Long live the Griff!

Near the heart of the city lies an area where tumbleweeds blow by the stubby foundations of churches, where pews still stand as a memory to the past. The hardbitten industrial area from Notre-Dame to the canal between de la Montagne and McGill got its name, Griffintown, from the Irish immigrants who once settled there. Now the area has its own documentary too, thanks to Richard Burman. The local filmmaker spent five years gathering footage about the area that had started to empty by the 1950s, as many residents moved to the relative suburbs of the neighbouring Point.

Now the sweet fruit of Burman’s documentary labour, Ghosts of Griffintown, is ready. “What attracted me to doing this was what people felt about living there. It was a community that people felt something strong about, where people mattered,” says Burman, who describes the doc as “a Montreal story with inherently universal messages.”

While making the doc, Burman discovered that his great-great-grandfather, an Irish immigrant, lived almost all of his 85 years on Young, in the heart of the ’hood. That home wasn’t far from such other long-gone landmarks as Pesner’s grocery store and O’Connell Baths. Burman says that his doc has “a melancholy nostalgic aspect but doesn’t wallow in it.” The flick rolls tonight (Thursday) at 7 p.m. at the Westmount Library as well as several other locales in upcoming weeks. To find out where, check out http://ourworld.cs.com/griffintowndoc. : » Kristian Gravenor

Scrutinizing
the great white north

Canada, most of us like to admit, is a fairly tolerant country, more or less free from the explosive racial politics that still divide our southern neighbours. But a two-day Montreal Race & Equity Conference at McGill this weekend will be taking a closer look at what some have called Canada’s “racism with a smile.”

“The goal of the conference is to expose a lot of different issues, from police brutality, immigration laws, immigrant labour, racial profiling and the war on terror,” says James Yap, a member of QPIRG-McGill, one of the conference hosts. “We want to make people more aware of the dynamics of racism.

“We all know Canada likes to sell an image of all these different ethnicities living peacefully together,” adds Yap. “But we know that’s not quite the reality. Canada is still a white supremacist country.”

Speaking at the conference will be Mohawk activist and artist Ellen Gabriel and author/activist Reginald Newkirk. The conference takes place on January 18–19 in the Shatner Building at McGill University. Cost for both days is $15 in advance, $20 at the door. The cost of three meals is included. Contact QPIRG-McGill for more info at 398-7432. : » Patrick Lejtenyi

New Year’s
march

This Saturday, January 18, marks the first anti-war march of the year, in conjunction with demos across Canada and the U.S. If all goes well, organizers hope, it will be the biggest one yet.

“The big difference between this one and the one in November is the fact that the students are getting behind it this time,” says march organizer and International Solidarity Movement member Scott Weinstein. “They were involved with the big anti-FTAA march in October, so they were only involved kind of peripherally. It’s great to have their energy, and they’ll probably turn out even if the weather isn’t great.”

Weather can be damper, but if one looks at the anti-war march last November 16, which drew between 3,000 and 5,000 people to the streets despite blowing wind and snow, principles may quite possibly trump creature comforts again, and draw a similar, if not larger, crowd.

The march will begin at 1 p.m. at Guy metro. For more information on the event, visit www.fiiq.qc.ca/echecalaguerre_e.htm. : » Patrick Lejtenyi

Angel >> Billy Van Canada lost one of its greatest insane TV geniuses with the death of Billy Van, the man behind one of the wackiest shows ever, The Hilarious House of Frightenstein. Cited by no less than Mike Myers as a major influence, Van was never really given proper credit for creating, writing and starring as virtually every character in the comedic haunted house. Whether he was the ghastly gourmet Grizelda, the forgetful Librarian or the Count, Van brought manic weirdness to each of his inspired roles. Billy, the castle lights have grown dim for the last time, but you won’t be forgotten by a generation of Canadian kiddies.
Insect >> AIDSphobic media Stunningly and with profound stupidity, the mainstream media reported on fashion photographer and filmmaker Herb Ritts’ death as caused by pneumonia, when everyone and anyone knew the man had been HIV+ for years. The widespread (non-)reportage hearkened back to a pre-Rock Hudson era of AIDS repression, a time when President Reagan refused to mention the word in public and the entire epidemic was being swept under the rug as a nasty disease that only affected those people. The media’s step backwards indicates how far we haven’t come in the battle against HIV and the attitudes that surround it.