Quote of the week:

"Everyone says your currency is too low." - Michelle Anderson, a Turks and Caicos waitress, on why residents of the Caribbean paradise don't want to join Canada. Islanders use U.S. dollars and don't pay income or sales tax.

Tree policy sprouts

The City plants trees around this time, so if you see a spot on City turf that could use a tree, chances are that it'll only take a phone call to persuade a team of City planters to roll round and pop a Norway Maple, Hackberry or Red Ash into the piece of designated soil. The city plants 5,000 trees a year, which live, on average, seven to 15 years. And now our city mothers are putting their thoughts towards nurturing a city tree protection bylaw which, among other things, can punish people for cutting down trees on their own property, although the details of the punishment have yet to be determined.

According to city treemeister-general Helen Fotopulos, the tree policy will be more than just a bylaw. "If we're culturally diverse it's because Montrealers settled here from around the world, and one thing we share is this affinity towards trees - it's in our songs and poetry. A tree goes beyond simple biology and chemistry - it's a living being and also one that has a place in the human soul."

The tree policy is only expected to come down this autumn but it's thought that it might bear some resemblance to Côte-St-Luc's 10-year-old Tree Protection bylaw, one of the first on the island, according to councillor Dida Berku. Fotopulos suggests that the new tree rule will promote the planting of a greater variety of tree species and age, and favour larger, longer-living trees by expanding the space underground that trees need to grow roots. For tree info, call 872-1111. » Kristian Gravenor

NDG residents seize initiatives

Having spent over five decades in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce makes Anne Usher, president of the NDG Community Council, an expert on community life in the neighbourhood. The way she sees it, all the positive changes have come from citizens' initiatives, while all the other changes have, well, not. This weekend's Quality of Life conference, a one-day event on May 8 sponsored by the NDG Community Council, gives residents the opportunity to express what they'd like to see done in their 'hood.

Held once every 10 years since 1973, the conference will assess issues like housing shortages, food security, urban planning, health care and the local economy. "My main concern is sustaining affordable housing so that we can maintain the diversity of population that we have," says Usher, who has seen the rent skyrocket in her neighbourhood. As participants shuffle in Saturday morning, they can jot down their concerns which will then be used to make the afternoon's agenda.

Montrealers are indebted to NDG for innovations like the curbside recycling pick-up, which began as an initiative from the 1973 conference. Similarly, outreach programs to senior citizens, now commonplace at many CLSCs, were set up to combat the isolation that many seniors complained of at the first conference. Usher hopes that equally inventive solutions will come out of this year's event. Keen participants can also join an action committee to implement new programs.

Speak up on May 8, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Loyola High School (7272 Sherbrooke W). For more information, call 484-1471. » Shannon Devine

Smoggy days ahead

Now that the snow has finally disappeared for the season, Montrealers can look forward to a hot and muggy summer, with the inevitable smog warning days. Last weekend marked the beginning of Environment Canada's 11th annual Info-Smog program, a monitoring service that measures pollutants, in particular ozone, and releases daily advisories on air quality.

Last year, Environment Canada issued eight smog warnings (where the ozone count has an hourly concentration higher than 82 parts per billion at least once a day), down from 10 in 2002 and 16 in 2001. And while Environment Canada meteorologist Jacques Rousseau won't offer any long-term predictions on the summer's forecast or take any bets put on the table by the Mirror, he does say that when the mercury tops 30 degrees Celsius, there's a 50 per cent chance of smog. "That usually means about five to 10 or 15 smog warnings a year," he says. For the record, the Old Farmer's Almanac (www.almanac.com/weather/can.region2.php) predicts that, "Overall June through August will be hotter than normal, with above-normal rainfall. The hottest temperatures will be in mid- to late June and mid-July, with other very warm periods in early and late June and mid- and late August."

However, warns Greenpeace spokesman Steven Guilbault, the provincial government might be making air quality here worse. While Guilbault says that we get 50 per cent of our air pollution from Ontario and the mid-western U.S., the proposed Suroît plant and public transit cuts may have more people choking by summertime. » Patrick Lejtenyi

REAR-VIEW MIRROR

17 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK
May 1-May 20, 1987

On the cover: Divine, whose one-(wo)man show involves "stand-up comedy heavily imbibed with blue (XXX!) humour [and] song and dance." When travelling, he tells Mimi Re/Tardif, "I always pack the tits on top, nipples up. That usually keeps [customs officials] from looking further."

• The Mirror accompanies an international group of peace activists, radicals and journalists on an all-expenses-paid trip to the Socialist People's Libyan Jamahiriya (state of the masses), courtesy of the Qadhafi government, for a supposed peace conference. "Two events - the forcible ejection of a group of 10 neo-fascists who came as part of the Canadian delegation and the death of a Canadian reporter, apparently by suicide… marked the Canadian group as a serious pain in the Jamahiriya," Daniel Sanger writes.

• Despite allusions to religion and conservative politics in his songs, Jerry Jerry's use of words like "excoriate" and "propensity" and his habit of quoting James Joyce make it difficult for the Mirror to decide whether he's a redneck or not.

Angel >> L'Itinéraire The monthly non-profit magazine has been a voice for the city's homeless for 10 years this month, serving both to break their isolation and as a social re-integration learning tool. Magazine carriers, visible in metro stations and on street corners, make a buck per copy sold, and most of the stories published are written by the homeless - people whom editor Audrey Côté calls street journalists - with the help of three full-time staff and 20 volunteers. The writers, she says, are paid professional rates. To celebrate their 10th anniversary, L'Itinéraire is holding a "Best Of" retrospective running until August 19 at the Écomusée du Fier Monde (2050 Amherst). For info on donations, contact Manon Goulet at 597-0238 ext 25.
Insect >> Teen tanning The dangers of lying beneath the sun or under a salon's UV lamp for hours on end are well known, but teenagers - particularly teenage girls - don't seem to care. Speaking at a dermatologist convention earlier this week, Dr. James Spencer said teen tanning is especially dangerous because UV exposure while young is closely linked to higher incidences of skin cancer, including its most deadly form, melanoma. He also claimed that there will be one-million new cases of skin cancer diagnosed in the U.S. in 2004 alone. Kids, however, seem keen on getting that beautiful bronzed base in time for their proms, risks be damned - or at least worried about later.