Quote of the week:

"Amnesty International does not consider Ernst Zundel to be a prisoner of conscience and is not calling for his release" - The human rights group responds to Zundel’s supporters, who want them to denounce the Holocaust denier’s incarceration, from Tuesday’s National Post.

Feds order
family break-up

Cecilia Carillo used false documents and lied to get into Canada, and now she’s paying the price. The 37-year-old Peruvian woman, who arrived here with her nine-year-old son in the fall of 2001 to escape an abusive relationship, was told she had to leave the country this week, despite the fact that she is now married, surrounded by family here and pregnant.

And even though it is possible that returning to Peru could put both her life and the life of her unborn child in jeopardy, says her lawyer Bill Sloan, Canadian immigration authorities are either too blind or callous to care. He is trying to raise public awareness about her plight in order to win some state-sanctioned clemency, but it might be too late.

Sloan says the ruling judge refused her humanitarian exemption plea because "he thought this was a marriage of convenience. Is this a pregnancy of convenience? At some point they have to look at the situation and say, ‘Let’s be real, she’s pregnant, this is a real marriage.’ Either they can’t see that or they are trying to punish her about lying about her past."

Canadian authorities won’t deport her directly to Peru, he says. Instead, Carillo will be dropped off at the U.S. border to await processing.

"They’re going to dump her at the border, not claim any more responsibility and wash their hands," says Sloan. He does admit that he would be "very surprised" if she showed up for her deportation, and her whereabouts were unknown by press time » Patrick Lejtenyi

Rage against the mausoleum

A recent proposal to build a 17,000-square-metre mausoleum in the Mount Royal Cemetery - officially decreed part of a natural and historic landmark by the Tremblay administration last February - has preservation and conservation group Les Amis de la montagne and concerned citizens, well, concerned. Lobbyists voiced their apprehension at a Côte-des-Neiges/NDG borough council meeting on Monday night, though the decision to go ahead with the multi-million-dollar project may be announced as early as today.

Normally, in light of the area’s protected status, the decision to build on it would have to go through a series of checks and balances, with the provincial Ministry of Culture having the final say. However, it seems that the proper procedural channels may be circumvented, with the borough’s support, opponents say.

"We don’t really understand why the borough is allowing this," says Gabrielle Korn, director of communications for Les Amis. "We’ve been trying to contact the community, even going door-to-door to let people know."

Though Monday’s meeting only dealt with the one, the cemetery administrators are seeking to build a total of four new mausoleums. Les Amis are hoping to prevent what they say is the violation of the procedure process, which would set an unfavourable precedent for the future. "Worst-case scenario," says Korn, "it’ll go to referendum."

For more info on how to protect that big ol’ hill of ours, contact Les Amis de la montagne at 843-8240. » Alexandra Spunt

Cyclists seek missing links

Seven hundred cyclists have signed a petition urging the city to create a half-kilometre bike path link between the southern end of the bike path on Clark, which ends at Laurier, to Jeanne-Mance Park, where the path begins anew and continues downtown. Robert "Bicycle Bob" Silverman considers it the city’s major cycle priority, along with the connection of two West-End paths. One path along de Maisonneuve north of the CP tracks ends at Girouard, while another ends a few hundred yards east at Claremont and de Maisonneuve.

The veteran bike guru says that the answer to the West-End link lies on the tracks. "With the cooperation of the Canadian Pacific, cyclists (on the western path) could go south to the railway track, go half a block south, then four blocks east over two bridges. I’m an optimist. The CP has done it before and there’s enough space to do it here and it would be good for their public name."

Silverman isn’t all gloom and doom about the state of our cycling ways. He’s encouraged by the expansion of last summer’s program in which workers of certain companies can borrow bikes from their companies and he’s also buoyed by continuation of programs that allow cyclists to place their bikes on front-end racks of buses to Terrebonne and Mascouche. "These are big steps forward because they establish the principle that these things can be done," he says. » Kristian Gravenor

Rear view

18 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK
June 20-July 3, 1985

On the cover: Various festival posters, as the Mirror’s 16-page Vol. 1 No. 1 hits Montreal streets. Section editors include Brendan Kelly (culture), Julien Feldman and Peter Kuitenbrouwer (news), Paul Gott (music), Catherine Salisbury-Rowswell (listings), Eyal Kattan (photography), and Paula Sypnowich (design and production). On staff are Maria Triant (photographer) and Daniel Sanger (writer).

• Questioning the wisdom of lavishing money on big-ticket, big-name festivals and events rather than supporting local talent, the Mirror states that, "Funding a Picasso splash rather than helping Quebec artists, many of whom fit the starving artist stereotype, is a business decision and not a moral or nationalist one."

• "A huge perfectly turned out body coupled with complete imbecility and laid out as spectacle for public consumption would be laughable if the audiences weren’t responding so enthusiastically," sniffs the review of Rambo: First Blood Part II.

• Foufounes hosts a launch party for Deja Voodoo and the Terminal Sunglasses. Admission is $2.

Angel >> The (gradually) increasing blue whale population On the brink of extinction a quarter century ago, the blue whale population may have tripled since then, thanks to conservation efforts. Once killed in the tens of thousands annually, the world’s largest mammal - perhaps even the largest animal ever - has made a recovery from its lowest point in the mid-1960s, when it was nearly wiped out. The scientific committee of the International Whaling Commission told the body’s annual meeting this week that the population estimates are indeed only estimates, although research indicates a growth in numbers around Iceland and the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
Insect >> American hypocrisy Long contending part of their reasoning for the war on Iraq was the country’s shaky human rights record, the U.S. government continued to staunchly oppose the International Criminal Court in the Hague this week. Despite the appointment of renowned Argentine human rights lawyer Luis Moreno Ocampo as the Court’s first prosecutor, the U.S. government remained defiant, stating that they were worried about "politically motivated" prosecutions. In other words, they wished to remain above the reach of international law - a nasty double standard and dubious distinction coming from the Bush administration, of the simplistic you’re-either-with-us-or-against-us, axis-of-evil moral code.