My job sucks, says graffiti brigadier

Different participants had different things to say about the work of the City of Montreal's new graffiti brigade, which began this week. The band of young people on this federally subsidized make-work program bike around the city in search of defiled walls and posts, or answer calls from property owners unhappy about graffiti and other goop on their walls.

Jacques Vézina, Superintendent of the City's Graffiti and Postering Unit, told the Mirror, "We're concerned with recapturing an image of cleanliness in Montreal. This part of St-Laurent is a visual irritant. This project is about being proud of what we have."

"Me, I call it cheap labour," said one of the young workers hired at minimum wage, who worked alongside City blue collar workers (making $20 an hour) scraping 10 or so slimy layers of stickers off the Musée Juste Pour Rire's posts. Two workers had been scraping a post an hour and a quarter, and it was only half done. She wondered aloud why the blue-collars got to go on a break and they hadn't. "They say this is going to give us job skills, life skills. I'm not even going to put this on my CV."

--Jacquie Charlton