Quote of the week:

"If we take the Saint-Maurice riding, a bastion for the Liberals and former prime minister Jean Chrétien, I'd call that an intellectual orgasm." - Bloc candidate Réal Ménard, quoted in Tuesday's Journal. The Bloc took it.

Dumpster divers boycott market

Seasoned dumpster diver Stacy Miller has been going to the Atwater Market to forage for discarded produce since she first moved to the St-Henri area four years ago. Last Thursday, while rifling through the trash bins behind the produce stalls, she was accosted by two men, one a uniformed security guard. They asked her to leave and snatched a flimsy crate she was holding, sending two onions and an eggplant she had found crashing to the ground.

"Blocking people from access to foods that other people are throwing away is kind of ridiculous," says Miller, now spearheading a campaign to boycott the Atwater Market.

"If they were civilized, there would not be a problem, but they're not," says market manager Marïus Couture. "It's not only poor people who come in to get the food in the dumpsters. In this group, you have also thieves who come and steal what they can get. I understand that people are poor, obviously if they are going through the garbage, but what can I do? They are making a mess." Couture says there used to be a volunteer who collected discarded food and distributed it, but since that person left, they have been looking for someone to fill his shoes.

Until then, Miller is going to have to look for a new source of grub. She says that a broken foot from an accident has left her on welfare, unable to work. "If they keep being heavy-handed with people, it could escalate and become an action," says Miller. For more information, e-mail boycottatwatermarket@hotmail.com. » Mel Baril

Busker's towering problem

Greg Dunlevy towers over the rest of the city's saxophonists, largely thanks to a pair of four-foot-tall aluminium stilts which he sports while busking in front of Place Montreal Trust on Ste-Catherine W. The Montreal busker association chief has a persona so well-known that he's been used prominently in Montreal tourist commercials ("Without my consent!" he complains). Now, for the first time since his debut at the spot decade ago, mall security has started harassing him, he reports.

"When I take a break, I take my stilts off and lean them against the Montreal Trust building. There's not really any other place to put them. Then, last Sunday, the security people came out and grabbed my stilts," he says.

Dunlevy, 60, whose stiltwork is respected enough to have him teach La La La Human Steps and be recently flown to Tahiti and Cuba, is flabbergasted at the sudden hostility. "The Montreal Trust security people used to be fairly tolerant. They'd tell me not to put my shoes or water bottle on the ledge and I didn't. I've done everything they've asked me and now they're picking on me to not put the stilts against the building, because they think it's ugly. They say to leave them on the street, but if I did people would trip on them."

Security guards have reportedly told him that the Zara clothing store complained of his stilts. "But the manager and associate manager came out in front of the security guard and said they haven't made any complaints." Mall officials failed to comment on the stilt issue by deadline. » Kristian Gravenor

Peaceniks still agitating

The transfer of sovereignty to Iraq came earlier than expected, but the folks at anti-war group Échec à la guerre are still sore at Bush and company. Following their latest demonstration on Wednesday, June 30, the much-anticipated official handover day, the peaceniks will likely take much of the summer off before hitting the road and touring the province's unions, schools and the like to dish the dirt on war, sovereignty, hidden agendas and military power. And they remain as skeptical as ever about the Bush-Blair plan for the new Iraq.

"Basically, this [handover] is a planning process set up primarily for the electoral campaign in the U.S.," says Échec à la guerre member Raymond Legault. "It's very important for us to oppose and expose this charade. From our perspective, nothing has changed. There might be a number of Iraqis who feel they should give this new regime a chance out of sheer exhaustion, but an occupation is still an occupation, and there are still 138,000 U.S. soldiers there."

Between now and December, when the Canadian Parliament is supposed to review Bill C36, our anti-terror legislation, Legault and his group will be trying to explain the link between civil and human rights and war, the missile shield and other issues. "We'll be going into public information mode," he says. » Patrick Lejtenyi

REAR-VIEW MIRROR

17 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK
July 3–July 23, 1987

On the cover: Deadpan comic Steven Wright, who will be attending Just for Laughs. The interview is interspersed with Wright's jokes, like this one: "I put instant coffee in the microwave and almost went back in time."

• Certain Montreal Catholics are objecting to Opus Dei, a secretive, highly conservative faction of the Catholic Church accused of brainwashing its young recruits. "Anything that takes over the parental role in the lives of children very early and very gradually in an undercover way… is certainly nefarious," says Pierrefonds parish priest Jim MacDonald.

• "Musician, composer, artist, friend, ‘la colle des Mongols'" Kim Shadow is dead, Jenny Ross writes. He fell off a roof after the fireworks on June 20 and died four days later.

• Mel Brooks' Spaceballs, a spoof of Star Wars, Star Trek and other genre classics, proves that "regurgitated vomitus can be flung at the screen for fun and profit."

• Rick Trembles has been hit by a police van. "Send your ‘Get well Rick' cards c/o Montreal Mirror!" urges fellow cartoonist Peter Sandmark.

Angel >> Political compromises Now that the Liberals have had their wrists slapped by voters, they can get back to their muddled way of governing the country, but with an important change: they'll have to rely on third parties, including the ever-hectoring NDP, to pass legislation. It's to be hoped that Smilin' Jack's party can act as a kind of drag on the Martin Liberals' rightward slide, and the New Democrats have said that they will be keeping a close eye on all developments. But minority governments tend to be fragile and short-lived, meaning that we can all go through the joy of another election campaign in the not-so-distant future.
Insect >> Moving Day crises revisited With the election come and gone, Montrealers can go back to our annual moving day crunch, when dozens of families (and thousands of animals) find themselves homeless and at the mercy of unscrupulous landlords. City bureaucrats say the problem is easing with every passing year, but housing advocates at FRAPRU warn that the real effects of the housing shortage will only be felt in the weeks to come. They are also worried about vulnerable tenants and shifty landlords, and with good reason: on Tuesday, La Presse reported that the wife of Nicolo Rizzuto, son of reputed mob boss Vito Rizzuto, and another man with Mafia links are building condos near the Jacques-Cartier Bridge.