THE FRONT

Junkies on the march—Moms on strike—Turning off for Earth—Debating culture and space.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “Forget the riots that erupted last May after the Canadiens made it to the Eastern Conference final; they were nothing compared with the hordes of loot­ers who set fire to five police cars during the 2008 playoffs simply because Montreal advanced past the first round.” —GQ writer Adam Winer, ranking Habs fans #11 worst in sports

Users for safety

Drug addicts are not, by and large, the most beloved segment of any society. But, argues Kaven Dion, a spokesperson for l’Association pour la Défense des Droits et l’Inclusion des personnes qui Consomment des drogues du Québec (ADDICQ), that does not mean they are without their rights. Members marched through eastern downtown and Old Montreal this past Monday, March 21, demanding that the city and the police treat the local junkie population with some respect. They eventually wound up at the city council meeting, where they asked about safe injection sites (SIS), with no firm answer forthcoming. Needle exchange facility Cactus said they would open a SIS with or without the city’s permission this summer.

“This is a marginalized group,” says Dion. “We wanted to have our own vigil against police brutality and to demand the creation of supervised injection sites.”

ADDICQ formed in 2007 and Dion says the group has about 300 members across the province.

“The association is made up of people who are currently using drugs or are ex-drug users,” he says. “We’re organized to defend our rights and press for better services, because the health service is never adequate.”

—PATRICK LEJTENYI

Push for midwives

On Friday, March 25, le Groupe MAMAN will stage a symbolic “birthing strike,” calling on the provincial government to improve the lot of both practicing midwives and the women who want to employ them.

The midwifery situation in Quebec is dire, says the group’s spokeswoman, Lysane Grégoire. And with no new money for new birthing centres in the latest provincial budget, Grégoire says women are fed up with what she calls the continued “stagnation” in the dossier, not to mention more unemployed but fully qualified and badly wanted midwives graduating from the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières.

“There is such a high demand for them,” she says. And because midwives can only work through a licensed birthing centre, Grégoire says desperate women are sometimes turning to under-qualified or unlicensed midwives.

“Midwives respect pregnancy, and the birth should belong entirely to the woman,” she says. “So that is why we are going to have a birthing strike—the women won’t give birth until their voices are heard.”

The strike will be held at UQÀM’s JA de Sève pavilion (320 Ste-Catherine E., room DS 3375) at 10 a.m. See groupemaman.org/manifeste for more info, and the group’s manifesto.

—PATRICK LEJTENYI

Green time

From its relatively humble origins back in 2007, when a motley crew of righteous Aussies convinced 2.2 million people to turn off their lights for one hour in a mighty rebuke to climate change, the global phenomenon that is Earth Hour has grown nothing less than huge. Last year, some 10 million Canadians were registered participants in the event— yes, roughly one-third of the population—while globally, over 1.3 billion people reportedly made the ultimate sacrifice of sitting in the dark for an hour, no doubt musing about how miserably boring life must have been pre-Edison.

If history is any indication, the number of people expected to observe this year’s Earth Hour, which takes place Saturday, March 26, from 8:30–9:30 p.m. EST, will almost certainly dwarf even last year’s figures. “Every year it gets bigger because obviously this is an issue people care very deeply about,” explains Marie-Claude Lemieux, local spokesperson for WWF Canada, domestic champions of the event. “I think people understand that if we’re part of the problem, then we can also be part of the solution.”

Lemieux says Earth Hour 2011 will focus on clean energy, concentrating on creative solutions to the status quo. For info regarding local Earth Hour events, go to wwf.ca/earthhour.

—CHRIS BARRY

Walrus culture

How do we create spaces that will encourage more Montrealers to tap their cultural vein? This is the question that’s been put on the table for the first Walrus McGill Annual Debate entitled, “If You Build It, Will They Come? What does it take to build a cultural metropolis?”

The debate will look specifically at the Quartier des spectacles, the new festival area at Jeanne-Mance and Ste-Catherine by Place des Arts. The contenders are National Theatre School CEO Simon Brault and Witold Rybczynski, a longtime McGill architecture professor and Slate.com critic who now teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.

Brault, whose 2010 book No Culture, No Future deals with the issue of cultural participation, thinks the Quartier needs to attract a more diverse audience, and that programmers should look to la Grande Bibliothèque as an example of a cultural investment success story. “That project was debated for years, but it’s been adopted by all sorts of people,” he says. “It’s quite mov­ing.”

Brault says he looks forward to debating with Rybczynski, whose book Makeshift Metropolis (2010) deals in part with citizens’ engagement in modern urban planning.

The debate is on Wednesday, March 30, at 6 p.m. at the Segal Centre (5170 Côte-Ste-Catherine). Tickets cost $15 (general)/ $10 (students). Go to walrusmagazine.com/events for more info.

—HEATHER ROBB

REAR-VIEW MIRROR

12 YEARS AGO – MAR. 25–APR. 1, 1999

On the cover: The Roots, insisting that they won’t be bounced at the border again. ?uestlove explains his previous run-in with Customs: “We got to the border—several large black men on a bus—and they did-n’t like the element that was approaching them. So they were assholes. They got us on a technicality: our tour bus driver had some unpaid outstanding parking tickets. Parking tickets!”

•                 “My aim is to inject vitamins into the urban tissue and create new life,” says architect Luc Durand, referring to his plan to cover up the Décarie expressway and sell the newly created real estate on top.

•                Angel: The Canadian Federation of Students’ “radical mystery bus tour,” shuttling 200 kids to two different locations for student-fee demos. Insect: The Academy Awards, for praising “snitch” Elia Kazan, Celine Dion’s performance and its “four-hour+ endurance test.”

•                 Letter writer Dana Beydoun takes exception to Dominique Ritter’s “nasty and snide” and “patronizing” article on Norman Finkelstein, in which Ritter mentions the academic’s “uncomfortably high-pitched New York Jewish accent.” ■

ANGEL: A new Champlain Bridge After a mere five decades, it looks like the Champlain Bridge is in fairly urgent need of retirement. A report by an Ontario engineering firm for Transport Canada points out several glaring flaws in the current bridge, including an inability to withstand any number of natural calamities and a risk of collapsing concrete and steel. The December report, leaked this week, says the bridge “cannot continue to support a heavy traffic of cars, trucks and buses without certain risks.” The current bridge is the busiest in the country, so a new one, with extra lanes for public transit and even a light rail track, could be worth the sure-to-be-considerable investment.


INSECT: The crumbling Quartier des spectacles And speaking of shoddy infrastructure, it looks like the almost brand spanking new downtown festival site needs some work. Turns out that the mortar used in 12 kilometres of seams around the area is deteriorating much faster than lab tests had anticipated. Blame goes to fluctuations in Montreal’s weather—something that perhaps should have been taken into consideration. But this is Montreal, after all, a city with its own peculiar relationship with concrete. This latest screw-up is going to cost at least $650,000, just another drop in the bucket of taxpayer cash drowned in repair work so far. 

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