THE FRONT
Students and their pickets—Syrian solidarity—Radical Queers talk, party—Bandy comes to Quebec.
by MIRROR NEWS
February 23, 2012
QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “It’s a good attempt. [But] in terms of drug addicts, they are just going to switch to something else.” —Dr. Clement Sun of the Addiction Centre Toronto, on Purdue Pharma Canada’s decision to stop manufacturing OxyContin.
Strike wave 2
What a week it was for the striking students of the Coalition large de l’ASSÉ (CLASSE). Following last week’s blockade of the Montreal Stock Exchange building (tragically delaying Mirror staff from entering their office on a beautiful Thursday morning), a group occupied the CÉGEP du Vieux-Montréal, resulting in 37 arrests, demonstrated in front of the Sheraton hotel on Friday, draped the Mount-Royal cross with a big red flag Monday morning—symbolizing that they are “carrément dans le rouge”—and held a demo Monday afternoon at Berri Square. Just in case they aren’t busy enough, they’ll be holding another demo today, Thursday, Feb. 23, at Phillips Square, beginning at 1 p.m.
The demonstration, which will be followed by a march through downtown, is the first of planned weekly demos of an unlimited general strike that CLASSE spokesperson Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois says will get progressively bigger. According to him, 27 student associations representing 36,000 students are striking against the Charest government’s proposal to raise tuition by $1,625 over the next five years. They’re demanding the government scrap the proposed hike.
Nadeau-Dubois says he is expecting “several hundred” protesters to show up. “We aren’t retreating,” he says. “We won’t modify our demands. Our demands are very clear.”
—PATRICK LEJTENYI
Ten months for Syria
While the news coming out of Syria is getting progressively worse, members of the local Syrian community have been holding weekly vigils outside the Church of St-James the Apostle (1439 Ste-Catherine W.) since last April. They’ll be back tomorrow, Friday, Feb. 24 at 6 p.m., this time saluting men with guns.
“It’s going to be a tribute to the soldiers who defected and joined the Free Syrian Army,” a rebel force composed of deserters that has been battling the conventional army of Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship, says vigil organizer Alaa Mosa. “It’s paying respect to the sacrifice they’ve made.”
Mosa began organizing the vigils after he heard about Hamza al-Khatib, a 13-year-old boy who was brutalized and tortured to death by Syrian security forces. The 26-year-old Damascus-born Mosa emigrated to Canada in late 2007 and is currently studying finance at Concordia and says he will continue holding vigils until the Assad regime falls.
Mosa says he doesn’t believe the threats of imminent sectarian violence breaking out if the regime falls. He calls it typical propaganda intended to instill fear in certain parts of the populace in order to keep a lid on dissent. “There’s no confusion here,” says Mosa. “Everyone knows we are living in fear.”
—PATRICK LEJTENYI
A crazy queer week
Montreal’s annual alterna-queer week of festivities Radical Queer Semaine kicks off its 2012 edition tonight, Thursday, Feb. 23, and promises to offer pretty much what you’d expect: a week (actually, 10 days) of workshops, art exhibits and of course parties, all from a queer perspective. Most events go down at the RQS HQ at 2229 Ste-Catherine E.
“One of the underlying themes is providing spaces and opportunities for traditionally overlooked groups and marginalized people,” says RQS spokesperson Jordan Arseneault. At its core, RQS “is a survey of what anti-oppression queer expression really is right now.”
New this year is the visit from a group of a dozen or so queer French activists who will lead workshops on topics as diverse as breast health for radical queer women and DIY porn, and a partnership with Les lettres en couleurs, an organization that sends queer literature to seriously queer un-friendly Algeria. It will be a chance to hear what “mid-economic crisis European queers are doing,” he says.
The week-and-change ends with with the Monster Ball closing party on Saturday, March 3 at the Darling Foundry (745 Ottawa, doors 10 p.m.), with a portion of the proceeds going to LGBTQ organization Arc-en-Ciel d’Afrique.
For more info, see radicalqueersemaine.com.
—PATRICK LEJTENYI
Bandyover here
If you’ve got 10 friends and skates, you’ve got a bandy team—or so says Lolita Nagnibedovsky, the Russian-Canadian founder of Bandy Quebec.
She’s on a mission to promote bandy, a less violent and more accessible alternative to hockey that’s popular in Scandinavia, Russia and the ex-Soviet republics, with the ultimate goal of bringing Quebec players to the Winter Olympics.
“It’s very similar to hockey, but no one plays it here,” Nagnibedovsky says. “We want to have professional players and we want them to win gold medals for Canada.”
A major professional sport in Nordic and Eastern European countries, bandy is used by some NHL teams as an endurance and skills-building exercise. The premise is simple: 11 players a team skate up and down a soccer field-sized rink, trying to capture the bright orange ball with their sticks and launch it into their opponent’s net.
Nagnibedovsky hopes to get the ball rolling in Quebec by hosting a free afternoon of bandy on Saturday, March 3 in the Laurentian town of St-Adolphe-D’Howard, in collaboration with bandy aficionado Alex Kovalev’s Foundation for Kids. There will be a demonstration/exhibition game, and then people can actually participate if they bring skates.
For more information or to register, visit bandyquebec.com or call (514)-969-0963.
—TRACEY LINDEMAN
REAR-VIEW MIRROR
16 YEARS AGO – FEB. 22–29, 1996
On the cover: A model with a martini and a smoke, as the Clubland ’96 supplement looks at the lounge phenomenon. Profiled are Sona (1439 Bleury), Cabaret (2111 St-Laurent), Club VanGuard (1824 Ste-Catherine W.), Jello Bar (151 Ontario E.), Fetish Café (1426 Beaudry) and Yoda Den (256 Roy).
• “Americans sometimes get confused when they walk in here,” Café Cleopatra barman Jimmy tells sex reporter Sasha. “They says, ‘Hey! Those aren’t real women!’”
• Barefoot Hockey Goalie’s Darius: A Rock Opera is Disc of the Week. “A band from San Diego, California writes and performs a hockey-rock opera about a Canadian kid named Darius Kasperitus (sic) who, inspired by the ghost of Gump Worsely (sic), overcomes narcolepsy in pee-wee and uses his oversized feet to become a barefoot goalie in the NHL.” 10/10
• Rumble in the Bronx “is a blast but it needs even less plot and more action. Jackie Chan’s next film [should] simply be one big brawl, filled with evil gangland-types, and he can whip their asses good,” reads the review. ■
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