Author: Henry Gass

Police brutality attention-starved

Police brutality in Montreal – especially killings at the hands of police officers – is a year-round issue, a point yesterday’s demonstration was attempting to make. The lack of sustained political pressure and media coverage is clearing the path for a controversial police brutality bill currently under debate in the Quebec National Assembly…

Mind the Gap

In the 1942 classic Casablanca, a scene early in the film pits Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) against Nazi Major Heinrich Strasser in a test of Blaine’s cynical neutrality. Strasser asks Blaine if he can imagine the German army in New York, to which Blaine cooly answers: “Well there are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn’t advise you to try to invade.” The same could now be said of Montreal, only instead of territorial New Yorkers, German Panzer divisions would have to navigate the Montreal’s rapidly eroding streets…

June 22: Things are coming up Charest

With another day of action against tuition hikes planned for this afternoon – the sequel for similar actions on the 22nd of March and May – I spent the June 21 combing few some of the recent polls to try and get an idea of where all this madness has left us politically

Any excuse to party

That’s how the British tend to think of monarchy, myself included. Instead of thinking about how one person comes to be one of the wealthiest in the world by virtue of the hereditary ownership of roughly $600 million of land and other assets (still less than J.K. Rowling), we think, “Oh bollocks, should I swallow these cherry seeds or spit them out onto my plate in front of the Queen?” The fact is, the Queen – and the monarchy as a whole – just sort of exist in Britain. Especially since the recession, they’ve kept a low profile…

One night with the Omnibus Budget Bill

Forgive me if this article is a bit short on adjectives, but I’m writing after spending the night reading a 450-page government document. Most of my adjectives were lost along the way. Nestled between the streams of student strike headlines and Luka Magnotta profiles, Montreal can probably be excused for focusing its attention elsewhere this week…