The Martlet

JANUARY 28, 1999, “STINKY CHERRIES”

In 1999, the front page of the Martlet ran a story covering a visual arts grad exhibit entitled “Stinky Cherries” on display downtown.

Like stepping into an “enchanted forest,” viewers came to admire the giant, colourful car air fresheners hanging from the ceiling.

The two art grads constructed the cherries, the Playboy bunny, the Rolling Stones lips and the mud-flap girl out of styrofoam and combined air fresheners, mothballs and Tiger Balm to recreate that familiar scent.

While this may sound like the headache you get from standing in Lush for too long, the Martlet reported that the air fresheners “spin and twirl, mixing their scents into one mass of cheap, yet strangely comforting perfume.”

The two artists said that kids and babies really like it, comparing the exhibit to walking through a huge mobile.

They explained the interest of such “kitschy, throwaway things.”

“They’re these weird sort of fetish things that you hang from your rear-view mirror,” one of the artists said.

“They’re like the Egyptian eye on ships guiding you home. But where the hell are the stinky cherries guiding you?”

JANUARY 30, 1997, “BUSINESS STUDENTS SHOW OFF THEIR ASSETS”

The Sixth Annual Undergraduate Business Games in 1997 drew more than 800 students from 11 universities to Montreal to compete in academic and sporting events. The academic events were far overshadowed, however, by a certain wet t-shirt/boxers competition.

The event unsurprisingly spurred a condemnation of the games organizers. The competition was dubbed degrading, unprofessional and inappropriate for a business event featuring future Canadian business leaders.

The president of the games organizing committee stood her ground against the outcry, emphasizing the harmless nature of the social activity.

She went on to say that it was part of the message that the community was a “welcoming environment” and the event was included to “attract people to Montreal.” She reinforced that it only contributed to the “unifying spirit of the games.” She noted, in what could only be a coy afterthought, that the damp event was “great exposure for Concordia.”

The dean of Concordia was apparently unaware of the nature of the event, making us wonder whether the games organizers intentionally slipped the soggy details past him.