calgary-based Crown corporation Motive Industries, called the Kestrel. The body will be made from hemp mats, giving it a lightweight but impact-resistant frame, and can reach up to 90 km/h. It’s a good, if not necessarily new, idea: a hemp fibre and resin car was first developed, and abandoned, by Henry Ford over 50 years ago, and an all-weed car was the central plot device in Cheech and Chong’s excellent 1978 film Up In Smoke.

Insect >> The global helium supply Bad news for kids’ birthday parties, blimps and MRIs. The global supply of helium, an inert gas used mainly as an industrial coolant but also known to make voices hilariously squeaky when inhaled from a balloon, is dwindling fast, says Robert Richardson, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist at Cornell University. He says the government of the U.S.—where 80 per cent of the world’s helium comes from—is selling the gas at ridiculously low prices and undervaluing its true worth. He estimates that at current usage rates, the world’s stock will run out in 25 years. According to Richardson, the price of a party balloon will soar from around $3 to a whopping $100.