Capilano Courier | Vol. 52, Issue 1. by Capilano Courier

VOLUME 52, ISSUE NO.1

For the students of CapU, You may not <3 us, but we <3 you.

letter from the editor-in-chief

Change is coming, change is here. "Sometimes I prefer mustard to ketchup." -me

RACHEL D'SA Editor-In-Chief

I started out at CapU with the intentions of transferring out after attaining prerequisites for dental hygiene school. I hadn’t made many friends through my classes, as the University is a commuter school making it difficult to connect with peers outside of class. Ready to drop out that April, I came across the Communication Studies program. From there, I went on to peruse jobs in fields of interest to me and that’s when I discovered the publication you’re holding in your very hands (unless you’re reading this online, which makes things a bit awkward but I’m referring to the Courier). I applied for an editorial role, tanked the interview and was invited back as a contributor. Rather than letting my embarrassment get the best of me (as it normally does), I changed my attitude and decided to dedicate my energy towards bettering myself. It’s about time we address the elephant in the room. Not every student at CapU knows about the Courier (gasp). Amidst all the jokes that we crack in the office about how no one knows where or who we are, sits one of my proudest moments. Last year, I sat homeward bound on the 130 Metrotown Station bus as I stared out a window while listening to Big Thief (I was having a moment). Someone came and sat in front of me (one of those sideways seats, ya know), Capilano Courier in hand. I watched in shock as she flipped each page -- skimming some, while occasionally taking the time to carefully review select articles. Whoosh, whoosh went the light paperweight pages as my eyes lit up with confusion and glee. And that’s when it hit me. People do care about we do here at the Courier. This summer I spent in Toronto fulfilling my practicum hours for my degree. It was incredibly difficult essentially balancing two full-time jobs. But I can’t say that it wasn’t essential for me to push myself towards the change I needed to see in myself in order to tackle my career goals and crawl out of my creative rut. I learned a lot about how eating junk food for breakfast, lunch and dinner could effect my health, how to function with a 9-5 office job and how to handle being in a long-distance relationship. Pushing myself into a corner, while temporarily uncomfortable, brought out strengths in me that I had never really noticed before. This year’s editorial staff is one of eight issues in and has already crossed boundaries the publication has never in the last 50 years crossed. This issue presents themes of change -- an entirely new campus location, major changes to the transit system and, best of all, major changes to the publication itself. Change is unavoidable, and the Courier is no exception. We’ve brought you news for the past five decades and we’ll remain solid on that promise. But this year, we’re ready for a bit of a shakeup. We recognize our place in the CapU community and we don’t want to be just another student fee. We’re here to inform and best of all, entertain -- and we want to hear from you. This semester is my last as a student at CapU. I’m honoured to be the editor-in-chief of this small but mighty publication and I’m excited for what’s to come of this now monthly magazine newspaper. I can’t say I’m not absolutely terrified of my future upon my departure from school but until then, I’m pumped for the ride ahead.

editor-in-chief

communications director

capcourier@gmail.com

community.capcourier@gmail.com

Rachel Dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Sa

managing editor

Freya Wasteneys

manager.capcourier@gmail.com

news editor

Sheila Arellano

news.capcourier@gmail.com

associate news editor

arts & culture editor

associatenews.capcourier@gmail.com

arts.capcourier@gmail.com

Megan Amato

features editor

Sarah Rose

specialfeatures.capcourier@gmail.com art director

Ana Maria Caicedo

opinions editor

Chris Ho

opinions.capcourier@gmail.com staff writer

Cynthia Tran Vo

Jayde Atchison

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATORS

Bridget Stringer-Holden, Tom Balog, Andie Bjornsfelt, Lena Orlova, Tamia Thompson, Alexis Zygan, Carlo Javier, Ashleigh Brink, Brooklyn Doucette, Elizabeth Scott, Nima Boscarinow

Jessica Peng, Karla Monterrosa, Emily Rose, Lillian Zhang, Ashley Loo, Cynthia Tran Vo

artdirector.capcourier@gmail.com

COVER ART

Emma Harris

Helen Aikenhead

FEATURED ARTISTS

Alex Joukov, Jaden Critchlow, Sinead Grewcock, Liann Huang, Mahi Kaur, Rachel Wada

VOLUME 52 ISSUE NO.1

table Contents of

NEWS

OPINIONS

CSU Plans

Live-Action Recess

Student Residences Update

Student Bribing

Walls to Bridges Program

Resuable Plastics

CapU Shipyards

Vaping's Sweet Mysteries

B-Line

Cap50 Trail

Library Renovation

ICBC Pilot Project

Do Aliens Exist

Live Action Lion King

ARTS & CULTURE MA$$ANK

Sara Cwynar: Gilded Age II

Artist Feature: Mahi Kaur

Algorithms

Sacred Works

Death of 9-5

Views From The Collection

A Note on Sick Days

What's In My Bag

Q+A with VIFF Director

INTERESTED IN CONTRIBUTING?

Email capcourier@gmail.com INTERESTED IN ILLUSTRATING?

Submit your portfolio or examples of work to artdirector.capcourier@gmail.com

FEATURES

COLUMNS Mise En Place

Queer And Now

Deviant Beauty

Turning Blue

Direction Unknown

I Can Code You The World

All you need to know about future CSU plans Get involved with the Capilano Students’ Union this Fall BRIDGET STRINGER-HOLDEN Contributor CYNTHIA TRAN VO Illustrator

Captivate 2018 Photographs by CSU

There are various ways in which students can get involved, yet one of the best routes is through the CSU. The Capilano Students’ Union (CSU) is the student society on campus that represents students and advocates and tackles the various issues that are crucial to improving students’ quality of life. In order to ensure that students have the best university experience possible, the CSU hosts multiple events throughout the year, provides many volunteer opportunities, and offers a wide range of services, such as the used book sale and health and dental plans. This fall, the Community Expo and Captivate are the two major events that the CSU will be hosting. The Community Expo will be held on September 3rd. In this exciting event, a showcase of what Capilano University has to offer will be open to new and returning students. Through booths and games, students will be able to explore and discover various volunteer opportunities, clubs, campaigns and services. Paula Zerpa, the Vice-President of Student Life, has been working to bring back Captivate for its third year on the 19th of September, which will be held in the Cedar Courtyard. “I felt that in my classes I was doing research and writing papers about a lot of social justice issues that we, as students, face, and I felt frustrated because there I was learning about all those things, yet I wanted to make a difference and wanted to actually work towards making things better,” said Emily Bridge, President and Vice-President of Equity and Sustainability on the CSU Board of Directors. When a previous Board member approached Bridge, she realized that this was an opportunity to finally take all the theory she’d been learning in school and apply it to truly making a difference. “By being involved with the Capilano Students’ Union, I can help affect change right here on campus and can directly see the results of our advocacy,” she said. There are various upcoming volunteer opportunities, many of which students can explore at the Community Expo, such as the Let’s Get Consensual and the Get Out the Vote campaigns. In preparation for the federal election, the Get Out the Vote campaign will be in full swing this fall, with the goal of ensuring that everyone feels empowered to vote. The by-election for the vacant positions on the CSU Board of Directors is coming up as well. The call for nominations will be released on September 9th. “I think that it’s important for students to get involved and at least be aware of what the CSU is doing because we represent them to the university and to local, provincial and federal governments. We are their voice here at Capilano University,” said Bridge. If students have more specific questions or need any assistance, the CSU offices are located in the Maple Building at the North end of campus. For a more central location, there is also a desk in the CSU Member Centre in the library with staff who are always open to chat and help students. To receive electronic updates about new volunteer opportunities, students can sign up for the volunteer program online at csu.bc.ca as well. Sometimes it is difficult to know where to start, yet “if [students] don’t get involved, then we don’t know what they need. So, it’s really to their credit to get involved or at least come to Board meetings and see what’s going on,” said Bridge, who started by attending Board meetings and talking to the members. The next Board meeting is on Friday, September 13th in Birch 126 from 2:30pm to 5:30pm. All new and returning students are welcome to participate in Board meetings, or simply observe. As well, students are encouraged to attend committee meetings and to join committees as students-at-large so that they may bring their voices to the table. “That’s what we’re here for,” said Bridge. “We’re here to represent everybody and we want to represent everybody; that’s the goal.”

DOGW OOD BOSA CENTRE

WILLOW MAPLE

FIR LIBRARY

CEDAR

ALDER

CHILDREN 'S CENTRE

ARBUTUS

BIRCH FITNESS CENTRE SPORTSPLEX NEWS

Discovering Your Home Away From Home An update on the Capilano University dorms just off Dollarton

JAYDE ATCHISON Staff Writer CYNTHIA TRAN VO Illustrator

The state of the housing market in the Greater Vancouver Area is only getting worse. It is no secret that the market is outrageous, and especially for students, the prices are even more unrealistic. Luckily, in 2017 Capilano University opened the doors to their first housing opportunity, which gave Capilano students a place to call home for the duration of the school year. As the new school year dawns on students, it is important to feature the facilities that three-hundred people call home. Located close to campus on Dollarton Highway, the CapU Residence is the ideal place to first experience leaving your family home without draining your bank account. If you are a new or returning student at Capilano, the idea of making new friends can be intimidating. Even though it is a small university, interacting with different groups of people in every class can become overwhelming. Thus, living in residency offers a unique experience where students are able to engage with other students on a daily basis. According to Residence Life Facilitator John Umunna, “Residence is a community of people, so you don’t have to look to create a group of friends, it is already there.” When you come into residency at the beginning of the year, it is an equal playing field despite how nerve-wracking it is to be roommates with over two-hundred people. For students, it is crucial to remember that the person next door may be having the same fear. Introducing yourself to new people can open the door to your next lifelong friend. The Capilano Residence offers transportation options to get to and from the main North Vancouver campus. If you are living at the residency or you want to pay your friend a visit after class, it is easy to do so through public transit. Directly outside the residency, there is an accessible bus stop that takes students to Phibbs Exchange, which is a twenty minute journey. Alternatively, by car it is a six minute drive. And, additionally, if students don’t own a car, the Evo cars are parked in the home zone of residency. Umunna suggests that students carpool using Evo, with one person driving on the way up to school and another driving back after classes. For those who feel athletically inclined, it is also possible to bike or walk to class, which makes for a scenic fifteen minute bike ride and a forty-five minute walk.

Living with hundreds of strangers can make students feel unsure of who to reach out to in times of need. The Residence Advisors on each floor are available for students around the clock to offer support, regardless of the hour. No problem is too small as the advisors cover it all, from study tips to crisis intervention. It is important to both the RAs and the university for students to have the best experience. Since residency opened, there have been several updates. The dining hall has extended its hours until 10pm to allow students longer study time on campus and more access to food. If students desire to join a club or group, Resident Advisors have expressed interest in creating clubs based on people’s requests. For example, a community garden will be open for student involvement in the fall semester. While the heating and showers are important upgrades, the pool, ping pong, and foosball tables added to the dining hall have added excitement and fun to the residences. Capilano University is one of the smaller post-secondary schools in the province, which has its benefits inside and outside of the classroom. Compared to other universities, the response time at CapU residency is faster due to the smaller team that lives on site. What may take until the next business day at a bigger university can be addressed immediately at Capilano. With Umunna living on site, he is available to support students and staff at all hours of the day. The Residence Advisors host events once a month, both residence-wide and floor specific. These events include ice cream nights, movie nights, educational activities, and culturally significant sessions like drum making taught by First Nations leaders. To create lasting memories and connections with fellow residents, it is recommended for students to attend as many of these events as they can. It may seem daunting, yet the application process for residence is accessible and available at the Capilano University Residence page. Do not worry if you did not make the first round of admissions. A waitlist is available that continuously goes through acceptances. However, always check your Capilano University email for updates on your application. If you have remaining questions, more information can be found online.

Capilano students will have to leave prejudices at the door as they attend classes at Fraser Valley Institution for Women MEGAN AMATO Associate News Editor

This September, Capilano University will be the first institution in British Columbia to participate in the Walls to Bridges program. Capilano instructor, Kirsten McIlveen, will teach a Geography level-100 course told through a Carceral Lens at the Fraser Valley Institution to a mix of eight incarcerated and eight Capilano students. The Walls to Bridges program evolved from the U.S. Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program in 2014, led by Shoshana Pollack out of Wilfrid Laurier University in Kitchener Ontario, and worked with the Grand Valley Institution for Women to offer university for-credit classes with “inside” and “outside” students studying together as peers. Once the program gained momentum, incarcerated students formed a Collective that would guide the way the program is run, and how future instructors are trained. “Academics, potential instructors, are trained in the pedagogy,” explained Kirsten McIlveen, a Geography and Woman and Gender Studies instructor at Capilano University. “The training is significant, there is an educational collective made of prisoners and alumni of Walls to Bridges. They make the decisions about what courses are offered, who the academics are, who is allowed in for the training. It keeps the decision making very grounded amongst the prisoners.” McIllveen—who has twenty-five years of experience working with incarcerated folk in women’s prisons in the lower mainland— stated that the program “turns hierarchies on their head because you have academics coming in and it’s the prisoners that take the lead and do the training.” Through this program, students will learn to confront their own prejudices by studying as peers alongside those who have been incarcerated. All this while gaining experiential knowledge about both the criminal justice and prison systems

in BC from the position of oppression and marginalization— knowledge that McIlveen suggests would be hard to attain anywhere else. Both students from Capilano University and from Fraser Valley have been carefully selected by McIlveen. Each applicant was asked to submit a statement of interest, which was followed by an interview to ensure the values and intent of the students matched those of the program. The result is a mix of students with a diverse range of backgrounds in education and lived experiences. “There is one student from maximum security, a few from the minimum and the rest of the medium,” McIlveen said, regarding the diversity of incarcerated students in particular. “[It’s] significant that we are allowed to mix those securities because normally [it’s] forbidden.” The classroom setup will be unlike anything Capilano students are likely to be familiar with. Using a circle pedagogy, instructors will facilitate discussions between students that is relevant to both the course content and life experiences. For those on the inside, Capilano is making the course accessible by waving the fee and instructors will bring photocopied work for the students to work with. Textbook publishers have also donated relevant books. McIlveen will also be onsite once a week to hold office hours, and an incarcerated student TA will be able to provide support throughout the week. Vancouver poet and Capilano Writing and literature instructor, Reg Johnson, hopes that outside students will share their resources as “the idea of sharing is fundamental to the pedagogy. That goes from the sharing of your experiences and feelings, all the way up to the sharing of resources.” Johnson, who completed the week-long training in Kitchener this summer, hopes to begin

teaching Writing, and Literature to students in Fall 2020. Many of those on the inside are from marginalized groups, notably Indigenous communities, and have had difficult relationships with educational systems. Statistics Canada states that in 2017, 26% of those incarcerated were Indigenous adults—a group that makes up less than 5% of Canada’s population. Johnson stated that “we are living in a carceral society in which incarceration has become a tool of social control as governments refuse to deal with the systemic problems” and by having students and academics deal with prisoners on a peer-to-peer level he states that “undermines” that system of stigmatization that governments and media impose. The Walls to Bridges program offers those on the inside to connect with those on the outside and create relationships by putting everyone on equal footing. “There is something about the Walls to Bridges program that seems to bring out a totally different relationship to school. I’m pretty sure that some of the prisoners that I know do not have a good relationship to school. This pedagogy gives people a way to relate to schooling and education that does what school and education is supposed to [do], which is to be liberating as opposed to oppressive and I think Walls to Bridges has found that.” Both instructors hope to see the Walls to Bridges program pick up momentum in British Columbia, with more courses offered in varying correctional facilities as more instructors and institutions become interested. Long term, they hope this will result in an educational collective formed here in BC.

NEWS

Capilano University Satellite Campus Expected to

N E P O LL

THIS FA

The community-minded campus aims to open October 15th MEGAN AMATO Associate News Editor TAEHOON KIM Photographer

Capilano University will introduce its new campus this October in the newly transformed and refurbished Shipyards development on Lower Lonsdale. The building sits on the harbour overlooking the city of Vancouver and will boast restaurants, shops and businesses, along with other amenities in the city of North Vancouver’s attempt to revitalize the harbourfront. Facing westward towards Lonsdale Road, the nearly 11,500 square foot space is located on the second floor of the building with six classrooms, various offices and meeting spaces. It will be the new home for Capilano’s Continuing Studies & Executive Education, a perfect location to connect with transit for a program that holds evening classes. There are plans for Spring 2020 to accommodate the Paralegal program which has up until now been running out of another campus. Capilano’s Director of Communications and Marketing Victoria Miles stated they are excited to be able to “bring back programs that have [previously] been located off campus.” It’s a chance for Capilano to coalesce all their programs and bring them into the Capilano community. Miles added that deciding what other programs will be offered will take careful deliberation and collaboration concerning what will be suitable to introduce in the fall semester. Classes for the Continuing Studies and Executive Education program won’t start until the beginning of November. Other classes that will start at the main campus in September will move over to the Lonsdale

campus after its opening date. The university advises students to pay attention to their myCap schedule to see if they are registered at the Lonsdale campus and to plan accordingly. The Shipyards will act as an extension of the main campus and students studying at Lonsdale can find their usual student resources at the Purcell Way campus, but Miles stressed that “support services will always be accessible to students.” There will be no cafeteria on site, but students will have an abundance of options in the Shipyards itself, as well as other restaurants and cafes along Lonsdale, on the Quay and in the public market. Miles said that the decision to open a satellite location has been “an ongoing discussion for several years [and was finalized] when the opportunity with the Shipyards was presented itself in June 2018.” The final decision to lease the building was made the following winter by a five-member board including Capilano President Paul Dangerfield and announced to the public earlier this April. The initial opening date for this project is currently two weeks behind but Miles said that the timeline had always been ambitious. “This isn’t a pre-existent space we are moving into. Construction and permits need to be in place before we can introduce our IT systems.” DIALOG, the architecture firm behind the project, stated on their website that this project was inspired by the history of shipbuilding on Vancouver’s Burrard Inlet, and “prioritizes the heritage character of the original machine shop building.”

Capilano University hopes that the accessibility and vitality of the campus will attract potential students from all over the lower mainland. “It’s a new story to tell,” stated Miles. “To be present in the North Shore, increase visibility and create a connection to the community.” One of the university's first tasks after settling in is to create a good relationship with their neighbours, both residential and commercial. “Being good neighbours is first and foremost,” Miles said, after she was asked about partnerships the school might have with local businesses. “And harmonizing with the rest of the building and tenants. [The Shipyards] will be an extension of who we are with [that] basic community dialogue.” The campus aims to be a positive presence in the community that supports its neighbours while also outreaching to those only a fourteen-minute Seabus ride away. Miles credits the marketing team for getting the word out there about the new campus. “[The Shipyards] is a new brand and brings a whole new freshness,” she says, regarding the energizing effect on the marketing team. Students, faculty and community members can keep up-to-date on progress and events through the university's social media presence on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. They can also expect to see adverts placed on buses and other strategic spots. However, she says that while curiosity about the space remains high, it won't be until people walk through the space that it will be sated. NEWS

Faster and More Convenient

Bus Service Coming to North Vancouver in January TransLink’s RapidBus will replace the 239 service to Capilano University MEGAN AMATO Associate News Editor JESSICA PENG Illustrator

After much public debate, TransLink will finally introduce its five new RapidBus routes this January. This will include the R2 Marine Drive bus, which will run from the Park Royal Shopping Center to Phibbs Exchange, and offer Capilano students a more direct route to get from West Vancouver to Capilano University. “RapidBus will provide faster, more frequent, and more comfortable service for students commuting to or from Capilano University,” TransLink Media Relations advisor Dan Mountain answered in correspondence with the Courier. “Capilano students waiting for a RapidBus will have new accessibility for service information and audio read-outs of next bus arrivals at every post.” The R2 will run every eight minutes during peak times with the carrying capacity of 1650 people per hour. Outside peak hours, the bus will run every ten minutes, slowing down to every 15 minutes after 9pm. Currently, the 239 bus—which connects students from Park Royal and Lonsdale to Phibbs Exchange— stops 33 times and takes roughly 50 minutes, depending on traffic. The R2 will have only eight stops between Park Royal and Phibbs Exchange. TransLink is also introducing the new Route 245 bus which will coincide with the R2 Marine Drive stop at Phibbs Exchange to take students directly to the campus, while the 239 Park Royal-CapilanoU bus service will be retired. “We’re also building transit priority to get the bus out of traffic by building bus-only lanes with signal priority and queue jumps to give busses priority at intersections,” Mountain said when asked about how the R2 will differ from the 239. 12

While these new lanes will undoubtedly be helpful to students and other commuters, they were the cause of contention for the West Vancouver community. TransLink had initially planned for a B-Line bus to run from Dundarave to Phibbs exchange, but vocal opposition from the community halted that extension. In April, the West Vancouver Council voted not to extend it despite the pushback from pro B-Line supporters, including Capilano students. A council report published on April 5th 2019 from the District of West Vancouver stated that “the public reaction to the plan, as evidenced by an unprecedented number of emails addressed to Mayor & Council; opposed: 1) the closure of traffic lanes to general vehicular traffic; 2) the loss of onstreet parking in the Ambleside business distract; and 3) the routing of busses past the Irwin Park school site at the proposed 24th street terminus.” Despite this, the website states that the discussion isn’t closed on whether they will extend the route in the future. Construction is currently underway for the new bus lanes in West and North Vancouver and students may experience delays in traffic while the construction is ongoing. TransLink’s website lists the following road closures and disruptions that are currently ongoing: Marine Dr. from Taylor Way to Park Royal: expect single lane traffic during the evenings for approximately two weeks starting from August 12th as new bus shelters are implemented and road lines are painted. Esplanade W. from Chesterfield Ave. to Lonsdale Ave.: expect delays and detours as lane closures are in effect as new traffic signals are implemented; sidewalks are changed

and/or added; and paving and line painting is done. Mackay Ave. to Bewicke Ave.: delays and detours are expected as a westbound bus and bike lane is created, paving and cement work is done to road and sidewalks, and bus shelters are added E. 3rd St. from Queensbury Ave. to St. Andrews Ave.: expect delays and detours as an eastbound bus lane is added, sidewalks and curbs are cemented, and roads are paved. Marine Dr. from Capilano Rd. to Pemberton Ave.: construction will take place in August as new bus shelters added and road lines are painted. Southside of Cotton Rd. between Brooksbank and Gladstone Ave.: construction will continue until the end of December as curbs are altered, a bike lane is added, and bus stops are changed. Expect lane closures, detours and delays. The four other RapidBus routes will include the R1 King George BLVD which will run in Surrey from Newton Exchange to Guildford Town Center, R3 Lougheed Highway which runs from Coquitlam Center Station all the way to Haney Place in Maple Ridge, R4 41st Avenue which will run from the University of British Columbia along 41st avenue to Joyce-Collingwood Skytrain Station in East Vancouver, and the R5 Hastings which will run from Burrard Station to Simon Fraser University. As Capilano has many students from all over the Lower Mainland, these busses may help cut commute times.

Library Renovations Coming to Capilano University

Students can expect changes that improve the way they work in the library MEGAN AMATO Associate News Editor

The Library Department at Capilano University has decided to take its facilities to the next level this Fall. Last year, when students returned from their summer holidays, they were greeted with Library renovations that featured the new and trendy Learning Commons, with spaces marked off for the Math Learning Centre, English Language Support, the Collaboration Zone, and the Writing Centre. The new nooks and crannies provided students with great spaces to study and enjoy breaks from the chaos of student life. Similarly, this Fall, Capilano students will be welcomed back with an updated new look on the main floor of the campus library—reimagined to fit students’ productivity and comfort. “Many of the students come to the library in a rush with the intention to use the computers to print assignments,” said Head Librarian Debbie Schachter. “[Which is why] we are moving the printing station nearer to the entrance to the library, so that students may get in and out efficiently.” To make it easier and more accessible for students, the floor layout will be changed. In addition to the quick print stations move to the Library’s entrance, service desks will also be rearranged and placed in separate areas near the staircase at the entrance of the library for efficiency, convenience, and clarity. The Library Service desks will face the staircase while the research desk will be beside the stairs. The IT Service’s desk will face towards the quick print stations, in close proximity to the printers to maximize productivity. Student computer desks will be updated and arranged in ways that will enhance students’ study time and make it easier for groups to collaborate. “The aim of this refresh is to accommodate and address student needs, to enhance their library experience, and create study areas that are both practical and comfortable. A small amount of furniture has been bought to enhance comfort and support student productivity,” said Schachter regarding the new student work spaces. The decision to change the practicality of the spaces and change the flow of the library did not happen overnight,

however. Like any plan for alteration at the University, there are many stages of approval involved before contractors can even pull out measuring tape. Data is collected from student surveys and questionnaires with the intent of learning what students need and feel regarding a space in order to work more efficiently in the library. The conclusions are then brought to a board who goes over annual budgeting and costs to see what the Library can afford to change. The VP of Academics and Provost makes the final decision on what funds are allocated from the Facilities budget to update the library. Library and university staff hope to have renovations done by the beginning of the Fall semester. In the meantime, students studying during the summer semester may experience a bit of confusion navigating the Library, but Schachter assures us that the Library is still providing full services. The circulation and IT desks have been temporarily arranged in between the entrances to the Library and the Learning Commons, and research librarians are still available to help students until the end of the summer term. The printers and pay stations have been moved into LB105, the small enclave at the north side of the library. However, Schachter added that “there will be fewer computers available temporarily during August while the work is underway.” Oftentimes, changes can be difficult and confusing. The process of getting to create a whole new space can be overwhelming. Though, in the long run, the University hopes these changes will enhance student productivity and help inspire a better work environment for new and returning students. Capilano has the students’ best interest at heart, which is why these facilities will inspire teamwork, community, and productivity. In the meantime, before the renovations are finished, Schachter shares that the Library staff “are all excited [about] making the space more open and welcoming to students” and are open to answer any remaining questions students may have.

NEWS

AL EX JO U KOV

@seurcreme 14

JAD EN c r i tc h low

@jac_illustration FEATURED ART

Sinead G r ewc o ck

@artist.grl 16

L i an n h uan g

@liann.huang FEATURED ART

Make Some Noise

Vancouver-based musician MA$$ANK unpacks her creative process and talks what’s next.

ANA MARIA CAICEDO Arts & Culture Editor ANT Photo

When I first heard MA$$ANK’s music, I thought—Damn, she makes orgasm noises sound amazing. Her raps are peppered with moans, ad-libbed between call-out lyrics that are performed with a cool, ominous anger. “I just think it’s funny sometimes singing about sex,” she said to me. We’re sitting on the same side of a metal bench in South Granville just outside of Zebraclub, where she works. MA$$ANK’s unflinching discussion of sex, and all the messy emotions that come with it, is what first hooked me on her music. Her raps brim with the raw angst and bitterness that emerge fresh from a heartbreak. At the same time though, there’s something humorous about her music—her moans and groans feel like a wink reminding me to not take the anger so seriously. In person, she’s just as cheeky. When I told her how much I loved the orgasm ad-libs, she let out a very extra laugh. “I’m glad you do,” she exclaimed, “‘cause honestly everyone is so serious, I’m just like ‘let me just throw in a little bit of this!’ I guess it kind of throws off some people, I don’t know. But I see that they like it, so I’m like alright, just be real. It’s okay to be funny, you don’t have to take life so seriously.” MA$$ANK, real name Michelle Masanque, started playing with FL studio at 14 in Brunei. At 16, she moved to BC alone to live with her aunt in Richmond, leaving her parents and life in Brunei behind. Three years later, at 19, rapper Casta Troy (who was dating her friend at the time) asked her to perform with him. Not too long after, Vancouver musician Tom Whalen saw her perform and booked her to open for other bands. After hearing an interview with Grimes where she describes making genesis on GarageBand, Masanque, now 21, started experimenting with making her own beats on 18

the software. “I felt like a caveman, I’m like, ‘Woah! I didn’t know they had this here,’” she laughed. “Ever since then I was like, you can make music any way you want! It doesn’t have to be a certain way, it doesn’t have to rhyme. You just have to say shit, and it’ll sound beautiful.” Masanque’s SoundCloud consists of an assortment of noisy raps and low-fi indie tunes. Although they’re two totally different styles of music, somehow they’re coherent, and stylistically they seem to come from the place. “COLLECT UR MANS” is my favourite—a diss song that roasts the fuckboy archetype masterfully. “I always hear people—at least my straight friends, where they talk about boys, and guy is always so musty and greasy,” she said, referring to the song’s inspiration, “and I’m just like, this is nasty!” Another stand-out is “have you ever fallen in love with a tinder date,” a song inspired by the feeling of unrequited love after a tinder date ghosted. “I met this person once, and I thought they were really cool, so we got a few drinks and stuff,” she recalled. “[The song] was basically about our date and how it went so well, and then after that, they just ghosted me! And then I saw them again, in person—we just bumped into each other. They’re like, ‘yeah let's hangout!’ and I’m like, ‘okay!’, you know, being a dumb bitch. Of course I hit them up,” Masanque lamented. “Never again. I’m not doing that again. I learned, I have standards now.” Despite her natural proficiency at rapping, Masanque confessed it’s something she’s stepping away from for now in favour of exploring another musical headspace. “I actually don’t really wanna’ rap anymore. When I did it, it was a lot of angry, sad

songs and I was in a really dark time. It really matched the vibes of what I was going through. I can’t really see myself doing that with other feelings that I wanna portray,” she explained. “Rapping makes me feel like I’m gonna like stomp on some shit, you know— that’s why, and I wanna let go of that. I wanna be a little softer.” Her latest song “anthill”, a collaboration with her friend filipinobody, is a downbeat, hazy love song that comes slightly closer to the kind of sound she’s interested in making now—a sound she describes as “bubblegum”, “industrial”, and “low-key harsh noise”. She tells me she’s been “researching” Madonna, aka listening to “Open Your Heart” on repeat. “I like how in the 80’s they’re kind of idealizing love a lot, and even though the lyrics are so corny, it’s so nice to sing it out loud,” she mused. “Love is such a hard thing for me, honestly. Just being open with that feeling. Sometimes I still cringe—like the ‘L’ word… oh my god I just cannot. So I’ve been trying to study. I’m like okay, how do I really feel, you know? How do I make this direct as shit but also a little funky and you can dance to it. I wanna do that. I wanna try that.” Masanque estimates she’ll have new music out by November. Although I’m crushed she’s not going to be making raps, I’m nevertheless excited to hear how her current musical wanderings and experimentations materialize.

Listen to MA$$ANK’s music at soundcloud.com michellecm and find her on instagram under @michellewhat

emptying the digital junk drawer

Sara Cwynar: Gilded Age II at The Polygon Gallery draws from the visual languages of advertising and social media to examine a modern visual culture of consumption. TOM BALOG Contributor

We carry around and archive an extensive amount of information on our phones. Pictures, notes and sound bites collect in our devices and are then uploaded to the cloud, which functions as a digital junk drawer for our memories. What would it look like if we were to empty out this massive amount of data, memories, and forgotten moments into a visual space? Sara Cwynar’s exhibition at The Polygon Gallery, Gilded Age II, explores this very question. Cwynar scans archives of forgotten photos and advertisements, resurrecting them in her work through a collage-like process of deconstruction and rearrangement. The exhibition, a compilation of both her early and recent works, is an overwhelming yet sedative glimpse into a visual culture that arises from a history of advertising, social media, technology and photography. While standing with Justin Ramsey, the assistant curator of the Polygon Art Gallery, we fixate on Cwynar's work titled “A Rococo Base.” Items in the piece span from different ages of human history. “By confronting us with so much visual clutter, Sara Cwynar is challenging her audience to grapple with the physical limitations of Cloud computing, and the material nature of all that data we pretend is purely virtual,” Ramsey noted. Accumulation is a prominent theme in Gilded age II. Cwynar wants you to question the role of items that once held purpose and esteem, items that have now been discarded and tossed away. Her work repurposes these forgotten items to be rediscovered and seen once again. In her piece “432 Photographs of Nefertiti,” Cwynar layers an image of Egyptian Queen Nefertiti, renowned for her beauty,

so that the original image is fragmented and lost within the collage. Your eyes skim the surface of her piece and try and understand where it starts and finishes, leaving you unfulfilled. Cwynar’s pieces feel familiar, but in actuality, the whole of what you’re seeing can’t exist outside of the medium that it’s being displayed in. “Rose Gold,” one of two videos featured in the exhibition, is a digital representation of technological fads, cultural trends, and human impermanence. Shot on 35mm film and running 8 minutes long, the film’s narrator continually brings up ideas that are then cut off, constantly changing the direction of thought. Watching it, it’s evident it alludes to the short attention span people have due to the digital world’s nagging tendencies. The film satisfies a craving for intellectual content, while also making you question why we consume so much content. Cwynar’s work unveils the web of interconnectedness that results from our ability to go on our phones and access an infinite amount of information. People have an addiction to content, which is satisfied through the medium of social media. We store valuable memories in our minds and our digital devices, and then we forget about them. Cwynar draws on these moments and items that at one point were important, but have now been left to clutter storage units, junk drawers, and invisible digital clouds. Sara Cwynar: Gilded Age II runs until September 22nd at the Polygon Gallery.

1. 432 Photographs of Nefertiti, 2015 pigment print, courtesy the artist, Cooper Cole Gallery, Toronto, and Foxy Production, New York 2. Tracy (Rupt, Meaning Break Burst), 2017, pigment print, courtesy the artist, Cooper Cole Gallery, Toronto, and Foxy Production, New York

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A R T I S T F E AT U R E

Mahi Kaur ANA MARIA CAICEDO Arts & Culture Editor MAHI KAUR Photographer

There’s something otherworldly about Mahi Kaur’s portraits. The women in her photos, soaked in strange light and hazy film grain, feel like they exist in a parallel universe. Capturing in-between moments of vulnerability, there’s a slowness to her work that makes you feel like you’re on the verge of seeing something blossom. For the 22-year-old CapU student, photography is a process of strengthening friendships through aesthetic collaboration. “[The subjects] are my friends. That in itself has meaning— just making photos for your friends, seeing them happy, and you being happy,” she said. Kaur’s style is marked by the imperfections she leaves untouched. Specks of film dust adorn her images, subjects are captured blurry

in movement, faces are left a little unfocused, colours are intensified and saturated. “I feel like people take away the fun from photography so much, like it has to be perfect,” she remarked. “Shit happens, and being okay with that— having that transparency is nice.” This embrace of imperfection is an attitude that shapes Kaur’s work aesthetically. With many other photographers, I read these kinds of imperfections as mistakes. With Kaur’s work though, they are absorbed into a greater visual identity that makes me feel like I’ve been swept up into a place of strange feminine tenderness, a place that makes the photographic perfections of “good” photography feel totally foreign.

Interested in having your work featured here? Email arts.capcourier@gmail.com with some samples of your work.

Sacred Works Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955)

ANDIE BJORNSFELT

When I first read Vladimir Nabokov’s novel, “Lolita”, I was fourteen and absolutely mesmerized. I read it over the course of a month, taking the prose in small sips to appreciate every nuance of detail. I was endeared with the aesthetics of it: the flowery language, a road trip across America, a man who loves a girl so much that he would die for her—that he would write an entire book to defend his affections. I didn’t initially grasp the reality behind Nabokov’s mask of beautifully convoluted language: the story is about Humbert Humbert, a man who kidnaps and assaults twelve-year-old Dolores Haze over the course of a year. Because the novel is from Humbert’s point-of-view, the reader never gets insight into Dolores’ perspective.

I was a young girl just like Dolores when I first read Lolita. Like Dolores, I was charmed into believing that Humbert’s words were truth. I trusted his authority because he wrote with eloquence. When I reread the novel at twenty, I became aware of the imbalance in power dynamics between Humbert and Dolores that Nabokov had created. I realized that what I held in my hands wasn’t a love story. Obsession isn’t love. Abuse isn’t love. My reading of the novel has changed in the six years since I first picked up the book. I see now that Humbert manipulates and overshadows the truth, but Dolores’ life and strength bleeds between the lines, waiting for recognition, if only we search for her.

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi (2013) MEGAN AMATO

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's novel Americanah is a love story about identity and culture, told through the experiences of two young lovers, Ifemelu and Obinze, as they leave their home in Lagos and emigrate abroad. When Ifemelu is accepted into America to attend Princeton, Obinze’s visa is denied and she leaves without him. Her experiences with racism as an African immigrant in America cause her to alienate Obinze as she builds a life around new rules and issues. After Obinze is denied entrance into America, he moves to London where he eventually overstays his visa and struggles as an undocumented immigrant. Despite the systemic barriers that both of them face, they manage to make space for themselves in their chosen paths and eventually find their way back to each other. Americanah is the first book I read that asked me to think critically about feminism, race, privilege and power. Ifemelu recounts her experiences with an outsider’s perspective as an African immigrant experiencing new systems of oppression and racism that she hadn’t encountered in Lagos. This is illustrated by her struggle to find work to pay for her college tuition, and the imbalance of power she feels in her workplace. Ifemelu’s position as a nanny for a rich young white couple who identify as liberal

and volunteer in Africa was particularly jarring. The couple makes casual comments based on stereotypes and generalizations about Africa and Africans, and when Ifemelu responds to these comments, she’s the one who often ends up blunting her words and apologizing to not upset them. Later in the book, Ifemelu states that “she advises not to be bitter when talking about racism to white liberals, or they won't be sympathetic.” These scenes helped me start to understand how black folks are expected to sugar-coat injustices for white comfort. Another passage from the book that stuck with me was Ifemelu’s employer apologizing for the racist comments uttered by her sister: “Ifemelu finds these apologies ‘self-indulgent,’ as if she could fix everything wrong with the world just by saying sorry.” This emphasized how the act of apologizing often only serves to soothe white egos. Despite Americanah being a social commentary on the power dynamics of race in America, it made me look at racialization in Canada critically and examine how I benefit from white privilege. I am white in Canada, a white woman, and was born here. Ifemelu’s oppression is also threefold: She’s black in America, a black woman, and a black immigrant woman. Her experiences in Americanah taught me how the postracial North America is a myth built on the erasure of race and culture.

The Valkyries by Paulo Coelho (1992) LENA ORLOVA

Every person, Paulo Coelho writes, creates a space. There’s a fifteen-foot-radius of attention around them, enclosing all objects, things, people and the way they change. But if you lift your eyes to the horizon, this space gets better: you feel bigger. On the red sands spanning the Mojave Desert in the southern U.S., soul-tortured philosopher/ writer Coelho rides to find (if only to prove the myth reality) the Valkyries: a tribe of leather-clad, elusive but magnetic warrior women riding steel stallions into the desert’s horizons. Coelho retells an episode from his own life: a time when he realizes that as soon as he begins an artistic pursuit, he loses inspiration and quits, only to find something else to occupy his passions before quitting again. Wanting resolution to this fateful cycle and his failing marriage, Coelho takes a hiatus from writing and travels with his wife to find the Valkyries. Along his journey he meets mystics, strangers, and angels, who help him reform his own capricious thinking patterns.

The story incorporates elements of magic, spirituality, religion, but in essence, Coelho writes about an experience that feels universal to all artists: losing your fervour and succumbing to the anxiety that comes from this loss. I’m going to Joshua Tree National Park, adjacent to Mojave Desert. The searing heat scorches skin and asphalt. We take a hike during the cool, late hours of the day, and I bring The Valkyries with me. I’m not quite out of my own world. Unresolved problems at home and uncertainty of the future shadow my steps, making me fearful and uncreative. I look out at the horizon. I notice the immovable mountains, the way the evening drapes its stillness over life. These mountains have existed long before I was born, and they will survive me. These things don’t change. This horizon is bigger than whatever is in front of me. My vision expands, a sense of peace sets in. A thought comes in: I can be bigger than what’s in front of me. I see myself differently, I feel bigger. I read the book but it lives alongside me, like a helpful stranger accompanying me on my own journey.

“Everythings For Real” by Grace Wales Bonner (2015) TAMIA THOMPSON

Seeking authenticity in the art I consume carries many challenges for me. To relate deeply with another person’s message in art is to believe their message deserves to be given life the way the artist has chosen. Achieving the wholeness that connection requires is what is most difficult for me. I’ve come to find that connecting to someone else's work—beyond a superficial understanding—requires an alignment of personal taste and known experience. To truly identify with a message intimately drawn from art is to experience the art so viscerally, it’s as if the artist is speaking directly to you. I really never understood that until I encountered Grace Wales Bonner’s debut fashion collection and corresponding zine. A south London-native born to Jamaican and British parents in the early 90s, Wales Bonner graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2014. She released her first menswear collection as a presentation for Fashion East during A/W 2015, along with the three-part zine “Everythings For Real” for reference. Recognizing her heritage is integral to understanding how Wales Bonner has created a cross-continental and cultural zine on what she titles “Reflections on Black Rhythm.” The clothes and zine demonstrate a deep influence of Indian, Jamaican, and West African fashion and culture. The zine, however, ties the project together through poetry, prose, and photography in a way that evokes greater meaning and detail. Having grown up in a similar setting, I consider this book to be one of the greatest

depictions of Black identity in high fashion to date. I too am the daughter of Jamaican parents, navigating the art world in a Black female body. Her work for this collection shows thorough representation, with its focus on images of Black people around the world—in war, in embrace, at leisure, and at work. Visually, it brings about a sense that there is a personal calling from the artist to her cultural identity, which I share and feel. The pages are adorned with collages of bodies and landscapes, harmonious in colour and shape. Methodically, she tells a story through combined imagery and text that shines upon the African diaspora, West Indian identity, and a vast well of Black art. Wales Bonner also features selected works by James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison, Aimé Césaire, Amiri Baraka, and other Black thinkers and writers. By combining the words of these authors in their respective mother tongues and placing them alongside her collages, she gathers a unified sense of pride and energy from each voice she borrows, piecing them together in abstract conversation. In establishing a connected and interactive experience through clothing and print, Wales Bonner’s “Everythings For Real” demonstrates a sense of self-awareness absent from many works I’ve seen and admired in the past. It shares a range of feelings and memories that, by no coincidence, remind me of my own. A RT S A ND CULTURE

finding your place in the street

Views of the Collection: The Street at the Vancouver Art Gallery considers the significance of the urban street. JAYDE ATCHISON Staff Writer

What’s your walking style? Are you the person with headphones in, head down and a power stride? Do you only notice potential dogs to pet? Or do you savor the views and take note of the world around you? Views of the Collection: The Street at the Vancouver Art Gallery prompts visitors to rethink their position in public spaces. The exhibition is curated by Grant Arnold, the Audain Curator of British Columbia Art at the Vancouver Art Gallery and draws from the gallery’s existing collection of works. The Street explores the history of the urban street through paintings and photographs that chronicle gendered discrimination during World War II, colonization in Canada, sex work in Los Angeles, and construction labour in Vancouver, among other things. Upon entering the exhibition, the first thing I noticed was a photo mural that takes up a majority of the ceiling in the first room. It’s a re-creation of the gay-bashing attacks that happened in the summer of 1979 in Vancouver, where gay men were thrown over the side of the Stanley Park Seawall, an area which had been a long-established cruising site. Located directly under the mural is a bench where viewers can lie down to absorb the piece. Created by artist Kevin Medill, the 24

mural is a reminder of Vancouver’s history of homophobia. Vancouver is becoming known for being 2SLGBTQ+ friendly, but this piece addresses the struggle the community had to go through to feel safer walking in the West End. Medill uses the large scale photograph to mimic the stylings of artists such as Michaelangelo (think Sistine Chapel) where historical events and conflicts were primarily focused. In the second room sits a photograph titled “Marilyn, 28 years old, Las Vegas, NV, $30.” I found myself mesmerized by the spiritless stare of this male prostitute on a street corner in Los Angeles, staged and captured by photographer Phillip-Lorca diCorcia. Arnold also enjoys the impact of Marilyn but reminds viewers, “Photography isn’t the truth, photography is a kind of fiction.” Arnold advises those interested in attending the exhibition to “think about the mechanisms of representation while exploring the exhibit. Think about your own perceptions and experiences of the street and how they might coincide or diverge from the works.” Walking through the three rooms of The Street, I realized how I experience the

Robert Capa Chartres, France, 18 August, 1944 (female collaborators marched through town), 1944 silver gelatin print Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery, Gift of Claudia Beck and Andrew Gruft

world more securely than the people and scenes depicted. I was struck by an image that Robert Capa captured of two women walking through a crowded street in France during World War II. The image shows the crowd laughing at the women, whose heads were shaven on suspicion of Nazi collaboration. Another photograph of a girl with smiling eyes in Hebron after a political conflict in 2000 that left the city streets scorched and torn apart, photographed by Larry Towell, reminded me that people can survive destruction and still find happiness. When I stared at Fred Herzog’s photograph of Kits Beach in 1957, I felt an uncanny connection to a city that existed four decades before I was born. The concession stand may have gone through some upgrades, but the ritual of getting hot dogs and ice cream remains the same. It’s a piece that’s representative of how the greater exhibition details Vancouver’s cultural and physical changes over the last 60 years. Views of the Collection: The Street will be on display until November 17th at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

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Vee, 26

What we pack in our bags for the first day of post secondary versus a year into it is substantially different, far more minimal through trial and error.

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Photos and text by MAHI KAUR

Capilano University Communications student Edwina (Vee) said she uses a tote bag because, as opposed to a backpack, it’s fit for most occasions and she doesn’t “look like a little schoolgirl” going to work and social events. She also finds tote bags have easier accessibility, with “little pockets” that don’t require fishing through the bottom of a backpack to find what she needs.

Vee stores her assortment of pens and highlighters in this “Running Late Is My Cardio” case.

Inside Vee’s binder was a Communications Studies planning guide. She stores all her necessities in a little black Ted Baker zip up bag, including hand sanitizer, a compact mirror, chapstick, panty liners, and tampons (“lol”). Her compact wallet holds her I.D’s, debit and credit cards, and change.

Her clear vinyl Stella McCartney tote bag also contained a red lighter, a Tim Hortons chocolate chip muffin, Nissan Altima keys, binders, her Samsung S9 and charger, her Apple laptop with a gradient laptop case, an Aquafina water bottle, and a little bottle of valerian root pills to help calm her nerves. 25

The World Is Bright From VIFF’s Sea to Sky and BC Spotlight Series emerges a thrilling documentary covering a decade-long mystery RACHEL D'SA Editor-In-Chief

When BC filmmaker and director, Ying Wang, first laid her eyes on a local Chinese newspaper housing an article covering the court battle between a couple fighting for justice over their son’s suicide, she hadn’t expected her next project would be a decadelong endeavour. The upcoming film, The World Is Bright, a part of the Vancouver International Film Festival’s (VIFF) Sea to Sky series, covers the haunting turn of events that led up to and followed the mysterious death of Chinese immigrant Shiming Deng in 2005. The documentary, which began filming in 2007 and wrapped up in 2017— excluding the additional two years of editing — takes viewers along a complex journey, challenging the distraught parents to search for answers, along with a retelling and dramatization of Shiming’s life in Vancouver. The network of bureaucracy, negligence and mental illness weaved within the film brands The World Is Bright as a notable piece that highlights the value of the representation of contemporary migrant life.

Wang: I heard about their story from a local Chinese newspaper. After they came here, there was some coverage in the Chinese newspapers. What struck me is this old couple came all the way to Canada to find the truth of the death and also try to find some justice so that really triggered me. Also, there’s

a lot of mystery surrounding his death during that time so the whole story was just very intriguing. So I began to follow them. I was not born here. I grew up in Beijing and they came from Beijing — from my hometown. So that’s another element connecting me with the film.

Wang: I reached out to their lawyer and the lawyer connected me with them and they were very open. So, on our first meeting they agreed that I could follow them. It started in November of 2007 and the whole filming finished in 2017.

Wang: I think they have opened themselves to the camera. I think one reason is that they hope that the story can be heard and that the truth of the whole mystery, the death, the everything can be aware by the public. Their story was not a headline story, even though there was some media coverage, it was still very limited. But what's revealed through the story actually is quite tremendous and it’s quite profound. They were very alone here

and I came from the same hometown so I think for me, and for them… my presence could also bring some company to them— as if I gradually became a family member. I definitely tried to respect them so lots of the time, it was me with my camera there to listen. After a 12-year process, the film is to finally have its world premiere this September at VIFF—a moment that Wang describes as powerful and honoured, especially after all of the challenges that the film’s subjects and crew pushed through. During the course of the 10 years of filming alone, the documentary received one BC Arts Council grant and one Canada Council for the Arts grant. The rest of the funding was done using Wang’s money. “A lot of crew members either worked for free or they worked for very minimum payment. So it’s tough, actually. We didn’t know that everything would take so long. Because the material was huge, by the time we got to the editing, the grant money had run out. But with independent films, you just have to struggle to complete it,” said Wang. Additionally, the director stated the most difficult part of the entire process was making a good film out of the complexity of piecing together the intricate story, with many issues and an enormous amount of collected material. Wang also notes the demanding set of needs within the realm of casting for the retelling portions of the film.

Wang: It was not an easy job to find the right actor. First of all, we definitely tried to look

for someone who looked like him (Shiming Deng) and also felt like him. Because he came from Beijing, he was an international student and so he had his own atmosphere. A lot of actors here, most of them grew up here. So, even though some actors look like him, they don’t feel like him. And also, the language. They had to be able to speak some Mandarin, and the English could not be too perfect. So all these elements [made it] quite hard to find the actor.

Wang: Film interested me because at first I developed a passion for photography, and then the film just naturally is a moving image, and that combined with literature, story and also music. All the art in life you can just find in film. So I think that makes film the most fascinating aspect of the film, to me.

Wang: Definitely. At the time I was in China— that was at the end of 1990, and during that time in China, it was not so easy to watch foreign films. We’d often get a VHS copy to watch secretly. So what I think really inspired me to want to start to tell my own stories is an Ingmar Bergman film [Cries and Whispers]. In film history, he definitely was considered a master and he was a Swedish director. During that time we were able to watch a lot of old films from Europe so I was really inspired by his films. I will never forget that experience of watching that film. The film is about three sisters and the cinematography is so beautiful and the emotion—the intimacy of the three

women—that is so powerful. The profound humanity is placed throughout his work. That really inspired me.

Wang: I don’t have a big body of work. Before this film my only other film was Sisters, so this is my second film. And actually, Sisters is actually not a documentary—Sisters is fiction. Both films have similar elements. They’re about new immigrant life and the life in the void of culture—the life in-between. That is one topic, and the other is mental illness. Me, as an immigrant and migrant, the in-between—this kind of life in the middle of nowhere, that’s a topic that’s very interesting to me. Wang states that looking at Canadian film brings about conversation surrounding representation and addressing the country’s current state. “There are still so many new immigrants coming… but you look at the Canadian film screen about the contemporary migrant life and it’s so lacking,” she noted. “I strongly feel like there should be more films about contemporary migrant life in Canada because there’s this new complexity there.” While she acknowledges that history is still rich in storytelling value, Wang stressed that “we should also tell new stories because the stories from today will be the history for tomorrow.” Tickets to view the world premiere of The World Is Bright at VIFF will be available for purchase online on Sept. 5 through viff.org.

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@cynthiatranvo 28

Rach el wada

@mahithecreat0r @rachelwada FEATURED ART

Recess, but make it edgy How can a show about recess be made when there is no recess in high school? JAYDE ATCHISON Staff Writer KARLA MONTERROSA Illustrator

In 1997, one of the most iconic television shows of my childhood, Recess, was on every day after school. I watched it for the next nine years until it hit its finale and I went on to high school. (Whether or not I watched a cartoon show for longer than I should have is not up for debate at this time). The Recess gang never got to showcase what their high school experience was like, but that was never a sore spot in my adolescence. Sure, I dressed as Ashley Spinelli for Halloween in my early twenties (who didn’t), but I never craved closure from the show. In my mind, Recess belonged in a vault of nostalgic memories, later to be discussed at dinner parties, first dates, and to my younger siblings when comparing their weird late 2000’s shows to my superior pre-Y2K ones. This Disney remake is one of many in the era of reboots (Aladdin, The Lion King, Mulan, etc), but this one is different in that it is not backed by Disney. This one is a passion project. A fan-made film that has no association with the Walt Disney franchise, nor the creators of the original show. Due to its independent nature, there is an Indiegogo campaign which is raising money for final production costs, although the filming portion was completed over a two-day period back in July. The premise of the new Recess looks at TJ and the gang in high school as they work their way through “issues like love, peer pressure, social media, identity, etc”. This all sounds fine, except we’ve already been bombarded by teen-based shows with a darker edge, like Riverdale, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, and Pretty Little Liars, to name a few. Recess revamped doesn’t sound far off that route, especially with a teaser like “something more sinister than a break-up is brewing at Third Street High.” Don’t get me wrong, I have been hooked into my fair share of teen dramas – but after binge-watching one or two with the same dark twists, it gets predictable and tiresome. Unless the twist has something to do with Spinelli’s spy parents, I am not here for it.

There are perks to donating to the creation of this film, such as a social media shout out for $20, your name in the credits for $100 – (name on the big screen without the acting ability? Sign me up) – or a cast and crew signed TJ hat for a scandalous $500. If this sounds up your alley, go ahead and make your dreams a reality. The creators of the film are not trying to gain money for profit or entry into any festivals, but are just covering the costs of rentals, hair and make-up, and post-production. For a Disney reboot, this one seems to come with pure intentions, as the film would be available online for everyone to enjoy for free. Nonetheless, I haven’t been able to find the same level of enthusiasm for this film as others. My memories are painted with childhood life lessons that the original Recess taught me, like when TJ learned that not everyone is going to like you, and how that’s okay. I am skeptical of what lessons a group of teenagers can teach me this time around. If it’s anything like what some of the other shows have, such as “don’t get involved in Satanic cults,” well, I probably don’t need another teen show to remind me. A few favourite memories rush through my head when I think of Recess: The Ashley’s Tire Clubhouse, King Bob on his recliner at the top of the playground, Swinger Girl, the uncontrollable kindergartners. This is the Recess I want to remember. Are the Ashley’s going to have a new clubhouse that is just as cleverly hidden and posh on the inside? If not, are they going to be hanging out in a Regina George-esque mansion? Some of the best parts of the original television show were the outrageous locations and set ups, and it will be interesting to see if the remake touches on them. And most importantly, did they include an exact shot-for-shot replica of the hula hooping scene with Spinelli and Ms. Finster? If not, I will riot. In conclusion, “this whomps.”

OPI NIONS

Admissions without merit

Why parents and students should be held accountable for their actions in the “Operation Varsity Blues” college bribery scandal

LENA ORLOVA Contributor CYNTHIA TRAN VO Illustrator

In a recent bribery scandal, a group of the supposed smartest, wealthiest, and most athletic students were discovered to have been cheating their way into elite US colleges—the same US colleges that many top-crop Canadian students apply to every year. In March 2019, 33 star-studded celebrity parents were indicted by the US Federal Court in what the FBI dubbed “Operation Varsity Blues”. The parents paid over $25 million between 2011 and 2018 to coaches, administrators, and middlemen who falsely inflated SAT test scores and faked athletic profiles. It worked: the parents’ kids got in. But now the parents are facing charges, the universities are upset, administrators are fired, and the people, of course, are outraged. This raises the question: should these students be allowed to stay? And if not, should they be forgiven and allowed to reapply? The United States Department of Justice stated that “in many instances, the students taking the exams were unaware that their parents had arranged for the cheating.” The fame-crazed parents, addicted to maintaining their status wanted to secure the same notability for their own children. It makes sense. We all want the best for our kids, and getting into an elite college like Yale or Harvard is a way to do that. In principle, these institutions adopt meritbased admissions, meaning that your abilities and accomplishments are supposed to be 32

the indicator of future success, not your bank statement. The purported practice doesn’t account for the argument that the criteria greatly favours applicants from the elite. A child born into a wealthy family is going to be given more opportunities for high achievement, whether it be through private schools, private tutors, internships, trips to international competitions, first-rate sports gear, or volunteer exchanges overseas. Having an advantage in the admissions process begins long before the last year of high school. Once admitted, the majority of grads go on to become world leaders, CEOs, successful lawyers, politicians, or whatever they want, really. Any mention of an Ivy League education means something in the world— a winning future, an applaud, proud parents. That might not be everything, but it does mean it took an investment, monetary or otherwise. Falsifying accomplishments in order to gain admission is an ethical breach, not just a legal one. Accused parents secured what they wanted at the expense of an honest admission process. The indicted—the fortune holders—pooled their resources to facilitate the conspiracy. The child of this parent learns and develops the impression that the only way to get ahead is through lying, not personal merit. Extrapolating further, these students could likely develop either a belief that they are not good enough,

or just as destructive, an unwarranted sense of entitlement. Without any repercussions in place, these students continue down the same path of moral deprivation as their parents. Expelling the student, in this case, does little to change their perspective and cut out the cycle of status-over-integrity. It’s a mere slap on the wrist for bad behaviour, which rarely works to get the point across, and they are bound to lie and cheat elsewhere in life. The point is that the end doesn’t justify the means. The promise of success should be held for ability, dedication, direction, integrity, practice, and self-actualization. These qualities are not earned by getting into an elite university, but proactive action and honest competition. It’s held by putting your mind to a goal and achieving, while keeping in mind how it affects others. It involves time and maturation, support from community, respect for the process. While the fairness of the college admission process that rewards wealth and privilege is part of a larger issue, in this case of blatant fraud, the students should be expelled but allowed to reapply. Parents should be charged and held responsible for their actions. And if the students do reapply, they should be on the same fair and equal ground as anyone else: with transparency, preparation and hard work. Even if they get a rejection letter, what matters is that they showed up on their own merit, not the merit their parents paid for.

Plastic Ocean to plastic people:

How to navigate into the future, beyond the plastic horizon

LEXI MINGO Contributor EMILY ROSE Illustrator

As you already may know, Plastic is an artificially produced material made from distilled crude oil, or petroleum, which is chemically engineered to meet the desired purpose. Not only does the carbon-dense material have a variety of negative impacts on “disposal,” but it takes fossil fuels to make it. In Canada, barely 10% of plastic is recycled which begs the question, where does it all go? After my personal discovery of the plastic gyre in the North Pacific Ocean in 2009 (12 years after it was first discovered), I knew something wasn’t right about our global consumption and disposal system. Since then I, like many others, have been exposed to a constant unraveling of systemic failures, disclosing many generations of ignorance and neglect. But stay with me here, I’m only talking about one problem today: Plastic. It’s everywhere. There are miles of multicoloured plastic bottles bobbing amongst a smorgasbord of neon flip flops, beach toys, and other questionably discarded floaters. The images of dissected animal stomachs full of trash filled my stomach with an unsettling shame. In February of 2019, I decided to test out my will-power. Being aware of my privilege as a student with a little extra spending money (a novelty, I know), I decided I would explore the concept of “zero-waste.” The term itself is problematic though. From my own experiences dumpster diving, I knew that the vast quantities of corporate waste were inevitable. An individual who attempts a “zerowaste” lifestyle needs to know that they aren’t a superhero. If anything, they are a privileged practitioner of counterculture. The

“zero-waste” lifestyle comes with sacrifice no matter who you are. A typical grocery store’s potential “zero-waste” sections take up less than a quarter of its entirety. The rest is filled with bags, boxes, cans, tetra packs, foils and twist ties, none of which are mutually exclusive. Avoiding plastic for 40 days meant I needed to enter each day very prepared. Sure, I could get fruits, vegetables, nuts, and dried beans at Safeway without being confronted with single-use plastics, but where would I get my tofu, tortilla chips, pasta and other items that are predominantly plastic wrapped? Armed with reusable cotton totes, glass jars, and bulk bags, shopping became a monumental journey into the eco-affluent part of town. I did weekly “zero-waste” pilgrimages to Vancouver’s publicly marketed “zero-waste” stores. It took a total of six buses round trip, with my bulky backpack awkwardly jangling all the way. For my good deeds, I was awarded back with pain and inconvenience. This is only one example of consumer experience, where “zero-waste” practice seems like a nice idea in theory, but is inaccessible in practice. If you don’t live in a community that accommodates to a “zerowaste” lifestyle, you’re damned with burning either fossil fuels or your own physical and mental fuel. The "zero-waste" lifestyle looked more like a mythical goal set forth by minimalists and trendy upper-class housewives than a reality. After completing my challenge, I started to question other materials used in packaging. Is plastic really the criminal? It was revealed to me in my research that it takes four times as

much energy to make a paper bag than it does to make a plastic one. Are plant-based plastics any better? As it turns out, Bioplastics and paper products are almost as controversial as plastics, and just as ambiguous. They come with other residual pros and cons. Materials that are labeled “biodegradable” or “compostable” are designed to be disposed as trash. If not properly disposed of, these products emit methane, which is counterintuitive to their initial purpose. Public knowledge regarding new products needs to be shared, and local disposal system needs to create space for the efficient decomposition of plant-based materials. We need to take the pressure off the individual and put it on lawmakers and corporations instead. Although both provincial and federal Governments have proposed the banning of single-use plastics as early as 2021, we cannot afford to have our consumer consciousness stay idle. If we are aware of our consumption of plastics and the debate around the alternatives, then we can have an informed opinion on what steps the government must take to meet the Paris Climate Agreement goals. It’s your right to protect yourself and your wellbeing, and that intrinsically relies on wellbeing of our environment.

If you want your voice to be heard, please visit https://cleanbc.gov.bc.ca/plastics and take part in this important survey.

OPI NIONS

Vaping's Sweet Mysteries Why vaping should be a last resort for smokers CHRIS HO Opinions Editor lILLIAN ZHANG Illustrator

Sitting on the couch at my friends’ place, he tosses a Juul pen in my lap. Paying no heed to the many memes soon to be flooding my inbox, I inhale from the USB stick of e-cigarettes. Him and I are in a similar predicament. I want to quit smoking cigarettes with the help of vaping. And, now, he wants to quit vaping by smoking cigarettes. I think he’s crazy for smoking. He thinks I’m crazy for vaping. Lets just say 2019 has been a foggy year (pun intended, I’m so sorry). In spite of there being significantly more chemicals in cigarettes than in vape juice, it seems like some people are becoming so desperate to quit vaping that they are actually turning back to cigarettes. With a big question mark surrounding the impacts of vaping, smokers need to be cautious before they venture to open Pandora’s vaping kit, so to speak. The advent of e-cigarettes is a little reminiscent of cigarettes’ own heyday in the 50s. At that time there wasn’t enough evidence in circulation about the harmful effects of smoking cigarettes either. Thanks to Hollywood and The Marlboro Man, smoking was just about the coolest thing you could do. Much like e-cigarette companies now, the market was faced with a prime opportunity to capitalize on a vast demographic that would buy into it and keep coming back for more. It should come as no surprise then that an online survey has recently indicated a whopping 74 percent increase in teen vaping across Canada in a single year. Leading up to this, the slick, easy to use, and brilliantly marketed Juul pen quickly

became the most popular e-cigarette in the United States—and evidently it didn’t take long for the sale of Juul vapes, and many other brands, to rise rapidly in Canada too. By the way, Juul, which spun out of the American electronic vaporizer company PAX Labs in 2017, was valued at over $15 billion as of July 2018. And later that same year, one of the world’s largest cigarette companies, Atria, bought 35% of Juul for $12.8 billion. Good for them, right? E-cigarettes are not currently approved by the Food and Drug Administration as a smoking cessation device, and yet they are listed on the Health Canada website as a viable option for quitting. It is amazing how legitimized electronic vaporizers have become, and how rapidly their usage is growing. And let’s face it, the marketing has been pretty on point. After all, around 40% of people who vape weren’t even smoking cigarettes prior to that. Considering that we don’t even know what the long-term effects of inhaling vegetable glycerine and propylene glycol will be, this is definitely concerning. I don’t think it’s a question of whether there will be long term-effects, but a matter of just how bad those long-term effects will be. One can assume it won’t be nearly as detrimental as the long-term effects of cigarettes, but as I sit here and exhale hypocritical vape clouds toward my laptop, logic will tell me that my lungs probably are unimpressed by my choices right now. Although Health Canada is now rolling out strategies to try and curb teen usage, one has to wonder if this is going to be

immediate enough for the damage that has already been done. Sure, you can take down advertisements in public areas and put up health warnings on YouTube, but controlling the plethora of ads, or any portrayal of vaping on social media is another story. The bottom line is that these e-cigarette companies have a lot invested in this gold mine, and are by no means going to be pulling out of it without a fight. It doesn’t help that vaping is even more enjoyable than smoking—which is part of the reason why it’s so hard not to go overboard. It’s smooth, doesn’t burn, tastes like literal candy, and can easily be done indoors on your couch while watching Netflix. Quitting smoking was difficult, don’t get me wrong, but at least the thousands of chemicals, gross smell, and social stigma was working in my favour to quit. Vaping less, on the other hand, has proven itself to be a whole other beast. What’s worse is that some people take up vaping in hopes to cut out cigarettes, only to find themselves both vaping and smoking. Needless to say, this is definitely not an ideal situation. If you are trying to quit smoking and have already tried all other options, I would highly recommend doing a bit of research on what nicotine level you should start at (which is based off how much you currently smoke). While choosing to vape is certainly the lesser of the two evils, it’s easy to end up vaping even more than you smoked in the first place—giving you what is truly an unnecessary amount of nicotine.

OPI NIONS

CapU 50 Trail carves the path to a healthier mind Why we should support the addition of a new trail at Capilano

ALEXIS ZYGAN Contributor EMILY ROSE Illustrator

It is essential to provide students with an area of respite as university students are one of the most stressed-out groups due to their overload of readings and essays, often in addition to working up to 40 hours a week. Having the ability to take a quick walk and feel a sense of relief and peace while immersed in nature is essential for mental health and productivity. Spending as little as 20 minutes outside in the environment has been proven to lower stress levels, ease symptoms of depression and increase life expectancy. Fresh air outside of the stifling library during exam seasons could be exactly what Capilano students need.  The new CapU50 Trail will give teachers an opportunity to bring their classroom outside where a change in learning environments could help foster new ideas and experiences while enhancing students’ excitement about education, resilience, and well-being. It will also assist the university with its road to reconciliation by improving their relationship with the Indigenous community by allowing for people to acquire a deeper connection with the Earth.

In close proximity to the campus, the newly refined trail represents a unique natural experience unlike many other universities located in the Greater Vancouver area. When I chose to pursue my education at Capilano University, the charming and scenic greenery was a huge deciding factor. The picturesque surroundings at Capilano University have an aesthetic advantage in comparison to other universities. However, it is vital to keep in mind that the expansion of the CapU50 Trail will mean altering the natural landscape. Therefore, it is essential that, despite the benefits, we remain mindful of whether these alterations will have long-lasting effects on the environment. It is also crucial that we treat the land with respect and recognize its history. Ultimately, the CapU50 Trail is a positive addition to the Capilano University campus and community. With the grand opening on September 19th, outdoor enthusiasts will be heading over to North Vancouver to explore, relax, and enjoy the peaceful scenery.

Data Is ICBC’s new pilot project driving app just another way to invade our privacy, or a smart safety move?

FREYA WASTENEYS Managing Editor

ICBC recently put out a call for 7000 novice drivers (with less than five years of experience) to put their cell phones to good use. Somewhat ironically, it turns out your cell phone may very well be your key to safety on the road, with the help of a small in-vehicle device. The new pilot project will track the driving behaviours of participants through a telematics device linked to an app on the driver’s cellphone. From the data collected from in-vehicle feedback, a performance score will be produced. In the initial tests, 40 per cent of drivers saw an improvement in their driving, and the insurance company claims that this will be an effective way to make roads safer and possibly lower insurance rates. Too convenient? Thanks to the number of privacy hacks and big data scams in recent years, it’s hard not to feel at least a little hesitant about handing over our driving data to an insurance company. ICBC does not have the greatest track record in terms of customer satisfaction after all, and has little incentive to improve as B.C.’s monopolized auto insurer. But with the worst drivers and the worst insurance rates in the country, it seems ICBC may finally be looking for ways to improve its dismal ratings. In 2018 B.C. drivers paid an average annual rate of $1,680— numbers which have only risen since, according to a fact sheet by ARC Insurance. Meanwhile novice drivers, who ICBC reports as 5.6 times more likely to be involved in a crash, have insurance rates that range “from exorbitant to utterly unaffordable” according to the Globe and Mail. Clearly something has to change, but a 2014 report from Deloitte shows that widespread acceptance of the project has not always been guaranteed due to privacy concerns and a lack of trust in technology. And maybe we should be concerned. A decade ago, big data was touted as the solution to every problem, and now it’s at the centre of almost every controversial issue in our public discourse. Think Facebook, Google,

Uber, Huawei and Amazon—no favours there. Despite the skepticism however, Aaron Sutherland, vice president of the Insurance Bureau of Canada, assured the public that ICBC is not allowed to use the data to increase insurance prices, but can in fact be used to decrease insurance rates by up to 25 per cent. While we keep trying to find a flaw in the proposed system, so far, it’s looking fairly airtight—to the chagrin of ICBC’s many love-to-hate-ers. Of course, it’s good and necessary to be vigilant about privacy, but these days it seems like there is little rational thought attached to what we deem unsafe and what we deem worthy. Just think of the last time you gave your data to Facebook in exchange for your celebrity look alike or spirit animal. Many of us blatantly throw our privacy away for lesser things on such a frequent basis that we don’t even think about it. We invite smart devices into our homes, readily input our banking information online, and take very few measures to protect our privacy, accepting, at a certain point, that our vulnerability is inevitable. What it really calls into question is where we draw the line and why. In the case of the ICBC pilot project, this may just be one of those situations where the benefits are real and credible, and the rewards actually outweigh the risks. So why is it that we tend to throw our information willingly at companies that we know are disreputable, but then often feel skeptical of initiatives that promise a positive impact? Despite being a data driven society, it turns out we’re all a little susceptible to emotional decision making. In the grand scheme of things, trading a bit of data and privacy to save money and lives is not the worst deal of all time. We remain, Sincerely yours, Cautiously Optimistic About This Project. OPI NIONS

Extraterrestrial

revival,

re-simulated Why our endless fascination with extraterrestrials may get the better of us CHRIS HO Opinions Editor

Most of you are already familiar with the satirical Facebook event proposing to storm the controversial and mysterious Area 51 by now (Storm Area 51 They Can’t Stop All of Us). Don’t worry, I’m not going to do any throwbacks to the nauseating amount of alien memes that are out there now. I much prefer a good old, run-of-the-mill conspiracy documentary over any social media myself. Still, you have to admit how ingenious the whole scheme is. As soon as the Facebook event went viral, Matty Roberts subsequently used its popularity to promote his alienthemed music and arts festival, Alienstock, coming up on, you guessed it, September 20th, the same day we’re supposed to be storming Area 51. Not surprisingly, other companies and merch dealers jumped on the marketing opportunity as well, with Bud Light planning an alienthemed beer label, for example. Who would have thought double booking could be so profitable? The hype is real right now (maybe too real) but it’s nothing new, really. Our fascination with extraterrestrials and the great unknown has been around since the beginning - though it’s certainly making its resurgence these days. We have Netflix and Bob Lazar to thank for that, in part. At least, the 2018 biographical documentary Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers offers a fairly compelling argument for the discovery of a crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft. Lazar asserts that in 1989 he was hired to

work hands-on in the reverse engineering of an alien spacecraft, discovering technology that “simply doesn’t exist” for humans. The craft supposedly runs on an antimatter reactor powered by element 115, which propels the craft forward by generating a gravity wave. “Put simply,” he said “it’s like putting a bowling ball (representing the spacecraft) on a mattress and then pushing down beside it, causing it to move in your direction.” According to other scientists, while we can’t necessarily prove this, we can’t rule it out either. Similarly, we can’t rule out the possibility that he really did review government documents that outlined alien involvement in human affairs over thousands of years. If that doesn’t sound crazy enough, then gear up. I think we can assume that life exists beyond just our planet. Take the “nearby” exoplanetary system Trappist-1 for example. There we discovered three of seven earth-sized planets, which orbit a large red dwarf star and have the right temperature to contain liquid water— and thus support life. It’s just a matter of time before NASA completes the muchanticipated James Webb Space Telescope, which will be able to yield hard evidence of life in these habitable worlds. You do the math. If we’re so fascinated in the search for these extraterrestrials, it stands to reason that they’re probably interested in checking us out too. The difference being that to them our civilization would look antiquated, while to us, theirs would

likely look mind-bogglingly advanced. If our old pal Bob the Builder is right and these extraterrestrials have already built such a spacecraft and explored our world (and others), then what else have they achieved? Consider how far us earthlings have come with videogames (or simulated reality). It is already becoming widely accepted that in the not-so-distant future we will be able to create simulations so advanced, that they will have conscious entities within them. Simulation theory—the notion that our own reality is in fact simulated (yes, like the Matrix)—may sound like a stretch, but there are many scientists and physicists who not only believe it to be true, but that it will one day be proven just like we proved that the earth was not the center of the universe. But as philosopher Preston Greene suggests, we may not want to pry into it too much, since if it were true, “such knowing may end the simulation,” (yes, like The Truman Show). Part of me has to agree. I’m not entirely sure I want to find out what they’ve got hiding in Area 51. Alien remnants and space crafts are one thing; experimental weapons of mass destruction are quite another. If this is a simulation, can we all just agree that God-like extraterrestrials (or whatever floats your boat) created it and move on? We’ve got a planet to save here, and our alien deities are not going to be impressed if we mess this up.

The Circle of

i v e - act i o N

One woman’s journey into singing aloud in a crowded theatre. JAYDE ATCHISON Staff Writer ASHLEY LOO Illustrator

Hakuna Matata—it means no worries, scenes were filled with multi-coloured dance Glover, offer an experience no other Disney

but when it comes to the 2019 edition of The Lion King there seems to be many worries. I kept hearing dramatically different reviews for the photorealistic remake, as people either loved or hated it. So, I took myself to the theatre on a Saturday night to do some serious research. Warning: there are spoilers ahead with the similarities and differences of the films. If you are a fan of the original Disney classic, the opening scene will send chills up your spine as it is reminiscent of the iconic 1994 opening credit sequence. To truly age myself, I saw the original in theatres and was a self-proclaimed mega fan with a Lion King duvet, stuffed animals, lounge chair and kitchen set. As much as I loved the 90’s vibe of the original, my breath was taken away when the incredibly detailed face of Rafiki came on screen. The first few minutes had me half expecting David Attenborough to start educating me on why this crowd of animals were marching toward Pride Rock. The cat characteristics displayed in this movie showcase an attention to detail that I was not expecting. Watching Mufasa and Scar mark their territory by rubbing their heads against rocks created a stunning edge to Disney’s repertoire. In the original, the

sequences with unrealistic, but wonderfully creative designs. I haven’t been to Africa (yet), but I am 99 percent sure that glowing neon green would be a highly uncommon geyser colour. Gone are the days where animals wipe their faces on leaves with humanistic traits. Here are the days where the audience can wonder whether some shots are actually capturing real beasts in the wild. Not only do the scenes hold more realism, they have a darker tone. The moment Simba and Nala go to the Elephant Graveyard and are cornered by hyenas made my skin crawl. We’re talking “stop-eating” scared. The whole movie seems catered to an older audience, as though Disney realized they needed to grow up for their millennial fans, and remodeled the remake accordingly. It feels a little contrived, but I can’t even say I’m mad about it. The recreation of Scar’s solo “Be Prepared” had me wondering how kids might react to its newfound intensity. If the PG rating isn’t enough to draw you into the theatre, the casting and musical renditions will be. With a predominantly African American cast, this movie takes over the old westernized Disney films. Names like James Earl Jones, Keegan-Michael Key, Eric André, Beyoncé, and of course Donald

film has provided. We should really thank James Earl Jones for staying alive and healthy to provide his iconic voice to Mufasa a second time, as the movie may not have been as impactful without that spirit-booming “REMEMBER” reverberating down at the audience. Any Donald Glover (Childish Gambino) fan has reason enough to see this film to experience the musical masterpieces from the soulful singer himself. As much as I love Matthew Brodrick as our 90’s Simba, Donald Glover is the rightful heir to Pride Rock (and my heart). Simba just can’t wait to be king, but I can’t wait to go listen to this soundtrack on repeat. So, is this the best or worst thing to happen? Neither, I would say. But in the era of Disney remakes and reboots, The Lion King respectfully sticks to the original storyline, and achieves a realism with deeper and darker appeal. I thought it was beautifully made, and as a millennial I had no shame in singing along to all the songs alone in a theatre. Planning on checking it out to see where you stand on the line between loving and hating it? Just be warned that all of the memes were right—seeing Mufasa die in HD is just as sad as you think it’s going to be. OPI NIONS

ME AND YOU AND

Algorithms We Know The Architecture of Robotics in the Home SARAH ROSE Features Editor

was meant “Technology to liberate women from

drudgery, but we still speak to them the same way we did fifty years ago,”

explains Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, industrial designer and author of Smarter Homes in an interview on CBC’s Spark. “Ja tvoi rabotnik, ja tvoi sluga.” That’s the interlude to Kraftwerk’s The Robots, it directly translates to: “I am your worker, I am your servant.” The English word robot is derived from the Russian rabotnik. Follow the etymological roots down and you’ll find rabota, the Old Church Slavonic word for servitude.

One only needs to imagine a scene from Downton Abbey to be immersed in the home robotics of the early 20th century. Like a clockwork mansion, a home operates with various servants, maids, butlers, cooks, housekeepers, gardeners and other rabota in such a way that the only decision the lady of the house might make in a day is what to eat. Over the next century, every technology developed for the home thereafter is done to replace human rabota owned by the rich elite. A middle-class family wouldn’t have a maid, but they might have an electric washing machine. Fifty years ago, the electric washing machine did just that—it revolutionized housework. But how much did it really change ideas about women, work and the home? For Deschamps-Sonsino, pay attention to subtlety. From the gradual shift of re-orientating furniture away from others and towards the TV, to entire architectures designed and dedicated to housing technology, the way we see home has been altered beyond recognition. The abstraction of living in the world is produced first in the home. For the past century the concept of home has been an ideological battleground for ideas about future living—and ourselves. In 1923, Swiss architect Le Corbusier called homes “a machine for living in.” From the grid of electrification, to city architecture and now the internet, home is not simply a place. It’s the nexus of human interaction and connection in the 21st century. “The home is a space that is also too easily pointed as ‘female’ while the technology sector remains predominantly ‘male.’ For me, the ‘male gaze’ is transformed, in the area of smart homes, into the male brush: how a man paints a mental image of what happens to women at home and therefore how he designs solutions for her,” writes Deschamps-Sonsino. Part of the problem is that the empire of design has become synonymous with good. It reinforces the idea that good design is good business that makes good people. This concept has becoming so complete, so ubiquitous that the word design itself means “good”. Despite the fact that, as authors Colomina and Wigley write in Are We Human?, this very same concept is present and active in weapons, incarceration, surveillance, invasion, policing and terrorism. “The home space is becoming weaponized, filled with an increasing amount of tech that we don’t understand anymore,” DeschampsSonsino warns.

Enter the smart home, or as we often call her: Alexa. Alexa is only one piece of technology that knows more about us than our family and friends, and she’s made possible by the Internet of Things. “‘Thing’ is almost the problem in the phrase ‘internet of things’ because people sort of see ‘things’ as an empty vessel with which to pour all their desires and aspiration,” says Deschamps-Sonsino. These things, specifically, are internet connected machines embedded with sensors that gather, store and analyze data. Deschamps-Sonsino points out that the same number of Alexa’s were shipped in three years as iPhones were in one week. The Globe and Mail reports that at the end of 2017, there were 3.8 billion connected IoT devices out there—ranging from heart monitors to toasters. In five years, they won’t just be powering the home, but a fourth Industrial Revolution. According to sociological theory, there’s only six degrees of separation necessary to connect any one person on the planet with any other. The smart home is perhaps the most deranged application of this concept. After going out for a jog, who should be able to access the personal information (location, GPS, etc.) collected by a fitness tracker? Sensor embedded machines subsequently reduce this kind of descriptive privacy dramatically. One expert demonstrated how easy it was to hack into a radio-frequency controlled insulin pump to remotely administer a lethal dose. Other hackers don’t have an issue with disabling a smart lock or the Nest security in a home. But not all attacks are so overt and direct—or from a singular malicious third party. Consider the recently released Google Hub, setting it up takes less than a few minutes. Particularly if you skip past all the fine print and privacy agreements describing how Google is going to share your data with commercial businesses, monitor all your activity via Chrome and the battery level to track how often you use it. Ed Thomas, principal analyst at GlobalData isn’t optimistic. “The hardware revenue they’ll derive from those sales is secondary to what the speaker delivers for them: they get a vast amount of extremely valuable user data,” says Thomas. According to a survey of 400 IT executives from Altman Vilandrie & Co, nearly half of all IoT devices have been breached in the past two years. For Deschamps-Sonsino, the repetition is clear.

While smart home devices promise to make us more independent, they create a dangerous dependency predicated on ignorance and necessity. This is especially true considering how a large majority of connected home devices are being used for other forms of coercive control, such as in domestic abuse. “Fixing things is only the beginning of a career in technology. It is the key to building up knowledge and independence,” writes Deschamps-Sonsino as if taken directly from a pamphlet on abuse. These smart home hubs are what Thomas and other tech analysts dub as a gateway device. A tech-enabled gateway drug designed to create dependency, before moving us on to the other IoT devices. “Trojan horse is another way of putting it,” Thomas says in an interview with The Guardian. A trojan horse being a term co-opted in the 70’s by the US Air Force to refer to a type of malware that masquerades as something legitimate whilst being designed to allow a hacker to take control of the system. The similarity to how companies like Google and Amazon operate is morbidly striking, given how both systems of attack rely on social engineering to operate. This is especially true for the IoT. Social engineering is a form of psychological attack directly on humans using the devices, rather than the devices themselves. Defending oneself from the malicious rhetoric depends on sharpening one’s metacognition – before you hack a machine, you need to hack a person and people are easy to hack. The Harvard Business Review reached a similar conclusion: “The major sources of cyber threats aren’t technological. They’re found in the human brain, in the form of curiosity, ignorance, apathy, and hubris.” Shifting the locus of control on the design and creators of smart objects is a temporary solution, but a solution nonetheless. Deschamps-Sonsino suggests more mothers designing and creating smart objects that reflect their own experiences. “It’s time we revisit the source of these ideas and questioned the solutions we’re presented with,” she says. The ambition to reform the environment instead of the human contains a hidden, and false, assumption about the interrelationship of humans and their environment that disregards the new mediator: interface. How can humans remain unaltered at the center of a new architecture?

FEATURES

death Productivity tools and apps can motivate us to finish the never-ending to-do list, but the creep of work into home life, and constant need for productivity can take a toll. FREYA WASTENEYS Managing Editor CYNTHIA TRAN VO Illustrator

As I sit down to write this article in the small hours of the morning, I hear emails ping in my inbox —responses to my hasty, unedited plea via Facebook post: “LOOKING FOR: people with experience using productivity apps for an article about time management!!!” The irony doesn't escape me. Not even a little. In fact, the maniacal cackle-cry is bubbling somewhere in the cauldron of my stomach. My eyes skim the 20+ tabs open on my computer screen while my Pomodoro timer ticks down the minutes. A deadline is a deadline after all. Like many students and professionals these days, my work is not limited to your typical 9-5. My life—at times—subscribes to the sales pitch promised by time management and productivity tools like Trello and Pomodoro. Other times, time management and productivity feel like an oxymoron—the more I finish, the more I take on. “People have always sought to maximize their 24 hours,” writes Leah Messinger in an article in The Guardian exploring the effectiveness of time management apps. “Now, where analog to-do-lists once sufficed, the toolbox for increasing efficiency has greatly expanded.” This toolbox has given us the capacity to produce more than ever. In that way, the

workload and time management has shifted to the individual—and the more productive you are, the more employable you are. Melissa Gregg, a primary engineer at Intel, explores these issues in her book Counterproductive, questioning our faith in productivity as the “ultimate measure of success.” Opening email after email from students and professionals, I see my own conflicted stance set in black type against the glare of my computer screen. “I’m certainly conflicted about this issue,” writes Stephen McLeod, an MFA candidate in Studio Art at Concordia University and web developer for Reddin Global. “On the one hand, my life as a remote freelance programmer wouldn’t be possible without all the collaboration and task scheduling tools. But I think the obsession with productivity is unhealthy and can really lead to burnout.” Right. Burnout. As common as the common cold these days. “Every few weeks I have to remind myself that life isn’t a to-do list,” he continues. McLeod, who works remotely as web developer, software consultant, and artist finds that he heavily relies on “a constantly mutating cloud of apps” to synchronize his schedule, set goals, and make a solid attempt at work-life balance. Like most remote

workers however, this can pose a challenge. While these apps give McLeod a lot of freedom in terms of where he lives and the hours he keeps, constant access can make it challenging to relax. “I always feel like I’m ‘on the clock’ and it can be quite difficult to relax when my office is always at my fingertips.” But it turns out there’s another app for that: “One thing that has helped keep some separation between the two is that I use different task management and scheduling tools for work and for my personal life,” says McLeod. For instance, he uses apps such as Things and Whatsapp for his personal life, and tools like Jira and Slack for work. “In the same way that it’s important to have a designated area in my apartment that is only for work, the switch in user interface helps me switch gears,” he says. “It’s still a struggle though!” Amid the myriad of time management app options, there are, of course, positives and negatives in each. In fact, you could waste a lot of time looking for the perfect one. “An effective business app also needs to separate personal from professional tasks and let an employee choose to report only work-related data to avoid potential violations of privacy or other legal grey areas,” Messinger writes. “A product that works well for some employees and managers may also be less effective for others, depending on the variety of work styles and culture within an organization.” In the past couple years, Rosemary Langford, a student at SFU and a contractor, has tried a fair few of these tools. In her working life, she uses apps like Toggl to help set limits and normalize working from home. Rather than creating a feeling of isolation however, as Gregg hypothesizes in Counterproductive, Langford finds that using certain apps can in fact make

her feel less isolated in her experience, and more validated in her choice to work (although you could argue that is another issue). She explains: “I can have the sense of—okay, I’m working right now.” For school, Langford uses something different however. She finds time tracking apps, like TomatoTimer (which uses the Pomodoro technique) effective, though she tends to delete the apps once exams are over. “I have found these helpful especially for certain types of school work where I have to memorize things or where I’m not as interested in the subject,” she says. Of course, there is only so much tracking and productivity one person can handle, and Langford dislikes the sounds and visuals of apps like TomatoTimer—“it makes me feel like I’m at a basketball game,” she says. “If I don’t sink the shot as the buzzer goes off, it’s like I’ve let my fans down.” Many of us tend to feel guilty when we aren’t constantly producing, and it can be hard to remember that even if we don’t manage to check something off a list, it doesn’t mean we weren’t productive. “Productivity and focus don’t always look high intensity, hunched over a piece of paper, writing madly,” Langford points out. Reading this last insight, I arch my back in a stretch of defiance. Breaks are good. Five cups of coffee? Maybe not, but I boil some water anyways. My own flirtations with productivity and tracking are fraught. In recent years I’ve noticed a trend—it seems every time I make a commitment to following a religious schedule, I end up sick or injured, despite the illusion of productivity at the beginning. I realize that while there may be a societal push to produce, our relationship with these apps is often heavily

dependant on our existing relationship with work. These are not problems created by apps, but perhaps exacerbated by them, especially without proper boundaries, and with an inability to say no. As much as we complain about work, it can also inform a sense of identity. Some people thrive off of the pressure. While many of us complain about the tasks on our todo lists, sacrificing something seems out of the question. We have an obsession with being busy, even when our bodies and minds ache with the consequences (just the way my own body will ache when I, ahem, hopefully, finish my first 50 mile trail running race tomorrow. I tell myself it’s just therapeutic to run for that long). “It’s important to waste time, to be bored and to get lost,” insights McLeod, and he’s right. While checking off the never ending todo list is necessary, sometimes such perpetual business does not always lend itself well to creative pursuits or innovation. "Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets," writes essayist Tim Kreider in The New York Times. "The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration— it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done." As I finish this article, my automated playlist gives me the final push I need to finally check this off my list. Alanis Morisettte croons in the background: “Isn’t it ironic?”

FEATURES

No Country for Young Workers A Note On Sick Days SARAH ROSE Features Editor EMMA HARRIS Illustrator

The water concentration inside a fish is higher than in the ocean itself. A frilled shark thrives underneath enough pressure to crush a car. There are many kinds of habitats, and some are less tangible than others. Adaptation is the only rule for denizens of a hostile ecosystem thousands of feet below the surface. Humans are not omitted from the need for a suitable habitat. In a way, these feel like rules. If you break down the arbitrary border between what we think of as nature and what is subjectively categorized as human space, a lot of the rules fall apart. Why should those who get sick be left behind, or why do we have such banal and pervasive policies around sick notes? Remember: Just because you can’t see the predators—the bosses—doesn’t mean they aren’t there. And if they are, they’re probably exploiting you. That is in fact the rule of natural selection. In the gig economy under capitalism, that is. The knowledge economy is the fastest growing segment of the freelance world as reported by McKinsey. According to a study of 65 gig workers by the Harvard Business Review, it takes an equilibrium of four separate rules to cobble together a relatively suitable habitat for the 60 percent of millennials and Gen-Z’s occupying this market. Those rules being: environment, routine, purpose and community. The knowledge economy is oft freighted with so much risk that it could be a scene lifted directly from No Country for Old Men. Gig workers, independent consultants and artists ride a precarious coin toss of produce or perish. Not just financially and physically, but also existentially in the agonizing weight attached to the price tag of “freedom.” Grinding the roulette wheel alone means there’s no managers, reliable income from an employer on a payroll or corporate health benefits⁠—leaving many to simply drown. “There’s no arriving, that’s a myth,” one anonymous

artist wrote, “you become your work.” DoorDash recently showed what this looks like when they took a page directly from classic restaurant parlance by paying workers in tipped wages. DoorDash drivers never saw those tips, they got a static flat rate until the recent outrage prompted a shift. All tipped wage ecosystems mean is the harder someone works, the less predatory bosses have to worry about paying workers themselves. In gig work, productivity is seen as a kind of antidote to instability. Gig platforms promised to flip everything we knew about work on its head. What it really meant was that in altering the definition of employee, they could get away with not paying for anyone’s healthcare or sick days. For those floundering in the gig network, a few sick days can cost more than just rent or food, but their job itself. There’s no incentive to hire a sick temp worker when there’s a cache of other healthier ones in the primordial soup to fill the spot. Even employees who aren’t temp or gig workers face an offensive lack of security. “I would be crucified for calling into work sick,” said Jessica Jeanson, an employee at a local grocery store where the laissez-faire rules of her environment act more like a noose. “There's no official policy on anything. They just make it up as they go along and write you up if they feel like it,” she said. “I’m a wreck at this place and it’s been the best job I’ve had up to this point.” Like cities and economies, habitats are built over time by responding and incorporating the implicit messages received from the community. It often begins in the classroom, where the message is repeated year after year that perfect attendance is something to achieve, and not just a shared delusion. Getting sick isn’t a matter of personal constitution, it’s something we have virtually no control over. These attitudes reward people for being healthy and punish those who do get sick or have disabilities, which begets

the evolution into an ideological position that school and work come before ones’ own physical and mental wellbeing. It creates a disparate environment, as if we should all be able to perform under the kind of pressure of a frilled shark at five-thousand feet below the sea. Congruent with the Harvard Business Review’s finding that the most successful environments were those designed like shelters to protect workers from outside pressures and distractions. One freelance writer in the study describes the necessity of environment as: “people fail because they don’t create the space and time to do whatever it is they need to do.” For those with chronic conditions and disabilities, those kinds of expectations will ubiquitously be beyond reach no matter how dedicated they are. The kind of delusional meritocracy surrounding perfect attendance also neglects those who are forced to live in hostile or even desolate environments such as lacking fixed residency or facing economic hardship. Doctors such as Dr. Anton Rabien often resent being asked to write doctors notes at all. “Many employers demand sick notes indiscriminately—basically using them as a blunt instrument to combat absenteeism,” said Rabien. His sentiment is echoed by the Canadian Medical Association, where form-filling including sick notes represents “significant administrative burden” on doctors. “Asking employees with self-limited viral illnesses (particularly colds and flus) to go to the doctor for sick notes is a terrible policy,” Rabien said. “It unnecessarily exposes others to potentially contagious illnesses.” In post-secondary institutions, the prevalence of fake doctors’ notes is shockingly high. Those faking doctors’ notes are (on a surface level Reddit browse) not simply slackers looking to scam the system. They’re students who are severely ill, those who can’t pay a fee of anywhere between $20 to $50 for a note, or those who don’t believe their malady—especially mental health concerns—are valid enough for a note. One Reddit user and former call center employee writes, “I was once told I needed to get a doctor's note if I spent more than 12 minutes a month in the bathroom.” The physical price of a note is how convincingly one can produce the receipts for illness, but the intangible cost is far greater. An anonymous Dr. W describes that his office (and most general practices) don’t charge fixed rates for notes since there is no official policy on the matter. “I don’t generalize,” he said, “those I think that are scamming, I charge more for.”

The inherent problem in asking doctors to act as gatekeepers of behaviour is it creates a climate rife for bias. If you’re a woman, you’re more likely to be perceived as faking it regardless. Nowhere is this more evident than when it comes to gynecological conditions such as endometriosis. One it ten women suffer from the extraordinarily painful chronic disease, but it takes an average of seven years to be diagnosed. Many citing a primary reason being the doctor’s refusal to believe that they were really in pain, not simply faking it. A study published in The New England Journal of Medicine found that women are seven times more likely to be misdiagnosed and discharged in the middle of having a heart attack. Yet even at institutions with no-note policies such as the University of Alberta, the use of sick notes continues. When, even according to the NLMA, doctors’ notes serve no purpose except to inconvenience the student as well as the doctor. Dr. Rabien echoed this sentiment, “if educational institutions are going to have sick note policies, then they also have the obligation to ensure that their students have timely access to medical services. You can’t pack thousands of young people into shared accommodations, schedule exams during flu season, and expect them all to remain healthy,” said Rabien. There’s also an inverse relationship to the burden being placed on doctors. A 2016 study published in Annals of Internal Medicine found that for every hour physicians were seeing patients, they were spending nearly two additional hours on paperwork such as filling out doctors’ notes. This is particularly evident for mental health concerns, where recent studies by the NHS implicate issues like stress, anxiety and depression as the number one reason for notes. It’s not surprising when depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide according to the World Health Organization. Dr. W explains how languishing it can be to see mental health cases in general practice, “it takes up all your time, multiple facets have to be explored,” he says, although his tone jarringly shifts to add: “people want everything for nothing, they don’t work as hard.” Which sounds half nonsense, half banality from the previous sentiment. It runs contradictory to the fact that while methods of exploitation have changed, the predatory determination to cut costs and increase performance at the cost of worker wellbeing has not. Most worryingly, he believes what he’s saying. In this climate that sort of authenticity carries weight, even if what’s

being said is misguided. “I do not trust medical notes,” Professor Frances Woolley wrote for The Globe and Mail. “When I see one, I do not know if the student is ill, or simply ill-prepared. I do not trust medical notes because I do not trust physicians to act as gatekeepers,” said Woolley. There are plenty of creatures with eyes powerful enough to see colours that don’t exist to the human eye. Good luck asking them to survive anywhere that we do, because they migrate (as all things do) when the habitat is no longer survivable. A human is just a coral reef shaped extension of microscopic marvels, teeming with enough biodiversity that there are fewer human cells than those of the creatures who create the habitat we call ‘you’. What’s the point in naming them, or saying they don’t work hard enough when they’re perfectly adapted to an environment as deadly to humans as the surface of the sun? The bottom line is those rules just make it easier for someone else— that someone rarely ever being the student or employee. In post-secondary institutions Woolley suggested more frequent, lower-stakes assignments and tracking deferrals. Asking for doctors’ notes should be reserved as a last resort and for those chronically taking time off. “Educational institutions need to stop asking doctors to police student behaviour,” Woolley wrote. The UK has already taken strides to combat the rampant predation of the gig economy in a review by Theresa May for paid time off and sick leave. The reality is as much as a third of workers find themselves doing gig work. Not just for smaller startups like DoorDash and Uber, but companies like Google where 50 percent of the workforce is comprised of temporary and contract workers. The Justice for Foodora Couriers group is currently seeking to unionize to bargain for things like basic employee benefits, such as sick days, better pay and employment insurance. It’s a landmark decision that would shift the definition from independent contractor to dependent contractor, the middle ground between full-time employee providing the environmental protections while maintaining the flexibility of gig work. The truth is there is always an adaptation to be made, or an alternative to the status quo. It begins with honoring others’ happiness before our comfort, respecting the value of truth, and recognizing not everything is there for your convenience.

SPECIAL FEATURE

Mise En Place:

The day food became more than just food

CARLO JAVIER Columnist

“Take me to that special place where everything is beautiful and nothing hurts,” - Anthony Bourdain. The ambience is familiar. Loud motor tricycles, colourful Jeepneys, and rickshaws roam the streets with little regard for pedestrians. Chinese-inspired red lanterns adorn shop ceilings, and vendors with fresh produce and onsite mobile kitchens populate the streets and alleyways. This is Binondo, an area of Manila, Philippines that Spanish colonizers established in 1594 as settlement for Chinese migrants who had converted to Catholicism. Today, Binondo still stands as the world’s oldest Chinatown. Many of the vendors sell deep fried squid balls. Some sell local delicacies like battered quail eggs, grilled pork and chicken intestines, or betamax–grilled coagulated pork blood. Some sell taho, a sweet tofu pudding mixed with tapioca pearls that many Filipinos eat with breakfast. There’s Ivan, a tour guide wearing a simple tee-shirt with the word “Adobo” printed square across his chest. He’s quite tall for a Filipino, but Anthony Bourdain’s lanky 6 foot 4 frame comfortably towers over him. Bourdain’s vibrant floral shirt would make him stand out in almost any environment, but he doesn’t need aid to draw attention to himself amid the bustling crowd of a busy Philippine city. For the uninitiated, Bourdain is somewhat of a culinary demigod. One whose legacy easily exceeds most household celebrity chefs. If only because, for Bourdain, food was never really just food. As many read in his best-selling books or saw from his television shows like A Cook’s Tour, No Reservations, or Parts Unknown, for Bourdain, food was life. I spent my own childhood just hours away from historic Binondo. Seeing it through a YouTube copy of the No Reservations episode doesn’t spark much recollection from my nascent days. Instead, the wave of nostalgia brings back fragmented memories from my teenage years when I first began to cook, and the first time I watched Bourdain visit the Philippines. In retrospect, initializing his inaugural Philippine adventure in Chinatown may seem misguided, but by the end of the near hour-long episode, Bourdain had made his 46

way to Pampanga and even further south to Cebu. He had tried and devoured Filipino classics like Adobo, Sinigang, and Sisig. Sometime later, he would even proclaim the Filipino Lechon to be the best pig roast he’d ever had. I started cooking a little over 10 years ago. I was in my Grade 7 Home Economics class and the teacher made us fry eggs. I did it well and from there, I very slowly and steadily made my way around the kitchen. I started with breakfast; frying eggs, sausages and bacon seemed intuitive. Eventually, I started making sinangag–a Filipino dish of garlic fried rice. It was a simple enough recipe that involved day-old cooked white rice, several cloves of garlic, salt, pepper and some oil. I was proud of my fried rice. YouTube changed culinary education with its mass production of cooking tutorials. I learned how to roast and carve a whole bird, how to pan sear any cut of steak to perfection, how to make different varieties of mac and cheese, and even build and cook a complex beef wellington. It might be insulting to the millions of people who learn to cook in culinary schools, but I really did learn how to cook, and cook well, from YouTube. Then I saw that No Reservations episode set in the Philippines and I realized a fatal flaw with my kitchen adventures: outside of my fried rice, I only knew how to cook western cuisine. It seems ironic that a white American man with a French last name would be the indirect motivation for a Filipino like me to learn and connect with my own culture’s cuisine. I’ve been eating Filipino food my entire life, but it wasn’t until No Reservations that I consciously decided to learn not just the methods, but also the stories behind each dish, the meaning behind why something is what it is. Take for example the sisig. Arguably the most beloved dish across the Filipino Diaspora, sisig is simply chopped parts of a pig’s head–jowl, ears, cheeks–mixed with onions, chili peppers, and lemons. It’s often served hot on a sizzling plate, alongside alcohol. But behind the dish is a story of colonialism and about making the most out of what was given. It is commonly accepted that sisig was born after American soldiers

either sold, or gave away unwanted pig heads to locals, taking the conventional cuts of pork back to the army bases. Having only the heads to work with, Lucia Cunanan, a local restaurateur made the most out of what they had. Every day, a colleague of mine eats the same cauliflower rice and baked salmon dish for lunch and/or dinner. It’s a seemingly monotonous repetition that I’ve grown to admire. As someone who prefers the luxury of variety, seeing another person maintain an incredible level of dedication to a strict diet can be a source of both confusion and inspiration. One day, I asked this colleague how they did it. How do they manage to eat the same thing, multiple times a day, every day? Their answer was so simple, but baffling all the same: “It’s just calories, man.” Food isn’t political, it shouldn’t be, but as much as food may be full of precise quantities of nutrients and calories that we like to count, food is also filled with meaning. In another episode of No Reservations, Bourdain visits Kerala, India and interviews Mammootty, a Malayalam movie star. The two meet at the set of Mammootty’s film, Pokkiri Raja, where they congregate in the compact, yet cozy space of the movie star’s trailer. As their meal is served, the two partake in a quick, but profound exchange that still resonates with me to this day: “You need a spoon?” Mammootty asked his guest. “How are you doing it?” Bourdain replied. “I use my hand.” “Then I will also. I’m learning, I’m not so good, but I’m learning.” It is the very thesis of the Bourdain experience, and a simple, yet powerful reminder about the meaning behind the meals we often take for granted. Food is both the gateway and the gatekeeper. It is the most universal of all universal languages and much of the values and virtues we uphold as people can really be applied to the principles and philosophies of cooking. With this column, I hope to share the little life lessons I’ve picked up while finding my way in the kitchen.

QUEER AND NOW:

Euphoria is the Representation the LGBTQ+ Community Deserves ASHLEIGH BRINK She Doesn't Even Go Here

Storytelling is one of our most fundamental and powerful methods of communication. No matter the medium, whether it is a song, a show, a movie, a book— it can convey almost any message or emotion. More importantly, it provides a window into another world—somebody else’s world. With the globe growing ever more distant, and hatred seemingly on the rise, these glimpses into different experiences are increasingly important. But as important as it is to learn about others’ lives, it is even more important to see stories similar to your own being told. For those who grew up seeing characters just like themselves in movies, books and plays, and hearing themselves in the music they listen to, this may not seem like a big deal. But for those who didn’t, like many in the LGBTQ+ community, the recent surge in honest representation is extremely meaningful. For much of modern history, especially in Western society, the only stories that have had a real platform were those of straight white men. Oftentimes gay men and women were reduced to nothing more than token characters. Background filler. Always told through the lens of somebody else. Or worse, used as a punchline. Only in the past 20 years or so have we started truly hearing from other voices, such as POC, women and LGBTQ+ individuals. The recent HBO show Euphoria is on the cutting edge. It is a quintessential example of powerful, accurate representation in current popular media. While at first glance it may appear to be just another vapid teen drama, nothing more than HBO’s attempt to join the myriad of shows that are style over substance, it is so, so much more. Euphoria is undoubtedly an aesthetic masterpiece. It is filled with breathtaking cinematography,

amazing costume design (excuse me while I try and inevitably fail to do some of those gorgeous makeup looks), and one of the most pitch perfect soundtracks I have ever heard. Cumulatively, it is stunning work, capable of evoking an emotional response from its surface alone. Unlike many other shows in its genre, Euphoria holds up when you peel back the pretty, Instagram-worthy exterior. It is a raw, very honest story that addresses a lot of delicate and downright dark subject matter. And it’s the way it handles those subjects— with brutal honesty—that makes it such a compelling show. From the very beginning of the first episode, Euphoria doesn’t pull any punches. While the explicit content may feel gratuitous to some, it is still an unapologetically real story. In particular, it examines how the internet has deeply impacted this generation’s adolescence. Featuring violence, drugs, sex, nudity, toxic masculinity, struggles with mental health, and relationships, among other things, Euphoria hits just about every major trigger point that young people today can encounter. The show takes it all in stride, always tries to tell an authentic story, no matter how unglamorous it may be. It refuses to gloss over the ugly sides of life just to keep the audience comfortable within their own ideas of adolescence. Most importantly however, Euphoria is a pinnacle of positive LGBTQ+ representation. Even those appalled by its graphic nature cannot deny it paints a deeply authentic picture of queer people in a way that many shows have been unable to capture. One of the main romantic plots is a love story between two girls, Rue (Zendaya) and Jules (Hunter Schafer), and it’s presented as just that, a love story. Euphoria also handles

the character’s sexualities extremely well. This is mostly rooted in the show’s notable lack of labels. They are not mentioned once. And as such, the characters are never boxed into stereotypes—they are allowed to just be. The characters have space to develop and be themselves. Perhaps the most impressive thing, though, is the handling of the character Jules. Her transness is not the focus and entirety of who she is, but one aspect of her identity. That, along with casting Hunter Schafer, a transgender woman herself, to play her, makes for an extremely humanizing character. Perhaps the biggest reason that Euphoria’s LGBTQ+ characters feel authentic in all the right ways is due to the show creator, Sam Levinson. He took the radical (yes, radical) step of actually listening to LGBTQ+ people, really hearing their experiences, and subsequently bringing that to the characters. This is in stark contrast to many characters we see in popular media, where it’s men trying to tell women’s stories, white people attempting to tell POC’s stories, and of course, straight people trying to tell LGBTQ+ people’s stories. We’re inundated with them. And frankly, it’s condescending, and always misses the mark. The show is not without its missteps. Some of the storyline can admittedly feel exaggerated with just the sheer breadth of what happens in eight relatively short episodes. But most of the backlash seems to be from older generations who would rather sweep anything different or difficult under the rug. At its core, Euphoria’s handling of hard subject matter and authentic portrayals are what make it so human. And it’s these very human stories that need to be told.

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DEVIANT BEAUTY: Tackling the 'Stache

ANA MARIA CAICEDO Arts & Culture Editor

It’s a process I’ve been repeating for as long as I can remember. The first time I did it, I was about 10. My dad took me to a salon where I laid on a long, green leather chair tucked in the back, but still visible to all the other customers. I wished they couldn’t see me and I felt a bit exposed, but said nothing. Above me, a woman approached with a wooden spatula of wax, and slathered it from the side of my lip to the middle, placing a cloth strip over the wax as it cooled. She tugged a little at the edge of the strip, and then: pain. My eyes began to tear up, but my mind was focused on being as outwardly calm as possible. I felt warm tears stream down my cheeks. When she finished, I sat up and took hold of the mirror she handed me. My upper lip was raw and red, but most importantly: totally hairless. I felt my anxiety melt away. Thank God, I was a normal girl again. As a child, waxing was my way out of being ridiculed. If there’s no hair on my upper lip, there’s no hair to make fun of. It was a ritual that I dreaded but nonetheless never avoided, because it was how I returned to girlhood. I’m 24 now, which means I’ve been removing the hair on my upper lip for 14 years. I’ve got a whole routine figured out: wax, then bleach when hairs start to come in again. I keep bleaching every other day until the hairs are long enough to wax again. It’s a three-week cycle that’s become secondnature to me. When I was about 18, a blonde friend quietly revealed to me that she shaves her facial hair. “Honestly, just shave it,” I remember her telling me. I felt a pang of anger. Of course you can shave your facial hair, I thought, you’re white and blonde. No one can tell when your stubble grows back. I’m not sure exactly how, but during my early twenties I started to shed some of the anxiety that comes with exposing my body hair. I had never really cared about the thin lining of dark hair on my arms. In the summers, I couldn’t be bothered with shaving the hair on my thighs. I brushed off the comments and stares when I wore bikinis and didn't have the time to shave my pubic

hair before. During the winters, I stopped shaving my legs. I let my prickly calves peek out from cut-off jeans and couldn’t care less about it. I can honestly say I whole-heartedly enjoy shaping my eyebrows. It seemed my moustache was the last frontier for me, the one last hairy place on my body I was not ready or willing to sacrifice for my feminist cause. A few weeks ago, a blonde coworker revealed to me that she shaves her facial hair. This time though, I wasn’t angry with envy. I quietly typed into the Google search bar at my work, “Can you shave your facial hair?” An Allure magazine article titled, “Yes Ladies, You Can Just Shave Your Moustache” popped up. My eyes raced through the words while my history with upper lip hair removal—the time, the money spent, the pain—flashed through my mind. I opened a new tab and did another search, “If you shave your facial hair does it grow back thicker?” Again, I skimmed and scanned through the words and found the same answer repeated again and again. That night, I took the mini razor I had been using to clean up my eyebrows, slathered on some face lotion, and thought, fuck it. I did it again the next morning, and the morning after that. Since that evening, the longest I’ve gone without shaving my moustache is two days. The result? I can see why people think their hair grows back thicker after shaving it, especially women of colour with dark hair. The hair cuticles are definitely more pronounced than after having it waxed. But honestly, there’s barely a difference. My ‘stache hair grows back within two days after a wax anyway, so my choices are a day without a trace of a moustache before resetting my three-week cycle, or a faint outline of hair cuticles every day (and no, I can’t afford laser). I wanted to grow it out over a week to know and include how it turned out here, but I’m sorry to confess, dear reader, that I wasn’t able to. Why? I’ve had a lifetime to accustom myself to reactions of disgust from people when they are confronted with female body hair.

A few months ago, my brother told me my moustache was not that bad until he leaned in closer to look and shrieked out, “EWWWW!” Last fall, I was with a professor editing an article when I mentioned an interviewee’s armpit hair. The professor, out of nowhere, started recounting his childhood (female) tennis teacher’s armpit hair and how disgusted he was by it. Just a couple of days ago, I was having lunch with my coworkers and I mentioned how I don’t like wearing leggings because my legs get itchy. “Maybe you should shave then,” one of them joked (my legs, by the way, were shaven at the time). The whole world seems dead-set on the belief that body hair on a woman is unnatural, unfeminine, gross. I’m not mentioning these moments because I want to put those people on blast. I’m mentioning them because I think it’s important to acknowledge the scope and pervasiveness of this disgust for hair that grows, and will continue to grow, on every woman’s body. This disgust is so much more than a reaction to a body that falls outside the hyperfeminine, infantile and Eurocentric mould of normative female-ness. It is a reiteration of the belief that women need to exist within this norm—women need to be attractive—in order to be afforded humanity. At that same lunch with my coworkers (after my typically hairy legs were roasted) another co-worker, who often doesn’t shave hers, became the butt of the joke. I probed at my coworkers, “So what, who cares if she doesn’t wanna shave her legs?” “I’m just concerned her husband won’t be able to tell what gender she is anymore,” my manager giggled. That’s really what it’s about, isn’t it? Our notions of what it means to be a woman are rooted and seeped within that norm, within that belief. You let your body hair grow out, you’re no longer a woman.

If I were to grow out my moustache hair, I know what I’d be losing. I’d be losing the power that comes with inhabiting a body that fits comfortably within normative femininity; I’d be losing the power of being a pretty woman. And with that, I’d be losing my claim to being a woman. I’d be losing my humanity, or at least the humanity afforded to me by others. I’ve heard trans women speak on

this societal requirement of existing within normative femininity to exist as a woman at all. I’m only just coming to understand my place within it now, how I benefit and suffer from it, and how afraid I am of existing outside of it. It’s too easy to shrug off the feminist predicament of hair removal as a personal choice. How can you be what you can’t

see? How can I demand the greater world to accept women as people in whatever hairy body they occupy, when I can’t even be brave enough to ask the same of the people around me?

TURNING BLUE:

My Journey to Capilano University Women’s Soccer BROOKLYN DOUCETTE Columnist

Currently, I’m on my fifth-year as a midfield/ forward on the Capilano University Women’s Soccer team. Although, my journey to becoming a varsity athlete has been unconventional. When I was in high school, Capilano University wasn’t even on my radar. I had hoped to play at schools like the University of Victoria, Simon Fraser University and even some universities in Ontario. It wasn’t until I was faced with a major roadblock that I had to re-evaluate my options. In 2015, I tore my right ACL (Anterior Cruciate Ligament) during practice with my BCSPL (BC Soccer Premier League) soccer team. This injury is common for female soccer players, and many of my past and current teammates have had to go through knee surgery to repair it. Unfortunately, an ACL tear requires invasive surgery and takes approximately a year of recovery before being admitted back into sport. Having this injury in my senior year of high school meant that I wouldn’t be able to play university soccer for an entire season. This was a devastating realization. To top it off, like my ability to play, interest from all the big schools I was hoping to attend came to a sudden halt. No one wanted to sign a player with a torn ACL. Then, an opportunity at Capilano University became available when the head coach of my BCSPL team became the new head coach of the Capilano Blues Women’s Soccer team. I decided that it would be the best fit for me to attend Cap where I could

undergo my rehab close to home while spending time bonding with the team until I was fully ready to play again. Thus, my journey as a Capilano Blue began. In my first two years on the Capilano Women’s Soccer team I was primarily focused on rebuilding my knee. I wasn’t able to play my freshman year, so it wasn’t until 2016 that I played my first game as a Capilano Blue. The first year at Cap was difficult because I was facing a sense of ostracization. I wasn’t technically on the team roster, but I was still attending all of the games and most of the practices. I was in this weird in-between position, and it made me feel very alone. Once I was fully recovered from my injury and entering my second year, I finally began to feel like I was part of the team. I made new friends, and got to play in my first soccer game since high school. In 2016, our team won the bronze medal in the PACWest finals. It wasn’t until my third and fourth years at Capilano that I started to really excel. I was able to find my groove on the soccer field, and I had completely overcome my injury. I was awarded the Scholar Athlete of the Year Award for both the 2017 and 2018 seasons, and I also won several other academic and athletic awards. For the 2018 season, I was named a PACWest All-Star and became a CCAA Academic All Canadian Award Winner. In both 2017 and 2018, the Blues Women’s Soccer team finished with silver medals. Even though I’m disappointed that we haven’t been able to clench that first-

place title, I’m proud of all that we have accomplished as a team and individually as student-athletes. As I begin my fifth and final year at Capilano, I can reflect on how much this school and the entire Women’s Soccer program has impacted my university experience. I could have stuck with my original plan to play at a bigger university, but I probably wouldn’t have gotten much playing time. In fact, all of the girls that I played BCSPL soccer with that did attend large universities for soccer, no longer play at all. Since being a Capilano Blue, my teammates have turned into lifelong friends. I’ve been lucky enough to compete against other great players and grow as an athlete. I’ve challenged myself to be better and have worked to improve every year. I’ve grown as an athlete and as a student over the last four years. I went from being an injured player to a league All-Star. To finally complete my university career, I hope to help my team win first place in the league and earn a trip to Nationals. Although my soccer journey took me through roadblocks and turmoil, I’m extremely grateful to have ended up at Capilano. I hope that as I move on from the Capilano Women’s Soccer team, that the program continues to allow players to live out their dreams as successful varsity athletes.

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DIRECTION UNKNOWN No Path? No Problem

ELIZABETH SCOTT Columnist

Weird and wonderful things can happen when you’re without a plan. I graduated with a degree in communications, no design experience and no idea what to do with my life. Somehow, I still landed on two feet (okay, by “landed” I may just mean that it was more of a fumble followed by a faceplant) as a designer with a newfound sense of direction. Growing up, I never really had a “dream” job that felt viable. I ditched the idea of becoming a rockstar after I discovered the commitment involved in learning an instrument. I was never able to conceptualize a clear idea of the “right” career path. Instead, I existed in a perpetual state of panic stemmed from not knowing those things. Being wildly lost and feeling directionless may not have been so overwhelming if there wasn’t an expectation for us to know what we want to do with our lives from a young age. We’re constantly bombarded with questions about what we want to be as if we’re meant to have a fully-formed idea of a suitable career, and a clearly-defined path that leads us there. We’re expected to be like a slingshot — shooting straight from high school to postsecondary and into a job that relates to our studies, never straying from course. Fuck that. I felt more like shrapnel from an explosion— pieces of myself flying in every direction with no one clear path, just a million vague possibilities. Everything sparked curiosity, but nothing presented itself as being a suitable career path for me (perhaps it was my hindering self-doubt that got in the way). In high school, I thought I’d become an artist or a photographer — painting portraits or snapping street style photos in New York City. But I felt a certain pressure to shift my focus towards more “practical” endeavors. (The joke’s on you, societal and family pressures! I’m a fucking artist now anyway. Sort of.) My response to those irritating “What are you going to do with your life” questions

became a subconscious routine: visible panic and an uncomfortable pause, followed by a slow and solemn “I don’t know”. The undeniable disappointment and mutual discomfort in those moments were painful for everybody. If I was the edgy young girl I liked to believe I was, I’d have responded with what I wished to say: “Shut up, Brenda. Of course I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. I’m fucking twelve.” I probably could have offered a phony response aimed to impress: a doctor, a lawyer, Elon Musk! But the truth is, I really had no fucking idea and even the pressure of conjuring a fake answer caused me to panic. My lostness and career-path complex followed me throughout university. That’s probably why my wayward postsecondary journey ended with a mash of fashion credentials, marketing certificates, a bachelor's degree in communications and varying stints at five different institutions. Even after graduating from Capilano, I was overcome by indecisiveness and the feeling that I was the only person who still hadn’t figured out exactly what it was that they were meant to be moving towards. Don’t confuse my indecision for a lack of motivation. I was still headed somewhere. My career path was just on a totally unknown trajectory, causing an unsteady balance between thrill and terror. Despite my lack of direction, I searched for jobs that I thought had the potential to evolve into a “dream job.” I applied for roles I believed were conventional routes after a communications degree: public relations, social media management, marketing, etc. It was being blindly catapulted into the real world after graduation that allowed me to stumble awkwardly and ungracefully into a career in design. No design experience, no design education (aside from a few brief interactions with Adobe Creative Suite), and no design portfolio. I wasn’t going to question the decision to hire me (not out loud, at least). I was going to pretend like I belonged there and suppress the imposter

syndrome until it disappeared. Update: it's still here, and I’m still suppressing. How the fuck did I land on an actual career path as a designer after being directionally challenged for years? It was an unintentional victory, a happy accident and the moment I discovered two things: 1) that “fake it till you make it” was more than just an irritating rhyme — it was actually pretty solid advice, and 2) that being lost and without a plan is totally okay and panicking for six years was probably unnecessary. Full disclosure: I landed a marketing role at a digital marketing agency first, peeped on the design team from afar, and discovered that’s where I wanted to be. Then, I somehow convinced them to hire me when an opening became available. The third discovery here: ask for what you want because you may just get it. I quickly learned the design tools of the job that I may have bluffed about knowing prior to being hired (fake it till you make it, baby!) and took online courses to get up to speed. I still experience major imposter syndrome working on a team of designers who all pursued post-secondary education in design knowing early on that it was their calling. I also still feel like shrapnel, in that a thousand other things capture my curiosity. I aim to try many, following a non-linear career path and evolving into a multidisciplinary bad-ass. The point of all this is to say that being lost leads to the most unexpected endeavours, which can be far more fun than the planned ones. Fuck the expectation that we need to have a dream job figured out. Fuck the idea of a destined or a “right” career path. And finally, fuck the notion that our post-secondary education only launches us into a narrow window of relative career opportunities. Weird things happen when you stray from the path, and weirder things happen when you don’t have a path to begin with.

I Can Code You the World: Anatomy of a Lesson

NIMA BOSCARINO Columnist

For the past couple of years, I've immersed myself in the world of technology education, and in this column, I'll explore some of the different techniques that I've learned through teaching people to code. I've had the opportunity to teach people of all ages from across North America, and those experiences have given me a hearty appreciation for the work that teachers do. In this Column, I'll be your guide on lesson planning. In other words, how do you put together a presentation? There isn't exactly a "format" on creating an effective lecture or presentation, but with a few motivators and key components, they become much easier to whip together. Whether you're delivering a math lesson, teaching kids to code, or showing a relative the basics of using a new piece of technology, it helps to start with considering why itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s important to give the presentation. For me, it's simple: get people excited, introduce a small number of new ideas, and clarify some points that your audience may already be familiar with. Don't worry too much about teaching "new things". Sounds crazy, right? The truth is, presentations aren't that mission critical. People will forget the vast majority of the things that you've gone over, but they will remember how you make them feel. I find that the most valuable way I can use my energy during a presentation is to interact directly with the audience by inviting them to participate or by inviting and answering questions. It may seem obvious but the first thing you should do when you start a lecture is introduce yourself. Often when people are nervous, they tend to zoom through their introduction and dive right into the topic of the presentation. Depending on the context, you may want to spend a considerable amount of time letting the audience know a bit about yourself, your credentials and what your background is. Regardless of the length of your presentation, chances are there are only two

or three crucial points that the audience needs to take away. After my introduction, I like to give a brief outline of these items, and make a point of circling back to the same phrases during the presentation to highlight them. It's unrealistic to expect your audience to pay you their full attention for the entire presentation, so it's good to get the audience members acquainted with the key ideas before they drift off. It can be difficult for people listening to stay focused during presentations without being intellectually or emotionally invested. One of the ways to circumvent this is to frame the "meat" of your presentation as a solution to a problem. Generally, I tend to "motivate" by making the problem statement clear and encouraging my audience to engage with me to solve the problem. This is a great time to get silly and brainstorm with your audience to come up with all kinds of crazy and inventive ideas! If you have access to a whiteboard or a projector, take notes while audience members contribute their ideas. This gives everyone a sense of ownership of the presentation, and a general sense of progression to the lecture. Eventually, I like to use the motivation Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve created to solve the problem to launch into the "theory" of my presentation. This is usually a rephrased version of the topics that I'd outlined at the beginning, strung together with more detail and potentially more technical language. It can be helpful to view your presentation through the paradigm of "constructivism". Constructivism is a theory of learning that is centered on the idea that learners "construct" new knowledge by building on their own prior understanding. The basic tenet is this: you can't just tell people something and expect them to learn it. People need to engage with the material to build up new knowledge. A learner's understanding of a concept is going to be unique and personal

(in fact, all knowledge is seen as unique and personal), and I've found it remarkably effective to give learners an opportunity to be involved in the experience of the presentation. So, to deliver the content that you're trying to teach, you can lean on the audience to guide you through the learning path by asking good probing questions that should motivate people to try to discover the solutions themselves. Your role as a presenter or teacher should then be to course-correct, clarify, and expand on what the learners have vocalized. If the context of the presentation doesn't allow for audience engagement, that's unfortunate! The most effective thing to do in that case is to pose questions that are interesting enough to influence audience members to explore the subject on their own. At the end of your demonstration, remember to briefly recap what you have covered. Some people may have stopped paying attention at this point, so it's fun to do something a little wild or quirky to get people quickly re-engaged before letting them go. My main point is that anyone can teach! As long as you stick to a basic structure of motivation, brainstorming, solution, and recap, I've found that teaching can be an enjoyable and straightforward experience. Interestingly, this works just as well on an individual basis as it does with large groups. To craft a good lesson, there is also something to be said for putting yourself in the learner's shoes with an empathetic lens, but that's something we'll explore some other time.

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Horoscopes Virgo Aug. 24 - Sept. 23 Your sign is the virgin for a reason. This year isn’t going to be any different for you. scorpio Oct. 24 - Nov. 22 Your moon rising will tell you to hone in on your deep rooted emotions and connect with your surroundings. To you, this will just mean listening to Blink 182 and reconnecting with your stoner friends from high school. capricorn Dec. 22 - Jan. 20 Opt for more spandex this year. Structure is your forte but jeans make it harder to walk with a stick up your ass. pisces Feb. 20 - March 20 This month, the stars will align to tell you that your aesthetic isn’t artsy—it’s basic. taurus April 21 - May 21 That back-to-school haircut was a bad idea. cancer June 22 - July 23 Your natural instinct to nurture will come in handy when you’re holding your own hair back in the Seymour Pub’s bathroom after one too many lagers.

libra Sept. 24 - Oct. 23 Your parents told you that you’re a social butterfly to mask the fact that you have no friends. sagittarius Nov. 23 - Dec. 21 It’s time for you to fearlessly approach your dreams full-force and head-on. Get out there with the confidence to finally watch porn in a public washroom!

aquarius Jan. 21 - Feb. 19 As the water bearer, you think you’d shower more often. aries March 21 - April 20 We get it. You vape. gemini May 22 - June 21 Your friends are talking shit about you. Search through your group chats to find all the ammunition you need. leo July 24 - Aug. 23 You should really get tested.

SU DO KU Having some trouble?

CALENDAR FRI

sun

CIRCUS AFTER DARK

6-9 PM, The Beaumont Studios $35 Basically, this sounds like some thing you’d see in Gatsby’s backyard if he were less rich and more Vancouver. It’s an aerial circus held after dark in a courtyard where bringing cash is encouraged to tip the performers on stage. That sounds like stripping, old sport. (It’s not).

THE BC SPCA Paws for a Cause Walk 10 AM-3 PM, David Lam Park Fundraiser / Donations A cute little party that helps the cute little animals. Why not go? Have some beers at the Yellow Dog Brewing garden, visit some food trucks, and enjoy an all ages and dog friendly festival.

FRI

SUN

Friday the 13th All day

Whether or not you’re superstitious (or just a little stitious) this day sucks. Not only do people keep telling you what day it is, they feel excused for their shitty behaviour. If that’s not bad enough, or you were really hoping for a real event here, there’s also a football game at BC Place.

MorMor (19+)

6 PM doors, The Imperial $19.99 Toronto boy MorMor is playing Vancouver as part of the Westward Music Festival. I’m not sure if anyone cares about genre anymore, but if you do, MorMor is sure to bring a great night of iNdIE poP.

(September 3 – 30)

sat

BIKE THE NIGHT presented by MEC

6-9 PM, Sunset Beach Park (pre-party) & 10km ride Prices vary The Burrard Bridge and several city streets will be closed for this night ride/ dance party? I don’t know, it sounds like there’s a lot going on. Participants are encouraged to deck out their bikes with lights, and I must admit, that will look cool even if transit will be a nightmare because of it. stripping, old sport. (It’s not).

tues

Courier AGM + Board of Directors Election 12 PM, Maple 122 Free

Come hang out with us at our Annual General Meeting to ask us questions, eat some pizza and put your name in the ring to join our Board of Directors! It’s a sweet gig that looks even sweeter on a resume.

sat

Whitecaps Vs. Houstan Dynamo

7 PM, BC Place $16.44- $142.65 Even if you’re not a fan, watching soccer is a good time. Especially if you can eat hot dogs. Snacks really make or break any sporting event experience.

FRI

Western Canadian Foosball Championship 11:30 PM, 12 Kings Pub This event is exactly what it sounds like, and is brought to you by the fact that it’s hard to find events that are over a month away.

sat

fri

World Clean-up Day This is a world event that can be celebrated individually, but there will be small local clean-ups planned all over as the day approaches. Surfrider Foundation Vancouver currently has one planned for 11 AM-1 PM at Kitsilano Beach that you could join. You could also just not be that asshole that needs an official day in order to care about the world.

Art Social, Oil

7 PM, Liquid Amber Tattoo & Art Collective Free Admission The September edition of the Art Social hosted monthly at this Gastown tattoo studio will be featuring Oil, a series by Miranda Boire. It sounds pretty cool honestly, but I don’t know if they’ll let a little old calendar maker like me in.

sun

Word Vancouver 2019 Final Celebration

sun

Elton John, Farewell Yellow Brick Road 8 PM, Rogers Arena $65.50- $1,899 I’ve included this on the calendar for two reasons: to show you the price because, wow, and to share my conspiracy theory that Rocket Man was the most elaborate marketing strategy ever.

sat

Vancouver Etsy Made in Canada Market 10 AM-6 PM, Robson Square Free Admission Etsy is holding a nation-wide pop up market in cities all over Canada. Go check out Vancouver’s offerings to buy all the things you could make if you were just a little less busy and a little more talented.

All day, Vancouver Public Library Free Admission

This is the final celebration of a week-long reading and writing festival. What that means? I don’t know. There’s very little information on the event page. I’m assuming it will be a large circle of people sitting in folding chairs and reading independently.

CALE NDAR

MAH I KAU R

@mahithecreat0r 57

you are home Augmented Reality Mural Mural by Cynthia Tran Vo Augmented Reality done by the AR Program at Vancouver Film School

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Commissioned by the City of New Westminister Located in Downtown New Westminister Columbia & Mackenzie

is an autonomous, democratically-run student newspaper. Literary and visual submissions are welcomed. All submissions are subject to editing for brevity, taste and legality. The Capilano Courier will not publish material deemed by the collective to exhibit sexism, racism or homophobia. The views expressed by the contributing writers are not necessarily those of the Capilano Courier Publishing Society.

THE CAPILANO COURIER

e acknowledge that the work we do and the W institution we serve happens on the unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples, including the territories of Musqueam, Squamish, Stó:lō and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.

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