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Footie
truth
In a sport where objective thinking is absent, Jason Bogdaneris brought
us a sober (and sometimes funny) look into the 2002 World Cup participants
[“Twilight zone tourney,” May 30]. Bogdaneris is obviously
either a true fan of the sport or just plain good at researching. It
is indeed refreshing to see.
For the most part, Montreal papers have made inroads in their coverage
of the “beautiful game” and this is important in a sport where,
often, facts are ignored and only versions of the truth exist. Partisanship
was spared in this article. Leave that up to all the fans out there.
Avanti, Azzuri!
—Sandro
Sympatico
backlash
This is in regards to “Download downturn” [May 23]. I am a
Sympatico high-speed user, and have been for about two years or so.
What attracted me to it was that it was cheaper than Vidéotron
cable Internet, and didn’t have the download restrictions. Like
most users, I was soon drawn into the amazing download speeds, grabbing
all the DIVXs I could find and downloading about a gig of music a day.
Nowadays, I’ve gotten past that stage, but not to the point where
I download less than five gigs. Hell, five gigs? I can do that with
my old 56k connection.
My friend recently got a “bill” from Sympatico stating that
if the tarifs were in place, he would have had to pay over $120, over
and above the regular fee, and he hadn’t been able to connect most
of the month because of hardware problems on the Sympatico end. This
pissed him off so much that he went out and did a bit of research (after
denting his fridge). He discovered two alternatives to Sympatico high
speed and Videotron cable. Access Vantage and Colba.net both offer DSL
access in the same areas that Sympatico covers, for a lower cost.
Are they effective? Don’t know, I’m in the process of switching
now. If you want to check it out yourself the Web sites are: www.accessv.com
and www.colba.net. The way I see it, Sympatico is about to lose a large
number of customers.
—G. Ferland
Armenian
genocide
Thank you for the Front news item by Patrick Lejtenyi about the Armenian
genocide [May 23]. Even though this genocide claimed up to 1.5 million
Armenians between 1915 and 1920, it still has not been recognized by
the U.S. and many other nations. France, however, has formally recognized
the genocide. Turkey may be a marvel of secularism in the Middle East
and America’s strongest ally among Muslim nations, but that should
not be a reason to deny an ugly chapter in its history. Already the
Turkish government is beginning to recognize the Kurdish language and
grant the Kurds a measure of autonomy in a bid to improve its human
rights record and join the European union. Your article left out a very
important Web site on the holocaust at www.armeniangenocide.com
—Manish Patwari
End
of an art saga?
Well, Mark Lanctôt of the Association des galeries d’art
contemporain (AGAC) really wants the public to believe that the gallery
of which I am co-director, the arteVISTA gallery, and others like it,
such as Zeke’s, are not “real” galleries, even though
they received many votes in that section in this year’s BOM awards.
His last letter accurately summarizes the differences in business models
between the arteVISTA gallery and those represented by the AGAC. However
to say that, “the artists who choose to show there get little more
than a line in their résumé,” is rather petty and
unfair. Art is (I think, unfortunately) a huge business. The artists
are usually the last to profit from it. At least at the arteVISTA gallery
they get to keep all the proceeds from the sales they make.
Mr. Lanctôt’s initial premise—that art galleries like
arteVISTA are not art galleries at all—is so preposterous that
I’ll just leave the readers to make up their own minds. Perhaps
he should consider coining a new phrase to replace the term “art
gallery” which the AGAC could copyright, and have their own special
section in next year’s Best of Montreal. Can we consider this matter
closed now and get back to promoting local artists?
—John Dutton
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