Archive for the 'Activism' Category

Coppertone Jammed at Mainfest

Tuesday, June 9th, 2009

From May 28th – 31st the Société de Développement du Boulevard Saint-Laurent (SDBSL) hosted a four day party known as the Mainfest. Despite bad weather reports, the sun shone radiantly throughout most of the festival. This was wonderful for local merchants, musicians, performers, and pedestrians who converged at the Mainfest to participate in a multitude [...]

Cafe Cleopatra artists rally against plans to destroy their venue

Monday, June 1st, 2009

Montreal’s “Quartier des Spectacles” project is proceeding at a fast clip. The neighbourhood is currently undergoing major transformations as new parks are laid out, a state-of-the-art concert hall goes up, and select buildings are appropriated and destroyed to make way for “development”. Designed to transform Montreal’s old red light district and environs into a less-seedy [...]

MainFest launches summer of corporate spam (and resistance) in historic site

Thursday, May 28th, 2009

Today is the beginning of “MainFest”, a 3 day “street fair” on St. Laurent Boulevard, or “The Main” Historic site. The boulevard will be completely closed to traffic and is expected to receive an estimated 300 000 visitors. According to The Société de développement du boulevard Saint-Laurent (SDBSL), organizers of “MainFest” and other “street fairs”: [...]

RoyalOr to stake Mount Royal today

Monday, May 11th, 2009

It looks like ripping up the ground to create open pit mines in places like Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala just isn’t enough for some Canadian mining companies: RoyalOr has gone local!  The Johannesburg, South Africa-registered organization has plans to turn Mount Royal into an open-pit mine. “People always talk about buying local food and local [...]

Happy May Day!

Friday, May 1st, 2009

Today is May 1st, recognized in many places around the world as International Workers Day.  It traces its roots back to May 1st, 1886, when workers demanding an 8-hour work day walked out en-masse.  The police crackdown at the McCormick Reaper Works in Chicago two days later led to the Haymarket affair in where eight [...]

Theatrical workshop for change

Friday, April 24th, 2009

In 1971, Augusto Boal started what he called Newspaper Theatre to theatrically deal with current social issues in Brazil.  The concept soon blossomed into a tree of theatrical techniques including Forum Theatre and Image Theatre called Theatre of the Oppressed.  The concept soon spread to other countries in South America and eventually around the world. [...]

The RCMP wants to talk to Kevin Annett

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009

The Reverend Kevin Annett knows what it’s like to be under the microscope. He was kicked out of the United Church for speaking out against what happened to native people in Canada’s residential school system. When it became apparent that he wouldn’t be silent and do what he was told, they made things very difficult [...]

Movie night on Parliament Hill

Monday, April 20th, 2009

While many films, along with entertainment in general, have been known to desensitize people to violence, the Bloc Quebecois hope to use the medium to sensitize Members of Parliament from all parties to the magnitude of tragedies like the massacre of 14 women by Marc Lepine at Ä–cole Polytechnique in Montreal in 1989. This event, [...]

Open-pit mining comes to Quebéc

Friday, April 10th, 2009

Abitibi-Témiscamingue is no stranger to mines, in fact, there are over 100 of them in this mineral-rich region in northern Quebéc.  Along with forestry and agriculture, mining is one of the most important parts of the region’s economy.  There is, however, one type of mine that has fortunately not found its way to the region [...]

Afraid to sign

Monday, April 6th, 2009

In an about-face of the previous government’s position, Australia decided on Friday to endorse the UN declaration on the rights of indigenous people to their own culture, institutions and spiritual traditions. With Australia joining the 143 countries that came on board when the bill passed in 2007, the list of nations opposed to the declaration [...]