| Targeting Italians by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR
Every other day this summer the Gates of Hell slowly start to open around 5 p.m., as the first 24 year old driving a $75,000 SUV playing earthshaking beat-heavy music pulls up in front of the park across the street. The misery accelerates by the minute as the hundreds of fans of the West End Recreational Soccer League crowd onto the tiny sidelines of Oxford Park to cheer on every pass and roar at every goal. The unwelcome crescendo occurs near midnight as the players and fans hop back in their cars to return to wherever they came from, but not first without blasting their horns at each other, hollering and thumping the night with their powerful car stereos. The noisy decamping of the occupying soccer army is often played against the backdrop of a portrait of this columnist shaking his fist. So what to do when your neighbourhood becomes the ninth circle of ball-chasing Hades? Complaints to the police and city councillor Marcel Tremblay have so far elicited so many shrugs you swear you could see their shoulder muscles beefing up. The insane notion of putting a competitive soccer league with hundreds of fans into a small park rather than, say, Olympic Stadium, has everything to do with the local ascriptive ethnic grab bag of our city politics—in which the local Italians have long been the weakest link. Historically, no other community has been an easier mark for local politicians. In the ’60s Mayor Drapeau demolished the Italian neighbourhood known as Goose Village—near where Club Price now stands—for no reason in particular. Nobody complained. Then, after years of struggling on where to put the north-south highway, Drap decided again to take the path of least resistance, by demolishing the homes of Italian immigrants on Minto Avenue. I can’t tell you why the Italians weren’t politically mobilized against their own victimization. But I might speculate that it has something to do with their prioritizing irrelevant tasks such as making sure every blade in their backyard stands at an even height. Or perhaps they were feeling collectively distracted and sheepish about supporting Mussolini. But the failure of the Italians in local politics exposes the danger of a group taking their eye off the ball. Once city hall realizes they can buy you off with a bocce court, you’re in trouble. The abuse of the Italians continues unabated in St. Raymond’s Parish, (the area of NDG below the tracks). Last year the local elementary school John XXIII was shut for good. The cold-hearted administrators of the adult ed school that has taken over have even banned local kids from the school gym. The CPR last year started fining local residents for taking their customary walking paths over the tracks. And last year Mayor Bourque chose to ship all of the city’s garbage through the same neighbourhood. The plan was only cancelled after McGill authorities worried it might inconvenience their superhospital project. A few weeks ago the city effectively banned locals from the soccer field by erecting a fence around it to be opened only when people from God knows where get to play their league games. The field has been covered in astroturf that’s not only an excuse for other neighbourhoods to send unwanted soccer down here, but has also led to the demise of the highlight of the neighbourhood’s Italian cultural season. This weekend’s fireworks have been cancelled for fear it might damage the plastic grass. In any other neighbourhood residents would be phoning the papers, picketing and hollering at city council. But down here they only seem to be fretting among themselves. : Comments? kgravy@openface.ca |