Quote of the week:

"We couldn't put a decomposing body on the front page." - Richard Desmarais, publisher of Allô!, formerly known as Allô Police, as the sensational, trashy tabloid changes its identity and goes upscale, in Monday's National Post. The tabloid made the change this week.

No nets for fire jumpers

The horrific deaths of two roofers forced to leap off a blazing third-storey roof last Sunday raises the question: why weren't firefighters standing below with a net?

The answer: "Depending on which island municipality you're talking about, nets haven't been used for 10 to 50 years," says Montreal fire department division chief Frank Albert. "The problem was, they were made of canvas and after constant folding and unfolding they weakened, and the person would more often than not go through [the net and hit] the concrete."

Yves Thibault, security planning manager of the City of Montreal, says nets went the way of the carrier pigeons because, "They were considered too dangerous - not only because the jumper could miss the net, but also for the firefighters below. Consider the weight of a body and the speed it would be coming at. That's a pretty serious force and not many nets could withstand that."

One firefighter who did use nets says it was an ineffective means of saving lives. "We practiced with nets at firefighting school long ago, and it takes 10 to 12 students to hold, and in the field it led to a lot of firefighters breaking their wrists," says Benoît Pépin, a former Laval firefighter currently working in fire prevention.

Air bags transported by specialized trucks, which were present Sunday, are usually used to catch jumpers, but, says Albert, because they take five to 10 minutes to inflate and require a flat, uncluttered surface in order to work, couldn't be deployed in time to save the roofers' lives. » Kristian Gravenor

Plan Tremblay: whither?

In light of the ever-burning demerger issue, the Urban Ecology Centre is presenting a public forum day on "The 3D's: Democracy, Decentralization and Defusion" at Concordia. Its goal, say its organizers, is to explain the "Tremblay Plan" for decentralization, adopted by city council in September. The plan was widely panned by demerger types for not giving the boroughs - mostly the former municipalities swallowed by the mega-merger - enough power.

But Lucia Kowaluk, the Urban Ecology Centre's coordinator, says all points of view are welcome at the forum. "We just want to look at the Tremblay plan and have a debate," she says. "The Tremblay administration is not creating a debate themselves, and there should be one. The Tremblay plan is on the table, it's been announced, but there's been no effort to create a forum for the discussion of its implications."

One of the big questions of the day is that of democracy, and whether a return to the status quo ante merger will mean more of it. "Will decentralization really bring politics closer to the people, or will we be returning to a bunch of little bailiwicks?" she says. She expects several hundred people will turn out to ponder and opine on these questions.

The public forum takes place Saturday, Nov. 15 at Concordia's Hall Building (1455 de Maisonneuve W.) from 8:45 a.m. to 5 p.m. Registration is $5, $2 for people of low-income. For more info, call 282-8378 or visit www.ecologieurbaine.net. » Patrick Lejtenyi

Banned piper
comes of age

The piper is riper. Melissa-Jane Hollands, the 11 year old banned from our burg for being too young to busk three years ago, can no longer be quieted by age-based permit requirements. The calendar has provided revenge to the youngest of seven children raised by schoolteachers in Huntsville (and more recently Brockville, Ontario). As of Monday, she is 14, old enough to qualify for a permit to play her bagpipes on our streets.

According to Melissa-Jane, "having my 15 minutes of fame" didn't hurt her fortunes. She says that the media hubbub caused by our anti-prepubescent legislation opened the door to a handful of well-paying corporate gigs. Hollands spent much of last summer playing the less age-discriminating streets of Ottawa to support her pet habit.

"I have a horse, a dog and a cat to pay for," she says. Her mother Christiane, who hangs around while Melissa-Jane bleats away on the Scottish sack, says there's a possibility her daughter will busk here again next summer. » Kristian Gravenor

REAR-VIEW MIRROR

15 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK
Nov. 17-Dec. 1, 1988

On the cover: Diminutive author Margaret Atwood, in town to read from her novel Cat's Eye. She believes CanLit to be a worthwhile pursuit: "It is no longer an appropriate or necessary attitude to consider that Canadian literature is some kind of duty. If I had to rely on an audience of high school students who could hardly wait to get to the real stuff, I wouldn't have much of an audience."

• The Mirror runs a federal election special, with articles on free trade, institutionalized voters, downtown candidate profiles and weird parties, including the Party for a Commonwealth of Canada, who "push a Canadian version of the fascism of perennial U.S. presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche, upon whom they heap lavish praise."

• Tickets for the Dec. 16 Deja Voodoo Barbecue cost $4 in advance or $5 at the door.

• Errol Morris' documentary about a Dallas policeman's murder, The Thin Blue Line, is described as a "Homeric episode of 60 Minutes where Mike Wallace has been replaced by Wallace Stevens."

Angel >> Billionaire philanthropists Stupendously wealthy Hungarian-American financier George Soros and a partner donated $5-million (all figures U.S.) to left-leaning grassroots flash campaign group MoveOn.org, with the intention of helping to remove George Bush from the White House in 2004. Soros, one of the world's wealthiest men, has already given away over $5-billion to various international pro-democracy campaigns. Including this latest contribution, he has spent over $15-million of his own money to get Bush out. And last week, Joan Kroc, widow of McDonald's Corp. founder Ray Kroc, bequested $200-million to the leftish National Public Radio - described as the largest monetary gift ever received by an American cultural institution. Who says money's the root of all evil?
Insect >> Gay Games squabbles On Tuesday, Nov. 11, word got out that the Federation of Gay Games (FGG) and Rendez-Vous Montréal 2006, the organizing committee for the 2006 Games, were at an impasse over the event's size, scope and financial control. By press time, talks had broken down completely. Montréal 2006 says the Games will go on with or without FGG sanction, who in turn say they will move the official Games to Atlanta. But this public spat isn't good for anyone, least of all the athletes, who may be caught in a nasty tug of war that could result in two separate, weaker events instead of a single successful one.