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Schnurmacher: Meeting John, Yoko (and Kyoko) and how it cost me a friendTommy Schnurmacher recounts the story of how he spent an entire week with John Lennon, Yoko Ono and her six-year-old daughter Kyoko during their bed-in for peace at the Queen E in Montreal. Unfortunately, there was a price to pay for such exclusive celebrity access: the fallout of a longtime friendship. Private clinics in MUHC building ‘worrisome’ to patient-rights groupsPatient-rights advocates at the McGill University Health Centre say they’re deeply concerned over what they consider to be the “multiplication” of private clinics that have opened in a building owned by the MUHC. What’s troubling, say members of the Central Users Committee of the MUHC, is that most of these clinics used to operate fully under the public system in the superhospital around the corner. The off-loading of MUHC clinics to the private sector comes as the hospital network seeks to offset multimillion-dollar losses in an office building it owns at 5100 de Maisonneuve Blvd.Allison Hanes: Montreal ‘banned’ plastic bags, but we can do betterAlmost a year ago, Montreal took the major step of putting into effect a ban on single-use plastic bags in retail stores, supermarkets and dépanneurs. It was the first major city in Canada — though not by any means the first city — to do so. (Huntingdon beat us by a decade and Brossard by two years.) Montreal likes to pat itself on the back. But as the first anniversary dawns, it’s worth taking a closer look at just what has been achieved.Montreal Comiccon bulks up its Avengers and WWE contingentsMontreal Comiccon is just around the corner, and its list of stars keeps expanding like, well, The Hulk.Chez Doris fundraiser pays tribute to Hockey Helps the HomelessThe 10th annual fundraising tea for Chez Doris netted more than $49,600 for the women’s day shelter, up significantly from the $30,750 netted at last year’s tea. The sold-out event paid tribute to Hockey Helps the Homeless, a volunteer-driven charitable organization that hosts hockey tournaments across Canada; players raise funds that have a direct impact in their own community. Hockey Helps the Homeless has provided $170,000 in funding to Chez Doris since 2014.