By now you've heard the news. By now you've seen the outpouring of love an support. By now you've seen the old high school photos. By now you've seen the evolution of his mustache over the years. By now you've read about his Hudson, QC origins. And by now, you've read his incredibly powerful goodbye letter, written just days before he passed.

After 20 years in Toronto city council, and a near decade of leading the New Democratic Party of Canada, Jack Layton had achieved something most people had deemed impossible in winning the hearts of Quebeckers. And the hardest part is that we knew his best was still to come.

In no way does this article represent Midnight Poutine's or my own political views. Rather it's a post written to show that even though I never voted for the NDP, I have always been a supporter of Jack Layton, our country's last likeable politician.

'My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we'll change the world.'

Goodbye Jack. We were lucky to have you.

Opinion | Last night's leader debate offered no respite from status quo politics amongst Canada's "great" leaders. In true Parliamentary fashion, our current Prime Minister played aloof and superior, while the opposition dealt in fumbling petulance. Layton (NDP) and Duceppe (Bloc), comfortable in their positions as redundant vote-splitters, offered the clearest policies and attacked evenly against Harper (Conservative) and Ignatieff (Liberal). Layton lambasted Ignatieff's pitiful House attendance record, stating that missing work was not a good prerequisite to getting a promotion. Meanwhile, Duceppe clearly outlined Harper's flip-flopping vision of democracy over the years from opposition to leader.

For those of you out there who are students (undergrad, grad, post-grad) or care about tuition increases, some serious shit is going down on Monday. As many as 44,000 students from all over the province will be gathering in Quebec City to protest upcoming tuition increases. You can hitch a ride on one of the many buses heading there Monday morning, or attend simultaneous actions in Montreal.

Call & Response is a series of Q&As with bands, artists and random people we dig that live in Montreal, visit here, or have some dubious connection to the city.

I wasn't sure what to say about Pat Jordache, so I turned to the internet: "Patrick was a mechanic; Patrick was a carpenter; Patrick was a virtuoso engineer. He spent the month of May turning furniture into radios. He hid tuning dials in freezer cabinets, slid antennas under seat cushions, smoothed speaker grilles to the underside of coffee-tables. Armchairs were tuned to CBC Radio 2, chaises-longues to BBC Radio 3, La-Z-Boys to local top 40." You can check out his MySpace or find him this Saturday June 19th @ Parc des Ameriques for the Fringe Festival. Also check out his latest release FUTURE SONGS here.

I recently had a chance to sit down with pat JORDACHE via the interweb and ask him some very in-depth questions about life and music:

This is Claude Dauphin, the president of council. He didn't do anything wrong, though.

Over the past three days, Montreal's city council held their final session before the summer recess. Transparency was a big theme, after the recent scandals around how the city awards big contracts.

Here's a recap of the situation, Midnight-Poutine-style - time for some delicious, high-fat political commentary.

'Tis the season of drug and tobacco raids. Police in Montreal and Longueuil conducted two separate raids today of 52 locales storing/selling illegal cigarillos and 15 storing marijuana plants, cash, and hydraulic equipment. The two raids follow on the heals of a June 3 blitz on five of Montreal's compassion clubs (and the subequenet arrest of 35 or so people, according to the CBC).