Quote of the week:

“The battle for independence continues.” - Jean-Olivier, a marcher commenting on the significance of the first-ever Journée des Patriotes, formerly known (in Quebec) as Dollard-des-Ormeaux Day. The Gazette reported that less than 100 people turned out for Monday’s march (the Journal said 500).

Hotline offers beastly solutions

For the benefit of those unsure of how to deal with the wild animals in their lives, the Urban Nature Information Service (UNIS)—informally known as the city-critter hotline—is back to answer all your panicked queries. Buzz their digits and this McGill-run phone line will tell you what to do when a bird nests on your balcony (wait it out, it’ll be gone in weeks and it’s a violation of the Migratory Birds Act to move a nest or destroy eggs) or where to turn to help relocate that cute orphaned beast wandering around in your yard.

“Animals are being chased out of their natural environment. They’re learning how to thrive in cities, so we’ve go to learn to coexist,” says hotline rep Kelly Faubert. Recent complaints have ranged from a beaver invading a swimming pool in St-Hubert to countless skunk quandaries. “Skunks dig up lawns to eat white grubs, which are butterfly eggs. The skunks are doing you a favour because the eggs eat the grassroots.”

Faubert counsels killing the grub with an organic spray and notes that skunks are relatively benign, sharing their notorious odour only as a last resort. Raccoon invasions can be curtailed by spilling Tabasco sauce and putting bungee cords on your garbage bin. And Faubert says humans too often assume that tiny critters they find are parentless: “Chances are that if it’s fat and healthy then the mother just climbed out of the nest for a while to go hunting.”

For further info call 398-7882 or visit www.agrenv.mcgill.ca/urban-nature/. » Kristian Gravenor

Charity delivery

If you’ve been looking for an opportunity to help feed the elderly but keep resisting because you’re a little squeamish about having to witness them drool creamed corn down their chins, you need resist no longer. Up until June 30, the À la Carte Express delivery service and their 80 restaurants and suppliers will be holding a fundraising drive for Montreal seniors. Through carwashes, bowl-a-thons and benefit dinners, the À la Carte Express team are hoping to raise approximately $10,000 for Santropol Roulant—the well-known youth-run meals-on-wheels organization.

And if bowling for Granny is more effort than you’re prepared to make, the service has made it even easier for you to do your bit. Up until the end of next month, anyone who places an order through À la Carte Express will have the opportunity to donate 50 cents to Santropol Roulant, to which the À la Carte Express team will add another $2 to the cause.

“We can’t thank Michel Lépine and À la Carte Express enough for initiating this campaign” says Santropol Roulant fundraising director Brian McFarlane. “This is really amazing for us. With this money we should be able to re-do all our computers, which will make us more efficient and allow us to spend more time with the seniors, rather than doing paperwork.” » Chris Barry

Art on the fringe

Les Impatients—a 10-plus-year-old Montreal institution dedicated to offering people with mental illness a chance to express themselves through the arts—held a book launch yesterday, May 21, at the Douglas Hospital. Entitled Les Impatients de Montréal (or in English, Artists From the Fringe), the book showcases the oeuvres of its members collected over the years.

With three studios across the city, explains spokesperson Flavie Boucher, the organization “offers art therapy and music therapy workshops to people who have, or have had, psychiatric problems.” However, says Boucher, the group’s larger mandate has been “to demystify mental illness through art.”

As founding chair Pierre Henry explains in a press release, the book offers a glimpse into the world of mental illness and notes that the afflicted are often “people like you and me, architects, firemen, musicians, teachers, who have had a temporary setback following a difficult period in their lives—like a burnout.” The book also includes some personal testimonials.

With a gallery attached to its downtown locale, Les Impatients has held regular exhibitions in the past—the book, however, is the first of its kind. Les Impatients de Montréal, available in both French and English, is for sale for $30 at the downtown centre (100 Sherbrooke E., 4th floor) as well as at Renaud-Bray bookstores across the city. For more information visit www.artbrut.qc.ca. » Alexandra Spunt

Rear view

15 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK

On the cover: A thinkpiece/essay on horror films (Friday the 13th Part 7: The New Blood opens in Montreal) examines the evolution of the genre, with an emphasis on humour and sex. While witnessing the brutal slayings of “giggling female victims,” viewers, writes Steve Kokker, “undergo a temporary catharsis wherein their own sexual repressions and fears are justified by the murdered nymphets on the screen.”

• Bio-activists fear that food irradiation at Laval’s Canadian Irradiation Centre is “insidious, undesirable, and unnecessary.” They voice worries over the Centre’s safety, the effect on eating irradiated food, taste, loss of vitamins and freshness.

• Montreal hosts its first-ever 10-day reggae festival, featuring, among others, Kali and Dub, the Swinging Relatives, the Sattalites, Mike Anthony and Jah Cutta.

• Les Amis du Cinéma take out a half-page call to arms against Bill 59, which would subject film screenings to conditions prescribed by Quebec. They worry that forcing movies to be simultaneously distributed in English and French will potentially result in mass linguistic government control over all other media.

Angel >> Support for Ghyslain the “Star Wars Kid,” Quebec’s most famous nerd Fame found the pudgy 15-year-old wannabe Dark Lord rather unexpectedly, when, last month, friends uploaded a self-shot video of him furiously wielding a golf ball retriever like a light saber in imitation of Darth Maul, the villain of The Phantom Menace. Since downloaded over a million times, the clip’s appeal stems from both Ghyslain’s enthusiasm and awkward gracelessness. Some comments posted online, however, have been overly nasty, but the Star Wars Kid has at least some defenders: Andy Baio, creator of www.waxy.org, last week began soliciting money to compensate Ghyslain for being the subject of unwanted global scrutiny, and has since raised over $2,000 (U.S.).
Insect >> Management manhandling at The Gazette Last Friday, just before the long weekend, Gazette publisher Larry Smith announced the buyout of 16 positions in the paper’s editorial department—almost 10 per cent of the newsroom. This is only the latest move in a series of cost-cutting, centralizing measures that have afflicted the paper since its takeover by CanWest, damaging its reputation, readability and staff morale. While the paper has had its share of shortcomings in the past, recent brass-imposed moves are turning it more and more into the local franchise of a cross-national, distant and unresponsive corporation.