Incite Magazine - November 2008

incite Children’s TV The Credit Crisis MACouture

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University of Ottawa

Graduate studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences

It starts here.

Why choose the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Social Sciences for graduate studies? t

Funded research: second in Ontario and among the top 5 in Canada in research support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

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Financial support: over $18,000 a year for 4 to 5 years for doctoral students, and over $16,500 for master’s students.

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Bilingual environment: programs offered in English or in French, the choice is yours!

More than 240 professors and 19 graduate programs.

Why I chose the University of Ottawa: “I chose the University of Ottawa because Canada’s bilingualism matters to me and because the University of Ottawa provides attractive funding that lets students focus on their studies. The quality of teaching at the University of Ottawa is unparalleled. The Graduate School of Public and International Affairs stands out in this regard. Its professors are not only excellent academics, but also seasoned practitioners. They bring both theoretical and practical knowledge to the classroom. What’s more, they help students develop beyond the classroom by providing meaningful advice and opportunities to put passion into practice.”

Ian Anderson, master’s student Graduate School of Public and International Affairs

www.socialsciences.uOttawa.ca scsgrad@uOttawa.ca

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EDITORIAL

.S. Eliot said that April was the cruelest month— thanks for that, high school English—but I think November is surely the most difficult.

With apologies to those with November birthdays, the month truly has few things going for it, whether it’s the weather outside or the schoolwork to do while cooped up indoors. Perhaps we should just be thankful that it only lasts 30 days.

When waking up after a Halloween spent overindulging on candy and other sinful pleasures, we’re struck with a terrible reality—it’s now officially winter. There’s no way around it, and November introduces us to it all too abruptly. There may be a period of warmer weather, but it only seems to distract us from the cold, rainy weather that follows.

I grew up in Ottawa—a place where trick-or-treating was sometimes done under snowsuits—and I even like winter. Yet still, I dread this weather.

When the temperature first drops, my body rejects the change and instead yearns for the warm, t-shirt-friendly days of September. I know that eventually I’ll get used to it, but for the time being I fear each time I must step outside.

So instead I stay home and work.

By now midterms have passed, but November simply offers up term essays in their place. Even if you’d like to look ahead to better times, the only things you can anticipate are final exams. It’s lose-lose: either you focus on your current deadlines or you live in denial.

What you need is an escape. At Incite, every so often we send a couple of students on near- and far-flung adventures and ask them to write about them. This month, we offer two great “Wanderings” instead of just one. Together, they might just succeed in prying you out of the November doldrums, if only temporarily.

The first is an apple-picking expedition at an orchard located a few kilometres outside of Ancaster.

Unfortunately, the growing season for apples wrapped up after Halloween, meaning that you won’t be able to follow in our author’s footsteps until next year. But the second one, Hamilton’s local art crawl on James Street North, runs year-long. On the second Friday of each month, galleries on the strip stay open late to display neat—and occasionally interactive—exhibits. It’s a world away from the monotonous repetitions of schoolwork, and just a short HSR ride away.

Editing and Production Co–ordinator

Ben Freeman Editors

Muneeb Ansari Nick Davies

Chris Evans Zsuzsi Fodor

Siva Vijenthira Layout Co–ordinator

Yang Lei Graphics Co–ordinators

Chris HIlbrecht Ishani Nath Graphics and Layout

Pouyan Ahangarim

Sarah Byers Megan Byre

Ava Dideban Alexandra Kirsh

Chiara Meneguzzi

Michael Wexler

McMaster Photography Association Contributors

Melissa Charenko

Ruth Collings Jeanette Eby

Resham Ejaz Sabrina Falco

Katherine Georgious

Will Goldbloom Paul Huebener

Garnet Johnson-Koehn

Anna Kulikov Teanna Lobo

Kate Logan Raman Nijjar

Andrew Prine Natalie Raso

Tajana Ristic Shohinee Sarma

Catherine Zagar Printing

Hamilton Web Printing Impact Youth Publications 1105 King Street West Hamilton, ON L8S 1L8 incite@mcmaster.ca http://www.incitemagazine.ca Incite is published six times per academic year by Impact Youth Publications. 10,000 copies are distributed in the McMaster University–Westdale area. Entire contents copyright 2007–2008 Impact Youth Publications. Letters up to 300 words may be sent to the above address; they may be edited for length and clarity and will not be printed unless a name, address, and daytime phone are provided. Opinions expressed are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Incite’s staff or Impact Youth Publications.

These two examples might seem trivial, but there is a point to seeking out experiences that differ from our day-to-day grind. University students are often accused of being self-centered, of living within their “bubble” and rarely venturing outside of it. For most students, these assessments are true. It takes real determination to meaningfully interact with those outside of the university community; focusing on your own life and your priorities is always the easier option.

I don’t want to single out those who don’t involve themselves in the larger community. After all, I’m one of them and it shouldn’t be a matter of making excuses for that decision. People have vastly different motivations in their lives; occasionally, needs might entirely prevent them from devoting time to what they’d like to do. This variability means direct community involvement, however it is measured, is probably a poor indicator of student self-centeredness. A student who volunteers for a few hours each week is certainly doing good, but he might never bother to reflect on the experience; in the same way, someone who spends all her time between around campus and Westdale is not necessarily oblivious to her surroundings and its inhabitants.

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These concerns make me a little sceptical of attempts at bridging the gap between McMaster and Hamilton that rely mainly on promoting direct community involvement. To me, the goal is not simply to get students to volunteer some of their time outside of the classroom; it should be an attempt to raise consciousness among students of their place within society, to recalibrate their sense of benefit and responsibility. Just because I don’t volunteer in the city shouldn’t mean that I’m not responsibly engaged.

Students who want to contribute and help should be commended and given every opportunity to do so, but equally there should be a recognition that it might not work for everyone.

Which brings me back to the “Wanderings” in this issue. Like any book or article, they’re a way to become less intellectually selfish, if only briefly. Same goes for getting out the “bubble”: simply extracting yourself from student life forces you to consider others’ perspectives. University is supposed to prepare you for the real world, but falls short when it creates its own insular, self-reliant community.

This problem won’t solve itself easily; whatever solution is found must be inclusive enough to accept those who won’t or can’t be devoted volunteers.

INSIDE FEATURES Saturday Mornings 6 Scrutinizing The Serious World of Children’s Television Photos 12 McMaster By the McMaster Photography Association 14 MACouture Incite Investigates Student Fashion Bear on the Roof 16 The Original Fiction by Garnet Johnson-Koehn From Sweden 20 Letter Behind the IKEA Curtain 23 Diversions Comics and Maze Monarch 24 The Original Poetry

DEPARTMENTS Guy Fawkes Day in England

4 8 9 10 18 19 22

Happenings: News from Near and Far Wanderings: James Street North Art Crawl Wanderings: Carluke Orchards Interview: Dr. Atif Kubursi on the Credit Crisis Column: Mac in Time Column: Reframing Hamilton Column: Eat

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Happenings

MINUTES FROM LAST MONTH selected news from near and far

Your Next Vacation

Not So Safe Anymore?

inside the bubble Another step toward a Bur- than the attached price tag. The $99,999—$1 short of having to acters alike, took part in Trick proposed facilities should help report his income to the prov- or Eat, an event run by the Mclington campus Burlington city councillors recently approved a $5 million contribution to McMaster University. As part of Mac’s satellite campus expansion plan, Burlington was selected to be the site of three projects. These projects, which include converting the Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital into a teaching facility and the construction of another centre for the Michael DeGroote School of Business, are slated to cost around $28 million, $10 million of which will need to come from the coffers of Halton Region and the City of Burlington. The bill approved by the City leaves Halton Region with $5 million of its own to pony up, but should expansion plans come to fruition, the potential benefit for those across the Bay could be much greater

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attract medical care providers to the area, and the construction of clinic space in thriving downtown Burlington is hoped to further improve health care access for local residents.

VP Yachting Villas

and

Tuscan

According to to some sleuthing by the Hamilton Spectator, Dr. John Kelton, McMaster’s VicePresident and Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences, can look forward to a $1.44 million payout when his contract expires on 30 June 2011. This is the highest known exit package for a university employee in Ontario, trumping even the notorious one offered to Dr. Peter George.

George will receive $1,399,986 in 14 annual installments of

ince under the Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act. Colum Bastable, chair of McMaster’s board of governors, argues that Kelton’s success and 30 years of service to the university justify the package. Then again, the third most lucrative contract for an Ontario university administrator goes to Waterloo President David Johnston at $900,000. As Incite discovered in last year’s feature on rising tuition fees, one of the key factors in the last two decades’ fee hikes has been employee salaries. That’s probably why this article ran in the Spectator, and not the McMaster Daily News.

Scaring up food This Halloween, zombies, ghosts, axe murderers and Disney char-

Master Meal Exchange and the Bread Bin. With shopping carts in hand, 262 volunteers in costume canvassed the neighbourhood surrounding McMaster for non-perishable food items for the Hamilton Food Share, an organization that helps to feed the over 15,000 Hamiltonians who rely on food banks. The event was a success, with over 4300 pounds of food collected, translating to about 3500 meals for those who need it most. Meal Exchange and the Bread Bin wish to thank all the volunteers and donors who made the event possible.

Compiled by Chris Evans, Andrew Prine, and Will van Engen.

We are so boned…

Guelph, ON—Serving as a lesson in the conservation of momentum, several hundred kilograms of animal blood, bones, guts, and gore found their way onto a Guelph intersection on Thanksgiving weekend. A rendering services truck from Rothsay—you might recognize the name from the black grease dumpsters on campus—came to a sudden halt at an intersection, but its macabre cargo kept on going. Guelph Emergency Response crews redirected traffic and dammed the flow of blood around storm sewers while the Rothsay representatives heaved skulls, bones, and entrails back into the trailer. No one was hurt during the incident and no charges were laid, leaving the truck driver with another reason to be thankful.

Saving his bacon Waterloo, ON—A University of Waterloo student and his pig have reason to be celebrating after a stranger with a soft spot for creatures porcine decided

Pamela Anderson feel at home

would

HANOI, Vietnam—If you’ve ever felt embarrassed about being too short, thin, or small-chested, just be thankful that you don’t live in Vietnam. The Ministry of Health there has advised the government that people measuring less than 28 inches across the chest should be prevented from driving motorbikes, in a bid to improve the safety of both drivers and pedestrians. Unfortunately, many Vietnamese are of smaller stature and fall below this specification. It’s unclear why the Ministry believes excluding them will make roads safer, as it will not apply to cars or trucks.

It could a first step in efforts to ban motorbikes altogether from Vietnam’s streets.

Virtual world, real consequences TOKYO, Japan—It’s one thing to get a little upset in real world if your significant other decides to get a divorce; it’s another to try to kill them. In the online world, though, things get a bit trickier.

A 43-year-old woman was so up-

in north america...

to literally bring home the bacon. Dana Hirbod, a UW undergrad, had been raising a pig for slaughter in the backyard of his student home since mid-August.

The swine, affectionately named Bacon, was slated to be the star attraction of a pig roast, but before he was spitted, a stranger approached Hirbod and made him an offer too sweet to turn down. The buyer, who wished to remain anonymous, offered $500 for the cloven-hoofed animal, and the offer was gladly accepted

These new passports will cost Americans about $100 each, but cost the GPO an average of $7.97 to manufacture and are sold to the State Department for $14.80 each at 85 percent profit. Aside from obvious fears that anyone wishing to have a fake passport would find it easy to steal them in bulk, the hacking of RFID tags is well known and quite easy, making the possibility of identity theft even more likely.

Insecure security

Cincinnati, OH - Edna Jester, an 89-year-old woman, was recently arrested for confiscating a football belonging to a neighbour’s child after it landed repeatedly in her yard. The charge of petty theft could result in a maximum of six months in jail or $1000 fine.

Police reportedly gave Jester repeated warnings, but she refused to give the ball up, stating that this has been an ongoing dispute and that she has collected about ten balls in a similar fashion.

The family claims that they have tried to be respectful of her yard

Washington, DC—New American passports that include a RFID (radio frequency identification) tag were touted by politicians as a new way to safeguard travel.

The American government body in charge of printing passports, the Government Printing Office, has chosen to outsource production to overseas factories, including one in Thailand. Passports were shipped using FedEx until the State Department forced them to use armoured vehicles.

Traditional holds firm

child-rearing

and that she has taken at most three balls. It is believed that the magistrate will take into account her age and criminal record when sentencing.

Zombies: the new terrorists?

Lexington, KY- An 18-year-old was recently arrested under charges of terrorism after his grandparents found materials that outlined possible acts of violence against his high school and turned them over to police.

The student says that it was a fictional short story written for English class involving zombies overrunning a high school and that no names were mentioned in the work, but police continue to consider it a felony. The student’s bail was raised from $1000 to $5000 at the request of prosecution due to the seriousness of the case.

Compiled by Ruth Collings and Andrew Prine.

...and around the world

set with her virtual husband trying to divorce her that she created a new account and murdered him within the online role-playing game MapleStory. These actions have landed her in jail, as she was charged with hacking into his computer and “misusing” electronic data. She could face up to five years in jail and a $5000 fine.

Not all hearted

criminals

cold-

Halifax, UK—A 91-year-old woman was startled when a burglar entered her home around 4 a.m.

Problem was, the burglar was surprised too, as he believed the house was abandoned. The woman confronted the robber, who fled the scene empty-handed.

Most surprising was what came next: the burglar sent a bouquet of flowers to the woman the next day, along with a note apologizing and expressing guilt over the incident. Local police stated that it was an unusual development, but still appealed for the man to come forward and turn himself in.

The Great Moat of Austral- Video games find new ways ia? to be controversial Australia—Many people are aware of the “Great Firewall of China,” which censors and blocks content from the outside world from entering China, but they are likely unaware of a similar firewall being set up in Australia. The government’s $125.8 million “Plan for Cyber-Safety,” once implemented, will establish a national blacklist for content deemed inappropriate for children, to which service providers will be forced to restrict access.

Consumers will be able to opt out of this service, but can only downgrade to another blacklist that blocks all content deemed illegal by the government. These filters will be mandatory for all Australians, even as ISPs complained that the plan would cripple Internet speeds. There have been few public critics, likely because a mistaken belief in being able to opt-out entirely from the program. Worries largely rest upon the possibility that the program could open the door to future government censorship.

Worldwide—Geeks are used to getting their most highly anticipated video games and gadgets weeks, months, or even years after the original release date.

LittleBigPlanet, a PlayStation 3 game touted for its innovation, had its release delayed until the week of 3 November, even though copies had already been shipped to stores worldwide. The game itself was finished, but two expressions from the Qur’an were found in the background music of one of the game’s levels. Sony has publicly apologized for any offence this may have caused and is scrubbing the lyrics from the song in question, despite the fact that the song was written by Toumani Diabaté, a Malian musician and devout Muslim. Despite this setback, the game is expected to be a strong seller and one of the most important releases of the Christmas season.

Compiled by Ruth Collings and Raman Nijjar.

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FEATURE

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he shows that once held our undivided attention hold today a special place in our memories. The vivacious characters and acid trip of colors that we now view as a sensory overload were once the best part of Saturday mornings. As children’s programming has achieved greater popularity, off-screen dramas are frequently drawing more attention than the shows themselves.

Take a quick look at some of the most famous kids’ programs and you’ll see that HBO isn’t the only channel that has had its problems with censorship and controversy. From Pee Wee Herman, to gay Telletubbies, to allegations that Mr. Rogers is corrupting your neighbourhood, children’s television has often made headlines. Despite the austere vigilance of both parents and politicians, issues surrounding the world of children’s television have entertainment value far beyond their shows’ casts of cuddly characters.

Flicking through television channels in search of an afternoon soap or talk show often affords a glimpse of the seminal programs that once shaped childhoods across the nation.

They provoke nostalgic longings for an earlier, simpler life, when it took nothing more than bananas dancing around in striped pajamas to hold our undivided attention. Television became a luxury rather than a necessity, forming an essential component of every child’s daily routine. The role of babysitters evolved into simply flipping the channel to TVO and watching playtime fizzle into a trance-like focus on the flickering screen. Children’s programming thus emerged as a cheaper, more effective version of childcare for families across the nation.

Having witnessed this development in rearing the nation’s young, the United States government decided to set forth guidelines for the broadcasters moulding the minds of future generations. The result was the 1990 Children’s Television Act, affecting all American broadcasters that aired children’s programming.

The act mandated that broadcasters harness the power that television held within American society, using it to teach the nation’s children valuable information and life skills. In a sense, the act was a formal acceptance of the effect that the broadcast media had on children’s development. Through targeted programming, television became a means of creating and imposing a moral, educational, and social model. As television became the prime medium for influencing children, children’s programming fell under increased scrutiny.

With children’s media under close watch, certain legitimate concerns were “exposed.”

When Paul Reubens, host of Pee Wee’s Playhouse, bared his “pee wee” in an XXX theatre, a slew of court cases followed, leading to the show’s demise. This event became the precedent justifying all future investigations into children’s programming. Reuben’s sex-

el to a justification for keeping a watchful eye on children’s programming.

With this disturbing controversy fresh in the minds of parents, it became clear that the line between what was appropriate and appalling was becoming bitterly contested. This dichotomy became more apparent with the rise of homosexual references within children’s programming. The most famed example of this debate was the Tinky Winky scandal. The purple Teletubbie from the hit BBC2 program was not merely popular with youngsters, but rapidly became an icon in the homosexual community due to his purple colour, the inverted triangle symbol on his head, and his prized red purse. What emerged was the view that homosexuality had no place in children’s programs.

The issue was recently revived by an episode of Postcards from Buster, originally a spinoff from the massively popular PBS program Arthur. The episode aired in January 2005, depicting Buster’s visit to a family in Vermont which had “two mommies.” Although the issue of homosexuality was not explored in depth, the episode garnered massive controversy over whether or not the portrayal of an “alternative” lifestyle choice was appropriate for young viewers.

The unresolved debates within adult society have trickled down into the seemingly naïve world of Woody Woodpeckers and magic school buses. One such issue was the dispute over religious affiliations in media, which centered around VeggieTales.

The show was created as a way of educating children about morals through Bible stories, and promptly gained a large following. Once it was picked up by major networks, however, controversy arose over references to God and the Bible that did not have historical support. Conservative critics were uncomfortable with the religious aspects of the Bible-based show, such as the tagline, “Remember kids, God made you special and He loves you very much” that concluded each episode. The networks acted quickly to appease the steamed critics and censored the show to make it appear as secular as possible.

With intensifying scrutiny comes an inevitable rise in censorship. What falls under a children’s rating and what is reserved for more mature audiences is an ongoing battle.

In 2005, due to the dramatic rise in child obesity rates, PBS began initiatives to promote healthy living in its children’s programming.

As a result, the writers of Sesame Street saw fit to moderate the Cookie Monster’s voracious

By Katherine Georgious and Ishani Nath

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[Today], a show’s moral quality ceases to be judged by its actual content, but by the wholesomeness of its stars. ual offences ranged from indecent exposure to his arrest in 2001 for possession of child pornography. The hypocrisy of Reuben’s inappropriate personal life combined with the moral values advocated in his show resulted in swift action from the networks. Pee Wee’s Playhouse was quickly pulled from the air and Pee Wee Herman went from being a role mod-

appetite. It was felt that the sweet indulgences of this childhood favourite were sending an unhealthy message to children. Thus, the blue puppet no longer gorges on cookies—today he sticks to apples, and has the occasional cookie as a dessert.

While this simple change did little to affect the quality of Sesame Street programming, oftentimes the zealousness of scrutineers has verged on the ridiculous. The episode of Postcards from Buster that depicted a lesbian couple was banned from television, and shortly after the incident, the CEO of PBS announced her intent to step down after her contract expired. Once the controversy over Veggie Tales’ religious content led the show to be secularized, later criticism from opposing groups had references to God put back.

Similar overreactions have hit even the most seemingly benign children’s shows. In 2007, Louisiana State University Professor Don Chace denounced Mr. Roger’s message that “all children are special” as “representative of a culture of excessive doting.” According to Professor Chace, the current generation of young adults are narcissistic and have a false sense of selfimportance and entitlement because they were told how “special” they were throughout their childhood, and thus did not have to actually earn respect. Instead of telling kids Mr. Roger’s message of “I like you just the way you are,” Professor Chace suggests telling your child: “The world owes you nothing. You have to work and compete. If you want to be special, you’ll have to prove it.”

While shows have long been closely inspected for their content, a recent trend in children’s television has shifted this scrutiny to the programs’ stars. A decade or so ago, the concept of “children’s television stars” rarely existed. The kids and preteens who starred on shows like Barney, ZOOM, or The Mickey Mouse Club were nondescript and nameless—albeit cute—extras. When they grew into awkward teenagers, they were replaced by new actors and forgotten about.

While these children were recognizable, they certainly weren’t celebrities.

Today, child stars are rapidly infiltrating Hollywood, to the acclamation of history’s most excitable fan-base: preteens. Most stars

of a children’s television show not only become famous themselves, but their characters become brands for Disney or Nickelodeon to showcase in every toy store in America. Disney celebrities, like Ashley Tisdale, don’t just act, but must be able to sing and dance as well.

They can’t just be on a Disney show, they also have to be in a Disney made-for-TV movie, produce an album on Disney’s record label, and go on a concert tour with other Disney stars. Bonus points go out if they look really good on backpacks or in doll form, publicly declare their virginity, and date a fellow Disney star.

This profusion of child stars leads to actors outshining their own shows. Thus, a show’s

nah Montana is a good influence for children and preteens. While it isn’t particularly funny to anybody over the age of 12 and has an incredibly annoying laugh track, the show does impart some good life lessons, especially for girls. The protagonist, Miley Stewart, may have wealth and fame as her alter-ego Hannah Montana, but at school she is just a regular girl. She is extremely unpopular and has to deal with bullies, schoolwork, first crushes, family issues, and other problems well-known to preteens. While parents may not feel that Cyrus is a good role model for their children, her show is still one that promotes positive values, a fact that should not be ignored.

On the flip side, though, there is Zoey 101.

The media was so focused on Jamie Lynn Spears’ pregnancy that nobody showed concern over the show’s questionable content. The characters fret over boys, their appearance, and more disturbingly, promote body consciousness through dieting. Many of Zoey’s fellow students allow a boy named Logan to treat them horribly because he’s “so cute.” For these girls, intelligence is a negative quality. One girl is depicted as being weird and antisocial because she enjoys science. It is only when she hides her intellect and becomes like the others that she is seen as normal. And yet, no group ever voiced public disapproval over the show’s questionable content.

The carefree nature of children’s programming has been forever changed.

Gone are the days of caring bears and Looney Tunes well-versed in the art of explosives. In their place, we have religious shows being censored for religious content and G RAPHIC BY PoUYAN A HANGARIM Cookie Monster abandoning his namesake lifestyle moral quality ceases to be judged by its ac- for a healthier alternative. Newer children’s tual content, but by the wholesomeness of its programming is under tighter regulation to stars. The better these young stars behave off- ensure that children enter the world with apscreen, the more parents will support their propriate life skills and values, and shielded children watching them on-screen. After Miley from the realities of things like “alternative Cyrus’s Vanity Fair photo shoot controversy, lifestyles.” It seems that television shows are ratings for Hannah Montana fell 14 percent. being given enormous responsibility for shapWhen Jamie Lynn Spears announced she was ing future generations. Perhaps it is time for pregnant, Zoey 101 was cancelled. parents to try to reorient their children’s inThis trend is disconcerting because it ig- terests. Instead of letting them watch the conores the quality of a show’s content. Though lourful onscreen world, parents should get Miley Cyrus is now being branded as “Slutty them out into the real world to experience it Cyrus” by bloggers like Perez Hilton, Han- for themselves.

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WANDERINGS

High Art in the Hammer

By Sabrina Falco and Natalie Raso

A

sk for a Hamiltonian’s impressions of James Street North and you can anticipate mentions of Morgenstern’s, the dress shop for older European women; recollections of times when the street was the hub of Hamilton’s Italian and Portuguese communities; and reference to the strip as a gateway to Hamilton Harbour. Ask this same question to members of the arts community and you can expect a totally different response, one that identifies James Street North as the city’s up-and-coming arts district.

Interspersed among the social clubs, barbershops, and small, family-owned food markets are a number of trendy galleries. To celebrate and promote the budding arts community, artists and gallery owners have come together to create the James Street North Art Crawl, held on the second Friday of every month. On these evenings, the galleries open their doors to the public, which peruses that month’s exhibits and discover one of the city’s hidden treasures. Last month, we joined the crowds and went gallery-hopping along James Street North for our first ever Art Crawl, toting notepads, sophisticated attitudes, and a very (and we mean very) limited knowledge of art.

Our first stop was HIStory and HERitage, a small yet welcoming space that celebrates Hamilton’s rich

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history. A video display adorned the side wall, illustrating scenes from Hamilton’s past, including video footage from early Ti-Cat football games, pre-roadway photographs of the Mountain Access, and images of the Hamilton Farmers’ Market in its infancy. A collection of books lined the opposite wall, offering further readings on the snippets of Hamilton’s heritage offered by the films.

We helped ourselves to a healthy number of cookies on our way out, a parting gift as we left this lovely gallery.

Next, we wandered over to the Print Studio, which presented a markedly different experience. The large, bright, white space was divided into three rooms and a studio. Each area featured live demonstrations of artists in action. The first room’s paintings focused on the female form, while the other two exhibited sketches and prints of Hamilton’s landmarks.

Some were being sold for only twenty dollars, offering one the chance to be an art buyer without the hefty price tag. Second to the affordable artwork was the hospitable spread of food but since we were the only ones in the gallery—who knew being half an hour late was still too early to arrive in the arts world?—we chose not to attack the food table this time.

Next was the Loose Cannon gallery, which featured paintings profiling beautiful women... with a catch.

Dripping, oozing, and smothered over these lovely ladies was blood.

Lots of it. Bleeding hearts, to be specific. And we’re not talking cartoon, Alice-in-Wonderland-bleeding hearts; these were full out, anatomically precise, blood-soaked organs. After looking around the gallery, we could not hide our sincere fright for any longer and decided to walk—actually run— out. Some might appreciate this kind of art but we, not being artists, did not know quite what to make of all of the blood and gore.

Our fourth stop was Melanie Gillis’ photography. On our way to her third floor studio, we passed an experimental film screening, which rivalled the Loose Cannon in creepiness. When we finally reached the studio, we found that it resembled a true artist’s loft. The walls were adorned with Gillis’ photography, which ranged from pregnant women and families to fully nude portraits.

On our way out, we filled out ballots for a free photography session, hoping that if we won, we were entitled to the nude ones.

The White Elephant is the newest edition to the James Street North community. Not a traditional gallery, the White Elephant sells 1950s-era home furnishings and jewellery acquired from online antique stores. Some of our favourite pieces included a black and white TV, cookware, and long, rusted lockets that proved quite chal-

lenging to open. Although the pieces were mismatched, there was unity in the vintage chaos. We were very impressed with the finger foods and the complimentary wine, as were the many people who pushed the twodrink limit. But perhaps the White Elephant’s most impressive feature was the owner’s dress. We were going to ask her where she got it from, but then assumed it was just another mid-twentieth century piece.

Our final stop on the art crawl was Le Petite Spa, whose pink interior stood in stark contrast to the rest of the sites. This spa is fully functional, complete with pedicure chairs and manicure tables, and hosted a number of paintings for the evening.

Perhaps more intriguing than the paintings, however, was the stand prominently exhibiting OPI Nail polish, the French Collection. To some (*ahem* Sabrina), this was apparently the best art of the evening.

As we left our last location, we looked delightedly at the energetic community that inhabited James Street North, altogether different from the one we have grown to expect in this area of Hamilton. We could really see the founders’ vision of a vibrant arts community coming to life, and felt privileged to have been let in on one of Hamilton’s bestkept secrets.

WANDERINGS

Apple pie The most delicious cliché

By Catherine Zagar

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s over-used and American as it might sound, apple pie is definitely one of my metaphors for home. As the crisp autumn weather moves in, banishing any lingering hope for that Indian Summer and signalling the arrival of cold, dark December evenings, I start thinking warm thoughts—thoughts about home and, strangely, about apples. When I lived in Sudbury, I would arrive home on late autumn evenings from work or school, and my mother would greet me with hot milk and apple pie. And I remember the smell of cloves—the smell of my father’s apple compote, steaming in an enormous pot on the stove, while he watched television and waited patiently.

Probably due to my post-midterm mental exhaustion and the change from midterm stress to that of the long-dreaded essay, I developed a preDecember longing for home. A longing that, coupled with a cook book and the apples that were falling from a tree in my friend’s front yard, developed into my latest whimsical idea: apple picking.

This idea led my boyfriend and me on a cloudless Saturday afternoon to Carluke Orchards on the outskirts of Ancaster. The drive could easily clear anyone’s head. Like most of the southern Ontario landscape that I have come to love over the past two years, it seemed to stretch for miles and boast the poetry of “under the harvest moon.” The dried cornstalks and red maple arches over the pavement. The highway and the tangles of dry brambles on the road side. The fallow fields. The crisp air biting at you through a slightly opened window.

And ahead, an anticipatory sign—”Carluke.”

The Carluke Orchard is family-run orchard which gives everyone the opportunity to try pickyour-own apples and pumpkins. Upon arriving, a small wood-built shop greeted us with apple cider and the opportunity to purchase pre-picked apples, as well as an enormous selection of baked goods— some pies and tarts made from freshly harvested apples, and other delicious scones and cakes and quiches of berries and summer vegetables. Needless to say, we sampled many things.

Outside, though, I found an even greater treat.

Small wagons were lined up at the back of the shop, each equipped with an empty bushel. Families, many with young children, tugged these wag-

ons off into the waiting acres and rows of apple trees, laughing as they walked. We followed suit, revelling in the chance to de-stress and be childish.

I picked a pumpkin from the bright orange rows behind the shop and crossed the path, disappearing into the rows of apple trees. (And yes, I skipped down the path, at least part of the way. The clear air was getting to my head.) To make the experience more fairytale-like, the many paths through the orchard were lined with scarecrows, each sporting a friendly smile and a speech bubble telling you either a small fact about the farm or a hint about where you would find what type of apple. It was delightful.

Fortunately, unlike the apple tree in my friend’s yard, these trees were fairly low to the ground.

Even a shorter than average person like myself could reach the tempting ripe fruit just by reaching up. But to put more adventure into this apple-filled wandering, I decided to pursue the fruit found on the highest branches. Looking around to make sure no one was watching, I launched myself into the branches to reach the biggest apple I have ever laid my hands on—golden delicious and about the size of a sweet dumpling squash! Of course, the tree clobbered me—I didn’t see the branch above my head—and my boyfriend laughed and took a picture, but I did get that prized apple. We then moved on in search of ida reds and northern spys: the two types of apples perfectly suited for a pie.

Eventually the evening approached, and after covering several acres and enjoying the solace of autumn colours and children’s laughter, we headed back to the shop, carting our prized pumpkin and bushel of green, red and golden apples. In the shop, they bagged our apples and we bought a vegetable quiche (delicious!) for the ride home. And this is where the best part of our wandering began (or at least I think). Home here in Hamilton became just like home in Sudbury. I baked all weekend, calling up my mother from time to time for recipes: apple fritters, apple compote, apple sauce, and of course, apple pie. Suddenly the house was filled with the smell of baked apples and cloves—and my housemates decided that they felt just as close to home as I did.

Cat’s Recipes Apple Compote

Core and slice five large apples and place in a large pot filled with six to seven cups of water. Add a cup of brown sugar (if desired) and a half teaspoon of ground cloves (or a teaspoon of whole cloves, to taste). Bring to a boil and cook until the apples have turned translucent, about 20 to 30 minutes.

Easy Apple Pie

In a large bowl place two cups of flour with ¾ cup vegetable shortening cut into small pieces. Mix with your fingers until the mixture takes on the appearance of bread crumbs. Add 4 tablespoons of cold water and mould the mixture into a ball of dough. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Peel, core, and slice apples. Place apples in a large bowl and mix with one cup of sugar and one teaspoon of ground cloves. Cover and let sit for 30 minutes.

Roll out about of the dough and form a crust by lining the bottom of the pie pan. Add in the apples. Roll out the rest of the dough to cover the apples. Pinch the edges of the pie crust together, using water to hold the dough together.

Glaze the top of the pie with milk, and cut four small slits in the top of the pie to let steam escape. Bake for 20 minutes at 400°F, and then turn down to 350°F and bake for another 30 minutes.

incite 9

INTERVIEW

Clarifying the Credit Crisis Incite’s Resham Ejaz and Shohinee Sarma talk to Dr. Atif Kubursi about the worldwide financial crisis Graphic by Bryan Allen (Corbis)

A

s stock prices continue to spiral downwards and fear of recession hangs in the air, the very structure of capitalism has been called into question. Dr. Atif Kubursi, noted economist and Professor Emeritus at the Department of Economics, offers a better understanding of what the credit crunch is and how it came about.

Is this the first time in economic history that a credit crunch has occurred?

It is not the first time the world has experienced a financial crisis. This crisis is similar to the one experienced in the 1980s, when money was lent out by American banks to developing nations. Banks, then as now, took incredible risk since they were investing in borrowers that did not have a credit history.

But the North American markets were able to weather it because the scale was not that big then. The credit crunch was around $500 billion when the problem started in the 1980s, but today’s credit crunch amounts to about $3 trillion.

Can you explain a bit about how the current credit crunch came about?

Today we have the same problem. American banks that had high liquidity suspended their risk management again and lent money to the national subprime market. This market is high-risk because the investors do not have the capacity to pay back the banks, in much the same way as in the 1980s.

But now the scale is incredible. Before we were talking about $500 billion, now we are talking about trillions of dollars and incredible losses to banks. Any bank is solvent in the sense that its assets may be larger than its liabilities. But it does not matter how big or strong a bank is; the money from customers is lent out to more customers in a cyclical flow. Once borrowers are unable to return loans for whatever reason, the banks start to crumble because money is no longer available for those who invested in the bank.

The whole edifice of international finance becomes shaky and people start suffering incredible losses on the stock market. And what we have really is a financial crisis.

But the story is a financial crisis we can deal with and countries have been dealing with it. In this case, Britain has taken a proactive role by buying shares in their banks in order to pump [up] liquidity. The issue now is far more serious because we do not know to what extent this crisis will remain contained in the financial economy [i.e., the banking and investment sector] or if it will travel into the real economy.

How does this affect the dynamics of the real economy and what can be done to control it?

Graphics courtesy http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/kubursi

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It is important to understand that we have four engines in the economy: the consumers (representing about 60 to 70 percent), businesses, the government, and the foreign market. It is the first time in economic history since the Depression that these four engines have begun to suffer simultaneously. Consumers now, who have suffered incredible financial losses, are poorer. The psychology is that they are unlikely to spend as much and, thus, economic confidence has become shaky.

People are insecure about jobs and these two

faculties combine to constrain consumption.

Since demand has fallen, businesses are not likely to increase production, even if you put all the liquidity and available credit in their hands.

So the trouble now is that consumer demand is going down, business investment is going down, so now we have to depend on our exports. But we cannot! Because of globalization, all the world economies are simultaneously reducing their output and suffering economic contraction. So in this situation we only have the last engine left: the government.

But this is going to be a problem because of the existing political mentality that arose during the 1980s through such politicians as [Ronald] Reagan and [Margaret] Thatcher. It is the same ideology that arose from Milton Friedman: the government is best when it governs the least.

What are the implications of this mentality?

We have gone into a dynamic of competitive deregulation because everybody wants to increase the space and latitude of the business and private sectors, and governments are without the capacity to oversee and regulate. But now since the government is the last resort, everybody is wondering if we should reconsider the way we have written off the government.

Moreover, the international financial order that came from [the Bretton Woods agreement] onwards has proven to be defective and in fact, causative of much of the woes.

There is no regulation, no oversight, and no accountability on the private sector. We need now to rebuild the international financial construction and build cooperation among countries in order to avoid an economic catastrophe.

Do you think there could be a trend in the future where we could be going back to [John Maynard] Keynes and use the government as a means to boost the economy?

People like [John Kenneth] Galbraith or Keynes have more or less been vindicated; Keynes [in particular] because his econom-

ics is economics of Depression. But now that we are really threatened by a major recession in the economy, let us consider what Keynes said. He said that if people’s expectations and confidence is low, you could pump all the money that you want into the economy and it will turn into liquidity [because consumers would rather save their money than spend it], what is called a liquidity trap. It will not really create propulsion in the economy because of the lack of confidence in the system.

At this point, it is perfect for the government to take a propulsive role.

How could the government take this propulsive role?

The government may get into deficit by default during the contracting economy because it will not be able to garner much revenue during the slowdown. It could however, create a deliberate and systematic boosting of the economy. That is, we could go into deficit purposefully, in the hopes that we can kickstart the economy and prevent it from collapsing into a recession.

Because consumers are not going to spend, investors are not going to spend. We could really lower the Canadian dollar as much as we want, but the Americans do not have any money to buy our goods. They are not likely to buy [many] of our exports and then the economy will keep, in a dizzying way, collapsing and contracting.

At the time of the Great Depression, Keynes said that it does not matter what the government does. He said “let them dig ditches but let them pump into the economy.” This is in the hopes that if the government puts enough money into the economy, it will create sufficient aggregate demand to continue to keep our utilization of capacity.

The stock market went down 40 percent but did we lose 40 percent of our machinery, our infrastructure, or our dexterity or skills? They are all [still] there. Our capacity is there. What is really now happening is that aggregate demand has declined. What we really need is for aggregate demand to come up.

And who could really bring it up? Only one [actor]—government.

How does this affect Canada, or our lives in a local context?

First of all, I’m going to say what everybody is saying: “We are not an island.” And we are an export-oriented economy and therefore, any decline in our exports (as it happens, 80 percent go to the US and the US economy is sinking) will affect us. So we certainly must expect that Canada is going to experience major [loss] in the demand for its products.

But, we do not have the same problems in our banking systems here. Some banks, [however], like CIBC, have also stupidly invested in [unsafe] financial innovations that bundled together risky mortgages with some good stocks. So we do have exposure, but it is not very large.

But one of the silver linings in Canada is recession. It allowed us to let the Canadian dollar slip and predictably it will hover around 80 cents. The fact is also that people have quite a bit of confidence in the Canadian banking system and everybody is praising it around the world even when it is not true.

The other silver lining is that this is really a chance for us to do the things we should [have done] when we were growing too fast, [growing] beyond the carrying capacity of the environment. We were on a “greed” revolution, compromising everything else [and] especially the environment. Maybe the world economy may be cut to size, to a level that is more consistent with the carrying capacity.

So this could be the silver lining.

Since Hamilton is a mainly manufacturing economy, how will it be affected?

In Hamilton, there are likely three factors.

First, [there] is the factor of heavy industry particularly tied to the car industry. The car industry has been heavily hit so there are going to be severe repercussions on steel. Two, Hamilton is also immigrant-oriented and immigrants tend to bear the brunt of any adjustment more disproportionably than others.

And three, Hamilton is not entirely diversified. But in many respects the non-manufacturing sectors in Hamilton may not be affected.

What steps would we need to take in order to prevent a crunch of this nature from occurring again?

We definitely need not only our government involvement but we really need all governments of the world involved. [Furthermore], we really need some oversight over the financial market, stock markets, hedge funds, and competitive deregulation. People are thinking, “We now need to re-measure institutions at the world level… We need to recreate international institutions that oversee, moderate, [and] regulate the market.”

We have the World Bank and the IMF (International Monetary Fund), [but] we probably need something more solid and different that [can] become the hallmark of international cooperation.

Some key terms: Aggregate demand: The total amount of goods and services demanded in the economy at a given overall price level and in a given time period.

Bretton Woods agreement: An 1944 agreement signed by the original United Nations members that established the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the post-World War II international monetary system of fixed exchange rates.

Credit crunch: a state in which there is a short supply of cash to lend to businesses and consumers, resulting in high interest rates for both Liquidity: Available cash or the capacity to obtain it on demand Recession: An extended decline in general business activity, typically identified by two consecutive quarters of falling real gross national product.

Risk management: The process of identifying, assessing, and controlling, risks resulting from typical operations and making decisions that balance risk cost with benefits.

Solvent: Able to meet debts Subprime: A loan, typically at a greater than usual rate of interest, offered to a borrower who is not qualified for other loans (e.g. because of poor credit history).

Definitions courtesty of Wiktionary and thefreedictionary.com.

Graphic by Scol22 (SXC)

incite 11

PHOTOGRAPHY McMaster Photography Association

12 incite

Drop, Tumble, Hit the Dirt

incite 13

PERSPECTIVE

MACouture Incite Investigates Student Fashion

T

By Anna Kulikov, Teanna Lobo, and Tajana Ristic

here is no doubt that McMaster culture manifests itself in fashion. Every season brings about new wonders and wondrous faux pas for sheep to follow and brave souls to denounce. Whether you follow, lead, or just wear the same thing all the time regardless of the changing trends, it is incredibly difficult to ignore them. This year, McMaster’s wardrobe choices reflect an alarming drift towards fashion hell: impracticality, shameless flirtatiousness, sloppiness and—to put it bluntly—plain mass blandness. Aside from rubbing a few of our own writers the wrong way, we’re sure that the fashion gods can’t be too happy with the drowning out of individuality and the endangering of creativae fashionus. To appease these deities, three of Incite’s modest fashionistas have set out to “critique” some of the sillier trends that have sunk their fangs into the campus heart this season.

Scarves and Shirts

On any given day, a multitude of Mac students can be spotted wearing scarves of varying patterns, materials, colours, and sizes, worn in a style specific to their liking.

Dating back to least ancient Roman times, scarves have served many purposes throughout their existence. Romans first wore scarves as sweat cloths, which eventually developed into a popular men’s fashion accessory worn either as a belt or around the neck. In Chinese and Croatian cultures, scarves were a symbol of rank for warriors. In the colder climates of the Western world, scarves became a winter essential, shielding the faces of women and men alike from bitter winds and driving snow. In contemporary Mac times, pashminas serve as accessories to any outfit—primarily, yet not exclusively, for females.

Now, maybe we should congratulate the bold men on campus for using scarves as they were originally intended, but at the same time, that pretty bit of silk might inadvertently symbolize something slightly more sinister.

What many Mac students don’t realize is that the latest fashion fad, innocent though it may seem, could represent a political viewpoint they may in fact disagree with. The keffiyeh, a traditional Arab men’s headdress, became a symbol of Palestinian nationalism in the 1930s and has continued to be a symbol of

14 incite

pro-Palestinian views in the modern Arab-Israeli conflict. With vendors in the student centre almost daily, it’s no wonder students are latching onto this latest trend, without necessarily realizing what the scarves imply. By wearing their black and white chequered scarves, Mac’s students are displaying what some interpret as a sign of solidarity with the pro-Palestinian movement, and some even with Palestinian militancy.

Then again, how can they resist? These scarves of different colours act as an easy accessory to any shirt. But wait, wasn’t the whole point of wearing scarves in our climate to keep warm? Students at Mac have been wearing their scarves since “blistering” Welcome Week. It looks like here, fashionistas are hardcore, willing to tough out the extra material around their sticky necks in the summer while subscribing to political views they did not know they held.

The Healthsci & the Engineer

Uggs and Skirts

As the days get colder and darker, you would think that our peers’ wardrobes would reflect this change in weather. But this is never the case.

Every year, there seems to be a new and more creative way to stay freezing cold while trudging towards your midterms. This year’s weatherinappropriate fashion duo of choice: Ugg boots and miniskirts.

“Uggs?” you ask in dismay. “That sounds like some kind of Neanderthal! I’m not so sure about wearing Neanderthals on my feet, no matter how comfortable and warm they are!” Okay, so maybe you’re a little more familiar with Uggs than I am. But in case you’ve also had your head in the snow, “Ugg” is the moniker of a very particular kind of footwear.

Ugg is an Australian brand that makes incredibly warm boots using sheepskin and often, but not always, synthetic soles. Believe me when I say that these shoes can keep your feet extra toasty. The boot in itself is fine, great, peachykeen… But seriously, let’s just stop a moment here. If you’re going to wear something nice and warm on your feet in this weather, wouldn’t you also have the common sense to wear something insulting on the rest of your body as well?

Wearing these oversized, overpriced, extra-warm boots with flimsy little skirts, shorts or tights, defeats the very purpose of sheepskin clothing! Every time I see a poor young lady wearing one of these ensembles my heart breaks. It’s true. I feel like they’ve forgotten to put their trousers on that morning and are living one of those “naked in class” nightmares. My roommate agrees: you see young ladies with pretty, warm sweaters, nice woollen hats, and fun, cute scarves… and some thin tights covering the skin between that and their Uggs.

Heaven forbid they’re actually wearing a skirt and no tights—that’s just madness.

The trend does have its merits, though. It reminds me of when, in the mid-1960s, go-go boots were in vogue, and women would wear them to “accentuate the leg.” André Courrèges was responsible for these boots, and I have to say, they weren’t all bad. But unlike

Tights for flirts

Even as the cold grips us mercilessly, the students of McMaster are still hopefully hovering in the age of legging utopia, sporting their black tights with skirts, shorts, long sweaters, and even longer jackets. Contrary to their use today, leggings were not originally invented for feminine accentuation or flirty translucency, but for their undeniable practicality. During the Renaissance, European men wore leggings not just for their (questionable) fashionable appeal, but also for the measure of flexibility and comfort they provided. Scottish Highlanders—amongst their many giggle worthy faux pas—indulged in crotch-hugging trousers while cowboys, Native Americans, fur trappers and mountain men relied on buckskin leggings to prevent chafing from horseback and to offer protection against snakebites, thick undergrowth, and the torment of insects. In fact, in some colder countries like Russia and Korea, both men and women still wear woollen leggings for warmth. Although today women make up the bulk of legging-wearers (barring the emasculating monster that is the skinny jean), the only real historical example of tights as a marker of femininity are the pantalettes worn underneath skirts in the 19th century—however ridiculously loosefitting by comparison they may be.

The true revival and feminization of tights only began in the 1960s, triggered appropriately enough by the emergence of women’s sexual liberation movements and the aerobics craze.

Though primarily worn by dancers and fitness addicts, the trend quickly spilled onto the streets and, until the mid 1990s, tights in neon colors,

paired with leg warmers, miniskirts, large belts, dresses, ballet flats, and slip-on heels were all the rage. A familiar but distinct scene is painted on the McMaster campus in the tights restoration of the 21st century: black, opaque leggings with flats or Uggs, accompanied by skirts, trendy sweaters, shiny waist belts, or almost-bare derrières seem to be the new standard. Though bearing echoes of retro-futurism and bohemian-chic, our girls today aren’t keen on raising the bar with creativity, color, or shape. Actually, the only variation perceptible to a keen eye is a gradation of translucency, potentially a mathematical function of flirtatiousness. Thankfully enough, we don’t see too many girls flaunting their assets that blatantly just yet!

Graphics by Alexandra Kirsh

go-go boots, Uggs do not aim to accentuate the leg. They seem to be saying, “If I can make my feet look as chunky as possible without slowing me down too much, the rest of me will look small and cute in comparison.” It’s exactly the message I get seeing the poor creatures wearing them. I’m not saying Uggs are inherently bad, but put some jeans on when you’re wearing them, girl! It’s just common sense.

Profashion

From role model and mentor to colleague and friend, professors can take on many roles.

But should we really look to them for fashion advice? Female profs may seem to possess some flair when it comes to dressing themselves, but the line between haute couture and simply eccentric can get a little blurry when you’re dealing with a truckload of academics. Likewise, you might see some younger profs sporting buzz cuts, tattoos, and maybe even a trench coat to go with the look, but whether they’re making a statement or just don’t fit in with the norms of society is a little hard to determine. Yet either way, the getups of some of my more eccentric profs do give me a reason to look forward to my 8:30, and that’s got to be worth something On the flipside, some of the well paid veterans have been around the block enough to know that when it comes to style, keeping it simple is key. These classy intellectuals know that professional dress lends credibility and inspires confidence, and that’s an aura they want to cultivate.

Perfectly coiffed hairstyles and simple pantsuits may not get them on the cover of Vogue, but it helps when they hope to demand respect on a world scale. You certainly won’t pick that up just by reading the textbook.

The Humanities Student

incite 15

FICTION

The Bear on the Roof

J

aime came in through the back, careful not to let the door make more than the faintest of clicks when it closed. The hinges were well-oiled, opening smoothly and silently, but even so she couldn’t help but hold her breath as she opened it. She slipped off her shoes and hung up her jacket, neatly arranging everything before stepping out of the little hallway into the kitchen. She glanced at the clock, relieved to find that it was only just half past three, and kept walking.

Jaime stopped in the living room to tidy up a bit of clutter, and make certain her father’s huge chair was clean and the ashtray beside it emptied out. Going to the front door, she leaned out and picked up the newspaper, still wrapped in plastic, and brought it to the living room. She arranged it on the small table beside the chair, the plastic slit open and the paper laid out, just the way he liked it. She had cleaned up before going to school, as usual, so there was very little for her to do now. She was as satisfied as she could be, given his inscrutable standards. She scurried up the stairs, taking the narrow steps two at a time.

The second floor hallway was dark, but Jaime paused as she spotted the faintest hint of light coming from under one of the doors. Her stockinged feet drifted silently over the hardwood floor as she made her way over, the door sliding open smoothly. Like the back door, like every door, it was carefully tended to make the least noise possible. Jaime leaned in through the half-opened door.

“Mom?” she said, softly. Her mother’s room was dim, the shades drawn to let just a sliver of light in. It was a small space, the single bed crowded on all sides by the walls, and her mother had responded by shrinking into herself. She lay curled up in the bed, her head almost hanging over the edge, lank blond hair in a tangled mass behind her. Jaime’s mother opened one bloodshot eye at the sound of her voice, and gave the faintest hint of a smile.

“Hey, baby,” she whispered,

16 incite

G RAPHIC BY M EGAN BYRE

her voice hoarse. “Mommy’s not feeling so good. Think you could make dinner tonight?”

Jaime very carefully kept her eyes on her mother, and not on the empty bottles scattered around the bedside table. “Of course, mom,” she said, quietly.

“I hope you feel better soon.”

But her mother was already out once again, her eyes closed and her thin chest rising and falling slowly. Jaime shut the door, and as it clicked shut once more, she hurried down the hall to her bedroom.

“Of course I can make dinner,” she muttered, setting her bag down beside the door. She walked across the room and scooped up her gold-furred bear. She held him tight against her chest, and said, “I always make dinner, don’t I Mr. Honeypot?” The bear was silent, as was his wont, but Jaime didn’t need him to agree with her. They both knew it was true.

Checking the clock, Jaime decided she had enough time before she started dinner. The window opened as silently as the doors,

and she knelt on her bed and leaned out of it. She carefully arranged Mr. Honeypot just behind the window’s arch, where he was out of sight from the road. Just in case, she thought to herself.

Then, closing her eyes tight, Jaime stretched on her bed, laying herself out just the way she always did when this happened. “I wish,” Jaime whispered, feeling the familiar heat behind her eyes, “I wish I was somewhere else…”

The squirrel scrambled down the tree, its paws gripping the rough bark as it moved. Through tiny black eyes Jaime looked out at the world, feeling her muscles shift and bunch under brownblack fur with each movement.

She paused, halfway down the tree, and glanced around. It always surprised her just how different it was, moving as a squirrel. She felt her tail, a bushy coil of fur fluttering in a light breeze, and inside the squirrel’s body the girl shivered. The leaves were already a riot of colours, and the temperature was dropping daily.

Soon, she knew, she might not be able to come out like this.

She skittered the rest of the way down the tree, covering the last few inches by launching herself into the air.

The ground was firm under her paws as she landed, the first hints of frost-hardened winter soil starting to show, but the grass wasn’t so dead that she couldn’t enjoy leaping through it. Like she did every time, Jaime marvelled at how her legs felt like springs, compressing each time she landed just so she could launch herself anew. As she bounded across the lawn, the cool wind ruffling her fur, Jaime couldn’t keep from feeling a shiver of pleasure run along her spine. The jumps were so high, and so long, at least from a squirrel’s tiny perspective, that for a moment, at the apex of each leap, it was almost like flying.

Jaime loved the idea of flying.

But she was a squirrel, not a bird, so she contented herself with jumping. She covered the wide expanse of yellow-brown grass in a dozen long hops, then squirmed under the edge of the porch where the wood didn’t quite meet the dirt. It was dark under there,

by Garnet Johnson-Koehn and her nose twitched, catching scents that had become familiar to her now. She could smell dirt and rotting leaves, the sharp smell of urine cutting across all the others, while under them she could catch just the faintest hint of meat, sweat and musk. She glanced around, her beady eyes accustoming themselves to the dark quickly, and let out a soft chitter.

From deeper under the porch, a sound answered her. It was a bass rumble, and for a moment, Jaime couldn’t help but think of the racoons. They terrorised the neighbourhood after dark: huge, waddling shapes that snarled and spat at anything that came near them. Once she’d tried to approach one, and it had nearly taken her nose off with a mad, lunging bite. Jaime had always loved furry animals before, but after that night she had decided that perhaps an exception could be made.

Appearing from the blanket of shadows at the far end of the porch was a grey-furred rat, one tattered ear shorter than the other. Jaime chattered at him again, and the rat’s response was a series of low sounds, almost like a cat’s yowl. She knew rats were supposed to make sounds more like her own quick chittering, but she told herself that that was how they sounded to humans; it didn’t mean they had to sound that way to every set of ears. Besides, that was the least of the strange things about it. More surprising, and more wondrous, was that while the noises meant nothing to Jaime, at the same time she could hear the rat’s words in her head.

Hello again. Your fur is looking very shiny today. Hungry?

Food was pretty much all the rat thought of, although he was still better company than almost any other animal she’d met so far.

Most of them were strictly worried about their own little corners of the world, their conversations revolving entirely around food, shelter, and protection from predators. The rat, at least, could manage some thoughts beyond

those basic survival instincts.

Thank you, Jaime replied, and she knew he could understand her just as she understood him.

Let’s go find food.

The rat nodded and scrunched his nose, long whiskers twitching. Yes, he said, It’s good you’re not dead yet. That, she’d learned, was as sentimental as animals got. He stared at her for another second, then turned and began to move back into the darkness.

Jaime liked the rat, who she called Stripes because of the lines of scar tissue that broke up his fur. She’d tried to ask him how he got them when they’d first met, but he’d been vague to the point that Jaime suspected he didn’t really remember. The only wound

kept regular schedules; whoever’s house this was must not be getting back until late. Rats were really very smart, she’d learned.

Although they’d once passed the body of a dead rat, his back broken by a trap. Sometimes, even very smart wasn’t smart enough.

Jaime, who had been told often enough that she was very smart, tried not to think about that too often.

Stripes disappeared through the hole in the half-rotted wood, his long dirty-pink tail the last thing to go. She took a deep breath, well aware that their might well be cats or dogs around, or that someone might have come home earlier than usual, upsetting Stripes’ careful planning. It

Ja i m e d i d n’t re s p o n d .

But under her breath, barely loud enough to count as even a whisp e r, s h e s a i d , “ I w i s h I w a s s o m e w h e r e e l s e …” he could recall with any degree of detail was the one to his ear.

A racoon had done that to him, a young one that had wandered into his nest under the porch. She liked to imagine a mighty and heroic struggle, like Hercules and the Nemean lion or Hector and Achilles, though she suspected Stripes wouldn’t grasp that idea.

But since he was still here, he mustn’t have fared too badly.

The back of the porch was rotted in places, the wood soft and soggy, easy enough for a rat to chew through. Stripes had already put several holes in it, and he led Jaime towards one of them.

There’s food in here, he said. Not dark enough for it to be dangerous. Jaime smiled, or at least she thought about smiling, since the squirrel’s mouth wasn’t built for the expression. The rat had managed to figure out that people

was scary, but in a new way, a better way than the kind of scary Jaime was all too familiar with. It was an adventure! And one, she swore once more, that she’d enjoy to the fullest.

Later that night, Jaime heard the stairs creak. She shut her school books and shoved them into her backpack, then leaned back to listen. If the footsteps stopped by her mother’s room, then she’d go back to her schoolwork. She waited, breathing shallowly, straining her ears for the faintest sound. The footsteps paused, for a moment…

And then started again. He was coming, after all.

She wanted to think that he was just coming to tell her good night, to thank her for the dinner and dessert she’d prepared.

Sometimes he did that. But when

he did, it was always a pleasant surprise, never anything she could count on. His footsteps had passed the bathroom now. He’d be here soon enough.

Jaime reached out and grabbed the window beside her bed, hauling it open. The night air was cold against her skin. She tucked her bear out of the way, in the same little spot she always put him. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, as she leaned out and set him on the roof. She knew he hated it out there; it was cold, and dark, and getting worse each day. “I’m sorry,” she said once more, as she dragged the window back down.

“But you…you can’t watch…”

Mr. Honeypot didn’t say anything as Jaime closed the window.

Still shivering, she slipped out of her clothes and into her pyjamas, then pulled back the heavy comforter and slipped into bed. The doorknob began to turn just as she pulled the blankets back up to her chin. She hurriedly stretched out under the blanket and closed her eyes, feeling the familiar heat behind them.

“Still awake, princess?”

Jaime didn’t respond. But under her breath, barely loud enough to count as even a whisper, she said, “I wish I was somewhere else…”

Jaime looked up at her house from down on the lawn. The light in her room was still on, and from that she could just make out Mr. Honeypot, sitting forlornly on the roof. The wind ruffled her fur, but it was thick and warm, far better suited to the weather than a girl’s skin. With a flick of her fluffy tail she turned away and bounded off, turning her back on the bright light.

Maybe, she told herself, this time would be the time.

Maybe she wouldn’t go back.

It wasn’t the first time she’d had that thought. And close on its heels, as always, came another. If this was the time, she told herself, and she decided to stay this way, then there was just one thing she’d have to take care of.

Mr. Honeypot couldn’t stay up there forever, after all.

incite 17

COLUMN

Mac in Time

by Melissa Charenko and Kate Logan McMaster at War

I

f you are currently struggling through November midterms, you have much to be thankful for. If you had been a McMaster student during the Second World War, a poor performance on an exam meant more than just a mediocre grade on your transcript. Instead, you would be reported to military authorities responsible for calling men to service. In accordance with government regulations of 1943, almost one-fifth of the male student body received a chilling letter from the Registrar’s Office informing them that they were in the lower half of their year and would soon receive instructions to report for military training. This new consequence of poor grades was just one of the measures that were instituted for the duration of the Second World War. Many other transformations to McMaster’s campus and student life took place as staff and students made sacrifices for their country.

The war influenced not just exam-takers but also the exams themselves. In December 1944, all exams had to be cancelled because of a paper shortage. Exams were also affected by changes to the course calendar brought about by the realities of war. Arts courses were deemed non-essential for the war effort and effectively became obsolete.

Instead, there was an increasing focus on science and technology courses, especially ones that could turn the tide of the war, such as wireless transmission, nursing, and Morse code. The overwhelming demand for chemists meant that many left before their final exams (but they were not permitted to graduate without finishing their exams unless they were a direct part of the war effort). Professors became interested in new technologies too, as wartime science projects started on campus. One professor worked with students to research gases known to be in enemy hands. There was also a secret wartime project overseen by Harry Thode. The plan was concealed by the university, and the RCMP patrolled the campus and ran security checks on all students and staff who worked on the task. Toiling away in the basement of Hamilton Hall, Thode was working on a heavy water distillery for the Chalk River Nuclear Power Plant. Other professors lent their talents to the war effort in other ways, as Togo Salmon performed a daily analysis of the war over Hamilton radio.

Many McMaster students and faculty provided much more than just research and commentary.

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Though the university was only a small Baptist college at the time, hundreds took up the call and participated at Dieppe, in the Italian campaign, and in bombing runs over Germany. Some would continue their studies from overseas with correspondence courses, even as they took up arms. Volunteers were also involved on the home front with a contingent of Canadian Officer’s Training Corps organized at McMaster. As the war progressed, the Training Corps became a mandatory component of the men’s education. Other men went west soon after registering for class in 1942, to help bring in the harvest in wheat fields devoid of manpower because of the war. While they did their best to help, the McMaster boys did not distinguish themselves for their farming skills. Female students took up the call as well, serving in the various auxiliaries of the armed forces. Arthur Burridge, after whom our gym is named, believed in equal wartime obligations for men and women and was instrumental in encouraging females to become ambulance drivers and nurses. A Women’s Service Training Detachment was also formed, with volunteers expected to devote at least two hours per week towards “some type of war work.” The women even received training on how to care for civilians, as there were fears that the Luftwaffe might come to Westdale. Regular blackouts were staged in the city as well.

On campus, many beloved traditions were deemed “frills” and eliminated in the name of the war effort. Grad Days, initiations, sports competitions, formals and funding for a new gym were all withdrawn as the conflict became the main focus.

It made for dreary days on campus, especially as almost every student received unsavoury news about a loved one abroad. Matters were not helped in 1942 when everyone in Wallingford Hall was quarantined due to a threatened outbreak of scarlet fever.

With all the bleak war news coming from overseas, students needed some diversions from the realities of war. But those who sought to console themselves with alcohol, an increasingly popular escape, could be expelled if openly caught drinking. Dancing was allowed on campus for the first time, removing the need for the roadhouses and old barns that had once been home to such events.

However, “unsatisfactory relations between the two sexes” were a cause for concern for the Dean; students, meanwhile, thought that in such times of emergency, “necking…ought not to be looked upon with so much official disfavour.” Banquets and the veterans formal broke some of the monotony of war, with a number of social events taking place in the newly constructed Drill Hall. By 1945, things were looking brighter for the Allies and the campus-wide Mac Formal was reinstated.

After six years of conflict, the Second World War finally drew to a close in September 1945. Students began to flood back to campus in a doublecohort-like “Veterans Bulge.” Ottawa supported veterans’ quests for higher education by paying for living expenses and tuition. Expanding numbers meant more spaces on campus needed to be built, including an annex to Edwards Hall and a Rec Hut, complete with bowling alley, piano, and snack bar.

The Victory Gardens were also planted by faculty and students. The temporary war buildings were torn down in the 1970s, but war still has left its mark on McMaster. The creation of the nursing faculty came about because of the war. Bronze plaques commemorating the 35 McMaster men who died can be found in Alumni Memorial Hall next to plaques for the 22 men who died in the First World War; they are all commemorated in services every Remembrance Day. More than just names written in bronze, these represent fellow students who will never return home to McMaster.

Did you know...?

- Edward Togo Salmon’s unusual middle name also originated in conflict. He was born on the same day in 1905 as when Japan’s Admiral Togo sank an entire Czarist Russian naval force.

- The McMaster Canadian Red Cross Corps, organized in the fall of 1941, was the second largest unit of its kind in Canada by the end of the war.

- Remembrance Day services take place in Convocation Hall every 11 November.

COLUMN

Reframing Hamilton

By Jeanette Eby

Love is Extravagant “Love is difficult... The practice of love is complex, contradictory and embattled. If it is possible to maintain a sense of wonder, to entertain serendipity and to enjoy romance within the tangled garden of our urban habitation… I’m all for it.” — John Terpstra (in Falling into Place, 2002)

P

laces create and invite stories. These stories engage people—they make space for empathy, for imagination, for understanding. Every day, as I walk about the city, as I listen in class, as I bump into people I know or share a spontaneous conversation with a stranger, I am surrounded by stories that both overwhelm and inspire me. What is it about a place that can foster storytelling and incite care in citizens?

How do we find a forum where you can meaningfully interact with someone for more than three minutes, beyond the mechanical “How are you?” “I am fine.”?

There are many possibilities for this kind of forum, for a dialogical place where we can give and receive through our stories. One such space for me is the Freeway. The Freeway Coffee House is a nonprofit community café and cultural hub located in the Beasley neighbourhood, right by the downtown Hamilton archway at King and Wellington. But it is more than just a coffee house: it is a community within a community—holding an important role within both the building and in the neighbourhood, affirming Beasley as a beautiful place full of beautiful people.

The Freeway used to be a bank, but a small group of people have transformed it into a space where people can simply be who they are without worrying about being judged or feeling out of place. It is a place where artists can display their work or appreciate the work of others, where musicians can perform and build a local fan base, where friends can enjoy a cup of coffee and chat, where seniors, people with disabilities, individuals who are homeless, students, business people, children, and volunteers can interact and maybe even befriend one another. The Freeway is about creating a space where everyone feels valuable, where everyone has the chance to learn from others and be listened to, where somehow, despite the outside world, everyone is on level ground. It is about celebrating community.

The most vital part of the Freeway is its essential belief in the value and beauty of all people. Everyone has a role to play in our communities. When we get to know each other and hear each other’s stories, stereotypes and walls of prejudice break down. As a community of people, Freeway frequenters are a diverse, energetic, and unlikely group. I call them “Freewayers”; some may stay in the building for no more than five minutes, while others come weekly for concerts, and others still visit daily and get to know all of the baristas and customers.

One such Freewayer is today a good friend of mine, whom I met at the very beginning of my time at the cafe. Her name is Jenny, and she is a vibrant, creative, generous woman whose face is well-known and appreciated throughout the downtown. She has a contagious passion for Hamilton and for her fellow citizens. Whenever I see her, she is wearing a new t-shirt that she has designed and made herself out of various recycled materials. She is always making necklaces and buttons and gives them away excessively. As soon as she has created one thing, she moves onto the next and keeps a running list of people she is making something for. You can always count on her carrying around her latest batch of photos, her favourite subject matter being downtown buildings, vehicles, and citizens that catch her eye.

My favourite gift from Jenny is a large Alice Cooper button made from a photo of a poster outside Hamilton Place. She thought of me when she made it, and was so excited to give it to me. I wear it proudly on my backpack, along with my Beasley and Incite buttons, and my field hockey keychain. It is a gift that is uniquely Jenny and uniquely Hamilton, and it makes for a great conversation-starter with Alice Cooper fans.

Jenny has made her place amidst the chaos and contradictions of downtown Hamilton. She is honest with herself and responsible to her neighbours, without getting boxed in by her hardships or the false assumptions of others. She chooses to recognize and share in the beauty in her community. Her gifts, her smile, and her enthusiasm for people and places bless many fellow citizens. She creates and she shares; she lives out citizenship without thinking twice about it.

When she asks, “How are you?” she genuinely means it. She may forget the occasional name, but she never forgets a face. Every time I see her I am reminded of the extravagance of love.

I think of Jenny, and then I think of how there are so many lonely, discouraged people living across the street and around the corner who do not believe in their intrinsic value or capacity to give. There are widowers who have lived 70 or 80 years’ worth of stories, but do not see a purpose to their lives. There are single mothers living with cockroaches and an empty fridge who do not have the energy to participate fully in their community. There is the man who stands in front of the Freeway’s front window talking to himself with a Bible in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He comes in and drinks coffee after coffee and tells me about his day. I often have no idea what he is saying, but I listen anyway and smile in the hope that there are others in his life who care.

He’ll always smile back. A community must value all of these people. A diverse community can nurture an attitude of respect and openness; it can debunk the stereotypes and open everyone’s eyes to the fact that every person has a story to tell and something to teach us.

At its core, the Freeway ethic is grounded in a firm belief in the value of every human being, and a fervent love for justice. There is no scale to love, and that is its beauty: it is extravagant. Jenny—with her overwhelming generosity, her joy in being, her sense of wonder—is only one of the many manifestations of this extravagance. Jenny offers us a glimpse of hope and truth, which must be shared and towards which we must run. There is no way to measure the impact Jenny has on my life and that of so many others. I care about the Freeway so much and I tend to idealize it. I tend to do this about Hamilton in general, about its many people and places that I love. Nothing is perfect. Living and loving in Hamilton continues to be a beautiful, messy, exhausting, frustrating and inspiring journey. But what is love without imagination? Without irrationality? If we think of our urban habitation as a tangled garden, let us immerse ourselves in its tangles and let us do it in celebration.

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LETTER FROM

Behind the IKEA Curtain:

W

hen we first opened our text of Hamlet in my Shakespeare class, I asked the professor, “Why is this set in Denmark?” After visiting Helsingor, Denmark, and the castle where the Bard’s most famous play is set, I learned that Shakespeare had never been to Denmark.

What’s more, the castle in Helsingor was built primarily to collect tolls from ships coming through the Öresund. There were no serious family feuds and no ghosts; now only two statues of Hamlet and Ophelia emphasize the symbolic, as opposed to actual, importance of the stone building they stand before. I should have known that the play was not even remotely historically accurate. But why Denmark?

“Because it’s not England,” my professor replied. Not only was it not England, it was Scandinavia, which in the 16th century was far outside the purview of the typical Elizabethan theatre-goer. The uncertainty of the play’s setting embodies the underlying themes of uncertain evidence, illusion, and the nagging notion of nihilism. Apparently this clouded view of the Nordic region has persisted. “Why Sweden?” was a question I was asked by almost every Canadian family member and friend, and by every Swede I met.

For my third year of university, I went on exchange to Uppsala Universitet (oo-niversh-eh-tey-it) in Uppsala, Sweden, the fourth largest city in the country and a very clean and efficient 40 minute train ride north of Stockholm. I had always been intrigued by the Nordic countries, for several reasons.

During my first two years studying International Relations, they were often cited by precocious sons and daughters of diplomats as ideal states for their neutrality. Student activists would use them as props for protesting tuition fee increases. If Sweden pays their students to go to school, why can’t we?

Finally, the Swedish body, long, languid, blond and hairless, and the language, full of strange intonation and musicality, were two things that attracted me, probably because I speak a language that can be rather monotonous and I am stocky, dark and hairy. As I tell my friends in Canada, if you are ever unsure as to whether or not you are short and fat, go to Sweden. Being immersed in Sweden from August to June meant that

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I was exposed to many aspects of Swedish culture that have remained within its borders, but it still remains a mystery to me.

I cannot tell you the full story of Sweden, but I hope to relay what you cannot find through IKEA, ABBA and Swedish porn.

When I landed in Stockholm, I looked out the window and thought I had returned home. The flat forestry and slightly rocky terrain was almost an exact replica of the Canadian Shield. But I realized in Uppsala that I was in a place very different from Ontario. As I strode through the city with an overly-stressed North American air, tired from not having slept in a day and struggling to carry all my luggage to my new residence, I quickly became self-conscious.

Beautiful men and women slowly, breezily cycled past me with their backs upright. I got glances from both men and women, up and down. This was my first big shock; men don’t check out men in North America because it’s, like, totally gay. So when I was being checked out by these tall blonde dudes, I thought: “JACKPOT! I’ve found the world’s queertopia!”

Little did I know that my North American gaydar did not come with a Swedish adapter. As it turns out, Swedish men sexualize their bodies in ways that many, often straight, N o r t h American men may be too afraid to do: Swedes sport white undershirts with simple cardigans, and tight pants that sit

a little lower than their waist to show off designer underwear by tennis star Björn Borg. I made the amateur North American mistake of thinking well-dressed men in revealing, fashionable clothing couldn’t possibly be heterosexual. In Sweden, it seemed as though everyone was gay. Since a number of Nordic countries have legalized same-sex unions, they are often perceived as being havens for homosexuals. Stockholm just hosted the Euro-gay-pride festival. But, as I soon discovered in my experiences with the queer student group at Uppsala, many people feign queerness.

At one of the events organized by the club (inappropriately entitled FUGS) some students were interviewed for the local news. The reporter asked them if they were gay, and the three men responded, “Tyvärr inte (unfortunately not).” “Varför tyvärr?

(Why unfortunately?)” asked the reporter.

They responded that being gay was more “fun.” I found out later that there are many more Swedish lesbians than gay men, and that many men say that they are, or wish to be, bisexual. Some guys I met said that they felt that being bisexual was more reflective

of their political identity. Unfortunately, most of them just couldn’t manage to swing both ways—unless they were drunk; the sight of two men making out while wasted was a common one. This eccentric take on sexuality, along with most other aspects of Swedish mentality, were very strange to me.

In my second semester I became a “klubbverker” at a student pub, which was a part of what Canadians would consider a fraternity or sorority. This meant that I was required to work eight-to-nine-hour shifts two or three times week and get paid nothing. Yes, nothing. I mopped up puke from toilets, made banquet dinners for 50, scrubbed the garbage room three times daily with bleach to maintain the ridiculously high Scandinavian hygiene standards (most people, I found, only felt comfortable cleaning things that were already clean), and served booze to alcohol-dependent students, all out of the goodness of my heart.

It was simultaneously troubling—why was I working what would be considered a “normal job” in Canada, for free?—and yet fun,

Blonde Mysteries in Sweden

because I had nothing else to do. School is free in Sweden, and students get 8000 Swedish Kronor ($1200 Canadian) from the government every month to pay for housing, food, and alcohol, but in the faculty of Arts, classes are held once or twice a week and a course lasts for only one month. For each course we did minimal readings and handed in one or two assignments. There were always re-tests, and exams lasted for up to five hours so we had time to eat, think, and relax.

For many Swedes, this was still a supposedly stressful endeavour. One of my co-workers opened his agenda to a particularly busy week in the fall (“Det vara ganska stressing”: it was rather stressful) and there was one thing written on each day. Perhaps the goal of Swedish agendas is to keep them as immaculate as their garbage room floor. Another co-worker of mine had only taken one course over the summer, but still received student loans, and worked every Sunday afternoon at the student pub. He thus had no paying job, and no school, but this didn’t appear to be a problem. Another friend was still receiving student loans, but not attending school, and eventually took a paid job

for 20 hours a week. He found this to be ganska stressing also. But it was just a façade of anxiety. Everyone seemed to be in a permanent state of ambivalence. I became less stressed too. Even though I had to speak a language I had only spent six months learning and I had to learn how to mix Swedish White Russians, at least when I was working in the campus pub I could escape from the overwhelming feeling that there were only so many hours of sunlight in a day; that, as I watched the sun fade, I had to think of something—anything—to do.

Once I started work at the student pub, my peer group altered from one of American and German exchange students to pure ethnic Swedes. Unlike with the foreign students who were eager to speak English and make international friends, it took a very long time to become close with the Swedes. I have a number of Swedish friends now, but the process of becoming friends with them was very different from when I made friends in my first year at university in Vancouver. Many of our initial meetings involved alcohol, but my Swedish friends and I also became close

through shared experiences: skiing, fika (the Swedish word for having a daily cup of coffee accompanied by at least three desserts), and dinners. What stuck me about these experiences was how little I learned about my new friends. We would sit and chat, discuss some things that had happened that day and my adjustment to Swedish culture, but our conversations were punctuated by long bouts of silence. The most important thing I learned while in Sweden was that this silence between people getting to know each other should not be treated as a painful awkwardness, but rather as a process by which people gain trust, understanding, and comfort. At the end of my 10 months in Sweden, I had achieved this sense of comfort with many Swedish friends, but there was still so much beneath the surface that I had yet to uncover. I will always remember the whisky that my friend Anders would measure out in six centilitres for his walk home, but I don’t know what drove him to work every Friday night making vegan dinners for upwards of 100 people for no pay and little appreciation. I know Simon really liked the Canadian band Tegan and Sara, but I don’t know why he had such a tenu-

ous relationship with his girlfriend. I know that Lena loved mashed potatoes but I will never know what was behind the last text message she sent to me: “I’m emotionally retarded.” Although I spent a lot of time with all of these friends and we shared many experiences, the moments of silence that we endured—a trait that many would claim is common of the Nordic countries—will always be a mystery to me. Although silence between two friends may indicate a certain comfort level, I wonder what could have been divulged in those hushed moments.

What was being left unsaid?

After spending a year in Sweden, it seems to me that our Anglo/North American uncertainties of Scandinavia have not been solved by listening to bands like The Knife and Jens Lekman and drinking the Lingonsylt that is now available in IKEA stores everywhere. One of the most common phrases I heard in Sweden was “Jag vet inte” (I don’t know). Perhaps uncertainty is embedded in Swedish culture, just one small step to the left of neutrality. But when I think of Sweden, I think of my relationships with my Swedish friends: “Jag vet inte faktiskt.” I actually do not know.

incite 21

COLUMN

, My Mom s Dream of Chickens

O

n a recent perfectly crisp October afternoon, over 100 people filled a pair of school buses for “From Seed to Scrap,” a local food tour.

Something about the fresh air, the barelywide-enough vinyl seating, and the simple anticipation of going someplace new created a buzz of excitement, reminding me of the build-up to grade school field trips. My own rush was fuelled when I surveyed the crowd and saw the diversity within it. Families with young children sat across from Portuguese elders, themselves located down the aisle from professors and students fraternizing with chefs. I am still not able to fully explain why the study of food appeals to me, but its universality—as evidenced here—is undoubtedly part of it.

Our first stop was Heart’s Content farm, located just outside of Hamilton’s city limits. You would never find it without either knowledge of its location or a helpful dose of happenstance, nestled as it is between a disturbing abundance of corn and soy fields. It made me think of the need for a wandering spirit to find Narnia in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. On the other side of our wardrobe, small patches of land yield an abundance of greens, chickens graze freely, and horses survey the land.

It took just a 20-minute drive out of the city to induce childlike glee among grown adults on the tour.

The farm itself is only two years old, but the land has been in the owner’s family significantly longer. Joining the likes of Plan B and Simpler Thyme, two well-established organic Community Supported Agriculture farms (CSAs), Heart’s Content now offers local organic produce to Hamiltonians. In the CSA model, urbanites pay upfront for a share of the harvest and then meet the farmer, or more likely the farmer’s staff, at a weekly pickup depot to procure their produce.

Organic family CSAs around Hamilton eagerly accept, and are in fact dependent on, the benevolence of my generation to help them plow, plant, weed, and harvest, particularly since modern aids such as tractors and pesticides are shunned by these operations. The transfer of this skillset is a beautiful and important process, but today it faces extinction as Heart’s Content is confronting

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government repossession of its property.

The story is not its alone, though, as family farms are too often reluctantly taken over by agribusinesses (those folks growing the corn and soy). Heart’s Content’s owners are older than most of the tourgoers on “From Seed to Scrap,” but still driven by a relentless passion for their work. The threat of losing their land has devastated them. Will theirs be the last generation to know self-sufficiency? To grow and raise their own food? To truly understand the land?

We have today become shamefully estranged from the ability to provide for ourselves, to the extent that the idea of “providing for oneself” has become synonymous with financial independence rather than anything as seemingly primitive as farming. We never meet the people “doing stuff for us”—those who prepare our food, sew our clothing, and build our houses—and we never expect to. We take it for granted that if we pay, the goods will appear and we will not have to inquire into what it takes for them to go from seed to scrap. Even less intuitive is a desire to claim ownership over our food and grow it ourselves.

This disconnection between production and consumption might help explain the nostalgia of tour-goers as they finally met the faces behind their food. Gaining insight into what goes into putting food on the table is the first step towards a culture of food autonomy.

Further along the tour route, we dropped in at the Dundurn Castle Kitchen Garden and West Avenue Growers, two fertile fields in the downtown core.

One woman on tour was unexaggeratedly flabbergasted to discover such a wealth of urban food production in Hamilton. Whenever I hear people talk about how dirty, desolate, and sketchy Hamilton is, I want to plop them on a local food tour, since it is hard to uphold these perceptions while standing in the middle of the Dundurn Castle garden. In it, you are surrounded by every imaginable Victorian-era-appropriate species of vegetable and flower. The hosts greeted us in nineteenth-century garb and there was a sense that, for the 20 or so minutes we were there, we had regressed to a much simpler time.

Of all the fields we toured, our last stop at West Avenue Growers was by far

the most inspiring. The growers, a trio of friends, decided earlier this year to dig up their front and back yards and a few months later found themselves with enough food to feed themselves and their neighbours, to do preserves, and to sell at the local Makers Market. No horses, no fancy costumes; just three friends wielding shovels. While their sense of self-sufficiency and entrepreneurship was well worth taking in during our time at West Avenue Growers, I could not help but be distracted as I stared down a Brussels sprout plant for the first time.

Having Brussels sprouts, among other edible vegetation, in city yards is becoming more widespread as urban agriculture gains momentum. There is actually a movement among certain CSAs to support urban agriculture as they attempt to downsize. Farmers are keen to encourage their city-dwelling clientele to grow their own rather than create a dependency on their weekly food share.

Plan B and Simpler Thyme had over 1000 weekly food share orders between them this summer, no small feat. West Avenue Growers does not boast a yield close to this amount but is living—and growing—proof that self-sufficiency with food can be realized in an urban setting as supposedly dirty, desolate, and sketchy as Hamilton’s.

Here, my vegetarianism nudges me to assert that gardening is altogether sufficient, but I can also appreciate omnivorous needs. The next phase of urban agriculture for cities is adopting bylaws permitting residential chicken coops. I will never be as proud of my mom as I was the day she declared over breakfast that she wanted a backyard chicken coop. If my pseudo-suburban nuclear Toronto family can begin to provide its own food, there is hope for a future of urban self-sufficiency after all. A row of Brussels sprouts and a few hens is by no means enough for a family to rely on, but it’s a start. London and Niagara Falls have already passed laws permitting backyard chicken coops and Waterloo is currently considering one. Hamilton will vote on its own urban chicken bylaw this month. Let’s hope council passes it. If they do, maybe next year we can call the bus tour “From Egg to Nugget.”

DIVERSIONS

BY N ICK DAVIES

BY CHRIS H ILBRECHT

BY I SHANI NATH AND A NDREW PRINE

Why I hate baby showers...

BY CHRIS H ILBRECHT

incite 23

POETRY

The Monarch Spinning a case for metamorphosis, soon to leave, the monarch hangs its womb from the neck of a swan plant, and when I tire of digging through potato leaves for grasses and nightshades I turn back to watch the butterfly’s motionless body, black and orange through a semitranslucent green aspiring film, crowned with gold, cupped in fullness after all, eventually to turn away testing stiff joints in silence as though not for me to look for a patient way of being untold.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY M ICHAEL WEXLER

Paul Huebener G RAPHIC BY AVa D IDEBAN

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