Quote of the week:

“I haven’t done anything wrong, I just want to practice my religion.” —16-year-old Irène Waseem, who was expelled from the private Collège Charlemagne in Pierrefonds for wearing an Islamic headscarf in violation of the school’s dress code, in La Presse.

Subsidized renters
fear cuts

What better way to make a quick buck than to sell off the government subsidized apartments and turf the 23,000 residents out of house and home?

Well, the Fédération des locataires d’habitations à loyer modique du Québec (the Federation of Subsidized Housing Residents) worries the Charest government might see the subsidized homes as a source of cash rather than a place where cash is needed. They also fear that the province could monkey with the traditional rule of thumb that sees the poor pay one-quarter of their income for their homes. They plan to organize a petition voicing these fears and present it to the province.

“At times in the past we’ve worried about privatization and other times we’ve had to worry about raising the rent levels, but with Charest’s promised re-engineering of Quebec, this is the first time we’ve had to worry about both at the same time,” says Louis Lafortune, community organizer for the group.

She notes that Charest has already slashed $5.5-million from the emergency repairs and renovation budget, which has left some beleaguered tenants in flooded homes and others without access to their balconies. “Even if the government seeks to raise their rents from 25 to say 28 or 30 per cent of their income, that works out to be an enormous increase for these people. Don’t forget these are very poor people, mostly welfare recipients, single parents and senior citizens who live in these places. They all have very low incomes, so these are worrisome times for them,” says Lafortune.

» Kristian Gravenor

Chile remembered

Through the middle of October, a coalition of local Chilean, socialist and human rights groups is sponsoring a series of cultural and educational events to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the bloody coup that toppled the Chilean government of Salvador Allende.

“Chile, at that time, was an exceptional case in Latin America of a rather stable, liberal democracy,” says Sergio Martinez, a spokesperson for the coalition.

As many as 3,000 (or more) Chilean dissidents would eventually be tortured and murdered during the 17-year rule of General Augusto Pinochet. Sergio Martinez was almost one of them.

Six months after the coup, Martinez, then a young philosophy professor and Allende supporter, was forced to flee the country after narrowly escaping arrest. Now living in Canada, where he’s resided for the past 27 years, he teaches at Centennial College in Montreal.

Tomorrow, Friday, Sept. 26, at 7 p.m., the Cinémathèque québécoise (335 de Maisonneuve E.) screens two documentaries, and on Saturday, Sept. 27, there will be a concert at Kola Note (5240 Parc, $15) as part of the Festival Victor Jara, named after the popular Chilean singer and artist, who was arrested the day of the coup and became one of Pinochet’s first victims. The festival continues on Sunday at the Union Française (429 Viger E.) where, from noon to midnight, Jara’s life and work will be celebrated through a wide range of artistic disciplines, including poetry, dance, photography and, of course, music. Other events will take place in October.

For more information, call 935-4438. » Christopher Hazou

Translator fiesta

Tuesday, Sept. 30, is International Translation Day, a day to celebrate the publishing world’s indispensable but often ignored behind-the-scenes border-busters. While not as fawned over as authors or invited to as many parties as editors, translators, say the Ordre des traducteurs, terminologues et interprètes agréés du Québec (OTTIAQ—and, for all monolinguists out there, the Order of Translators, Terminologists and Interpreters of Quebec), have a golden future ahead of them. And that’s a reason to party.

“Translation is growing all over the world,” says Bruce Knowlden, OTTIAQ’s vice-president of professional affairs. “A large number of people are asserting their identity, and business groups especially want to communicate with them in their own languages.”

He says that while English-to-French and vice versa remain the two mainstays in the Canadian translation scene, English-to-Cantonese or Mandarin is growing on the West Coast, and English-to-Spanish or Portuguese is surging everywhere, as trade within the Americas evolves. Back home, meanwhile, job growth is eye-popping: he points out that 81.3 per cent of translation B.A. grads find jobs in their fields, translation firms’ demand for interns is increasing by 20 per cent a year, and, between 2004 and 2010, the federal government will lose up to 50 per cent of its translation bureau to retirement. Prospects are très belles (very nice).

Intellectual property rights are the theme for this year’s celebrations, and remain a soggy spot for translators, especially in Europe. For more info on the translation world and their party, call 845-4411. »Patrick Lejtenyi

REAR-VIEW MIRROR

18 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK
September 26-October 10, 1985

On the cover: The Normals and Deja Voodoo, as the Mirror looks at the local alt music scene from punk to the present (spanning a total of eight years). The five articles include a brief history of local alternative music, the growth of Montreal indie labels, lack of local airplay for same, the MTLHC scene and a musician’s guide to surviving the club circuit.

• The Mirror goes behind the scenes at the Air Canada flight attendants’ strike. “At 35,000 feet, I’m the nurse, fireman, plumber, psychiatrist. They are putting us under more and more stressful conditions in the name of productivity, but safety is being sacrificed,” complains a union rep.

• Discussing her film Hasta Cierto Punto (Up to a Certain Point), Cuban actress Mirta Ibarra talks gender politics. “The worker at the beginning of the film is most honest,” she says. “He says he’s for women’s rights but only up to a certain point. He admits he’s a chauvinist. He assumes his machismo. The screenwriter thinks he isn’t a chauvinist but he is.”

Angel >> Waking up to local heritage Montreal’s new heritage advisory group, announced this week, has its work cut out for it. While Old Montreal and the mountain have received the lion’s share of attention and protection, many once-colourful neighbourhoods—the Plateau and St-Henri, to name two—have metamorphosed into areas hardly recognizable from a decade ago. The spurt of condos, office buildings, supermarkets and the like killing off not only cheap places to live, but our very history.
Insect >> Coronations Last weekend’s Liberal delegate vote assured Paul Martin’s long-anticipated ascension to the federal throne, something everyone—except maybe Sheila Coops, and even that’s a stretch—saw coming for months. The race may be over, but the democratic deficit that shot Martin to the top so flagrantly is worrying. Where was the debate? Where was the choice? There are a lot of questions still surrounding Martin’s platform, and while his pro-business agenda will undoubtedly stave off competition from the Tories and the Canadian Alliance, the country is still in for a sharp turn to the right.