March 2015

thenewspaper U of T’s Independent Newspaper Since 1978

vol 37 – issue VII

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Editor-In-Chief:..........David Stokes Managing Editor: Anna Bianca Roach Features Editor:.......George Neish Music Editor:..........Melissa Vincent Comment Editor: Zach Morgenstern Science Editor:......Emily Posteraro Copy Edito:..Rebecca M. Williams Design Editor:.....Daniel Glassman Contributors Raphael Elkabas-Besnard (“Raf”), Sabal Al-Khateeb, Ed Zou, Alexander Kershaw, Prisca Lam, Peter Liakhov, Nic Farber, John Hitchcock, Yukon Damov, Dean McHugh, Caroline Kamm, Astoria Felix .............................................................. the newspaper - University of Toronto’s Independent Paper since 1978. the newspaper is published by Planet Publications Inc., a non-profit corporation.

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FL ASHBA C K

JOHN LENNON AND YOKO ONO AT VARSITY STADIUM

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BY SABAL AL-KHATEEB

arsity Stadium opened in 1889, and not only hosted U of T teams, but was once the home of the Toronto Argonauts. The Varsity Stadium has also hosted the Grey Cup, Vanier Cup, and football during the 1976 Montreal Summer Olympics.

This coming summer, the stadium will be used for the Parapan American Games. Up until 2007, when the old stadium was demolished to make room for a new one, Varsity Stadium could seat up to 25,000 people. An imporntant event in rock history, the Rock ‘n’ Roll Revival, was hosted there in September of 1969. The event was documented in a film, Sweet Toronto and John Lennon’s album, Live Peace in Toronto. The show featured 1950s musicians such as Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry as well as a newer generation of performers including Alice Cooper and The Doors. Lennon headlined the festival. It was the ex-Beatle’s first performance since the band’s break up. The Beatles final performance together had also taken place in Toronto in 1966 at the Maple Leaf Gardens. Lennon’s performance in 1969 was a last-minute deal. After Lennon agreed to play the festival, he only had enough time to assemble a group of guitarist Eric Clapton and drummer Alan White and rehearse in the plane during their flight from London. Most Torontonians thought Lennon’s performance was a hoax until they witnessed him being escorted to Varsity Stadium by police motorcade. However, many were not impressed by Yoko Ono, who was described as shrieking throughout the performance. (It’s awesome) Witnesses of this event recalled booing. Ono has told the National

Post in 2000, “I was never exposed to a huge audience like that. I was dazed.” Lennon, on the other hand, had a different impression of the Torontonian reaction to the breakup of the Beatles and his performance.

Upon his return to the UK, he told a music magazine, “the buzz was incredible, I never felt so good in all my life. Everybody was with us and leaping up and down doing the peace sign.” n .................................................................

CAM PUS SCEN E

TAs TALK STRIKE

BY JOHN HITCHCOCK

the newspaper spoke to some TAs about their experiences being on strike.

Sarah, Anthropology “So far I think that its obviously not an ideal experience. It’s very cold outside, but overall its been very positive. It’s been great to meet fellow graduate students and work together. And really we’ve had a great number of wonderful conversations with supportive community members, undergraduate students, who’ve been very lovely. Obviously there have also been people who have not been so lovely on the street. And we’ve had a couple of striking TAs that have been hit by cars....This is my first strike. I firmly believe in what we’re fighting for. I look forward to talking to more people in the street about it.

Victor Lorenz, Geography It’s both exhilarating and really difficult.

Absolutely, we’re out in the cold trying to fight for some justice for ourselves.

It’s difficult to hear the university’s communications because it seems that they’re talking to everyone except for us. ... Members from a variety of different departments are walking picket lines together, meeting each other. Talking to each other, learning about common issues. It’s an experience in solidarity. It’s an interesting experience, and I think spirits are high at the moment.

Andrea Butler, Cinema Studies Well, so far, I would have to say that, in terms of the camaraderie and how many students have been coming out, it’s been really encouraging and very exciting and it’s really great to see the support that we are getting. Of course striking is not the ideal situation for everyone, and we would like to get this cleared up as soon as possible so that we can go back to teaching the courses we love. But everyone’s working really hard and it’s nice to see everyone pulling together. We want to teach, but this is what we need to do to move forward.

Julius: Well, I’d rather be working with my students than being on strike, but there is a lot of solidarity and people have been standing with us, which I think is important. I know it’s really cold outside but we’re doing what we have to do. When you are with people who are passionate about the cause that you’re passionate about it’s not so bad.

Benji: It’s a bad situation for any university community to go through a strike. I’ve been through two strikes in my academic career, once as an undergrad and once in college.and I know it’s rough on both sides, but I respect both sides.

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TA L K

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CIVIL RIGHTS ICON SPEAKS AT INNIS RAF I want my students to get the most of their education here. I prepped them before we went on strike on what to do to keep on working, to keep on working on their assignments. I gave them well in advance information on the strike so they knew get to me early on their assignments, to ask me as many questions as possible. I expanded my office hours before the strike to make sure they had the best possibility to succeed, but I still need to strike because, if I don’t strike we’re not going to get a better deal.

And it’s not just about me, it’s about the academic community as a whole here. ... Do you want it to be for profit or the expansion of knowledge?” n .................................................................

COMMENT

WHY WE NEED TO DISCUSS THE POLITICS OF ENGINEERING

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BY ZACK MORGENSTERN

nyone who follows student politics closely will know that the University of Toronto Students Union (UTSU) faces particularly vitriolic opposition from two campus groups—Trinity and Engineering students. Trinity has a reputation for poshness and reactionary traditions, but I’d never considered that a seemingly non-political program of study like engineering would be a bastion for political dissent.

But while non-humanities programs may seem apolitical - as they do not involve debates about morality and policy—a number of them may in fact protect or even encourage conservative viewpoints, precisely because they are not based around questioning the political status quo.

The more I paid attention to student politics, the greater range of problematic posts I saw from key figures in the U of T engineering community, in some cases dismissing union and even equity politics outside and inside the UTSU context. As an outsider, I see these statements only when they emerge in my online sphere, but an engineer at a rally this week told me, “things are way worse on the inside.” There is indeed a political quality to being in engineering: engineers, rightly or wrongly, are told by society that their strengths will help them succeed economically, and as such have a perceived material interest in dismissing the politics of change.

In the last few weeks at U of T, the reactionary side of engineering culture has reared its head in practice. An event on Facebook recently emerged advertising an “Africa” pub night at Suds, the engineering pub. A student quickly took to the page expressing concern that the event could easily become an

offensive, cultural-appropriation party.

This reaction was perfectly reasonable, especially considering that EngSoc had got in trouble earlier this school year for hosting a “fiesta” pub night, complete with a Mexican-caricature mascot. Rather than understanding this concern, a number of high profile engineers jumped to defend the Africa event and dismissed the criticism of it as anti-engineer bias.

Around the 20th of February, EngSoc drew controversy for refusing to endorse a vigil for the Muslim victims of the Chapel Hill shootings, with their president citing the principle that EngSoc avoided taking political stands so as not to misrepresent their politically diverse membership.

Finally, on Friday, March 6th, the day of a student-TA solidarity demonstration, the Lady Godiva Band (the engineering marching band) created a Facebook event using internet-style poor spelling that called (roughly) for a parody strike protest and contained links to a number of Marxist groups including the Young Communist League.

I later found the band playing loudly right next to a TA picket and holding up sarcastic protest signs, including one that seemed to make references to the TA’s (misleading) hourly wage. While the band refused to proclaim their political intentions to a questioning union supporter, their action showed little respect for the union chants their noise was drowning.

Of course it would be a mistake to paint engineers with a broad brush.

There are a range of political views in U of T Engineering’s UTSU opposition camp, and there are quieter engineers that don’t belong to that camp at all. In the lead up to the CUPE3902 strike, I was told a more nuanced story about how one union organizer had a difficult time reaching out to some engineering graduate students. After the union began to make gains for engineers at the bargaining table, he explained, he was able to win over these graduate students. That all said, the fact that not all engineers are conservative does not mean that conservatism in engineering should not be called out. Rather, students should talk lucidly about the political forces in their communities so they can be best mobilized, or in this case, mobilized against. n

O

BY ZACK MORGENSTERN

n Monday March 5th, John Carlos, the bronze medal winner in the 1968 Mexico Olympics spoke at Innis College in an event that discussed how racism manifests itself and also paid tribute to Carlos’ life long friend, Australian 200m silver-medalist Peter Norman.

Carlos is best known for what he did after winning his medal. He, and fellow African-American, gold-medalist Tommie Smith, upon receiving their medals, performed the black power salute on the podium. They also removed their shoes to symbolize the African-American struggle with poverty. Smith and Carlos were sent home and banned from the Olympics, despite initial protests from their coach, at the behest of IOC president and suspected anti-semite Avery Brundage.

At Monday’s event, Carlos discussed his discovery of racism. He recalled being a young child and watching a white-dominated fire department carelessly tear up furniture throughout a Harlem apartment in response to a false alarm. Even from that young age he saw racism where it was not explicitly declared in the form of white dominated institutions and African-American poverty. He told the audience his hero was Robin Hood, and after his parents told him they could not afford to provide food for his starving friends, he took to stealing supplies from freight trains to help those in need.

Carlos, of course, faced explicit discrimination as well. He told another story about seeing a white guy getting beaten up. When he tried to break up the fight the white victim called him a racial slur.

With this background, and in the context of 1960s American racial tension, Carlos, inspired by academic activist-academic Harry Edwards, joined other black athletes in considering boycotting the 1968 Olympics, based on the principle that white racists should not get the benefit of seeing black talent. This decision was reversed, however, as Carlos and others felt the Olympics was one of few platforms for black athletes to express their dissatisfaction with the state of America. Individual athletes were encouraged to chose their own form of protest, and Smith and Carlos chose the black power fist. Carlos emphasized that the fist was not a symbol of aggression but a symbol of solidarity, as each finger that unites in the fist is symbolic of a different racialized group.

At the end of his talk Carlos took questions. He argued that modern athletes are like racehorses fitted with blinders, taught to think only about their glory as individuals and not about the plight that even their own family members face as racialized individuals.

While he was no doubt encouraged by recent displays in which a number of basketball and football players wore “I can’t breathe” shirts in solidarity with Eric Garner, he called for athletes to make more of an effort to express support for womens’ issues, such as challenging domestic violence.n

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On the eve of his retirement, Professor of philosophy Douglas Hutchinson sits down with Ed Zou of the newspaper to talk about activism, medical marijuana, and how philosophy could change your life. ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... ho are you?

by the people. It’s clear to me now I was in some kind of vanguard but it was really upsetting to discover that

CAN’T

people who called themselves philosophers, people who thought they could have the skill to administer University, could be so wrong about the status of this, and listen to the wrong advice, when if you went for a walk with any single one of these people they would be able to see probably that it’s no big deal, it’s just marijuana.

There was never a person who

“PROFESSORS

problem, not my conduct. The law was an ass. After people had attacked me improperly, after they hadn’t understood that the status of the law was so dodgy. After people had been following the advice of prosecutors and lawyers and cops rather than me, when I could have told them and did tell them repeatedly the facts, which they eventually had to agree were true, I got a bit impatient. I lost confidence with my colleagues and I went into a bit of a hole of activism. I ended up doing a lot of work for other people accused of this crime, and defending them, and finding, among other things, that being a lawyer is quite easy, even if you don’t have a law degree. I had quite a few victories in court, people dropping charges.

The problem is that the main victory was not going to be a victory for this or that defendant or this or that student or assistant. I wanted the beast to be slain. I wanted to drive the javelin into the heart of the beast and make the poor creature come crashing down.

It took a number of years working in court to realize that Justice Canada have far more resources than I do, and they have a weapon that I can’t possibly work with, which is the weapon to drop cases. In other words, they can always drop a case at any time, and they will waste your resources until they find the best time to drop your case. In this way, you’ll never get the issue brought to judges. I eventually realized the illegitimate way in which poorly crafted law and bad jurisprudence is defended from real scrutiny. I have an argument that needs to be heard, and I have not been able to get it into court.

So I gave up on that. Also for personal reasons, because it had more to do with people in the States, I met a woman there several years later, married last week. I have a graduate student and myself working on the Protrepticus [one of Aristotle’s lost works] in the States. It wasn’t clever being on the forefront of activism and try to penetrate that U.S. border repeatedly. So what I did is I retreated from that. I’m quite glad I did because it was, in the end, a futile measure.

We are continuing to involve our thinking about Canada’s medical marijuana. Many of the things I have said years ago are now being said

BE

CRIMINALS”

could discipline marijuana use in this college from the time of the passing

of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982, until 2005, when a student was unceremoniously expelled from residence by the then-Provost, at which time his friends complained about the professor. That’s how it started. It started from a stupid attempt to enforce a law which didn’t have community support.

My comment is this: anybody who has read Mill’s On Liberty, should be in no doubt that this is a stupid liberty to take away from people. If there’s somebody who tries to argue that the law has validity even though it’s been struck down, they

don’t know law, and if they think this is a matter for criminal law, then they don’t know philosophy. I must say I was shocked not to find that opinion universally spread in my circle. It wasn’t. But there were no particular attacks, I want to make that clear.

There was one—brief—squeal from a first year student who said, “Ah ha!

I know why the Prof is so disorganized! And he actually made us answer a question on a Bob Marley song in our exam!” This is true: I set the lyrics of a song about friendship—I had to relate it to Seneca, it’s a very good question. When this squib went up on some internet site, there was tremendous response from a few of my former students, saying, “No, no, I know the person. This is where you’re wrong.” There was one brief tiny attack in hyperspace, and then there was a massive flood of defence. I never felt my reputation really had a problem, although I’d find myself

ber Far Nic ge: Ima

Hutchinson: [Laughs.] It depends who you are. If you’re a U.S. Customs officer, I’m not going to say “I’m a philosopher,” because then he’ll say “secondary screening.” That happened to me. Philosophy is not an approved profession. It may have been associated in the officer’s mind with questioning authority. I can imagine the conversation afterwards: “Hey, isn’t there a rule against philosophers in the U.S.A.?” If you were a U.S. Customs officer, I would say “Professor.” That would be a pretty safe answer.

But sometimes they think maybe the guy’s lying. Maybe he’s not really a professor. So they ask, “What’s your field? What’s your subject?”

Or perhaps they studied philosophy once, like twenty years ago as college students and have an interest. This is how I start: “Well my field really is history of philosophy, but especially Ancient Greek and Latin philosophy...” and I just start drivelling onwards, about what my current project is, and I know for a fact that they hate to hear that. As soon as they know that they’re in the presence of a professor who’s at risk of boring them with a lecture, they have all the information they need. tn: There have been accusations towards you, regarding your usage of medical marijuana. What philosophy might you have to offer on the discussion of marijuana usage?

I’m happy to say these accusations are not part of the present reality. The time when there was stress and difficulty about this was 2005, 2006, and then there was a bit of an aftermath. The period in question was three, four or five years after the law changed in Canada. I had to face accusations, with processes that were looking at going in a disciplinary or criminal direction, or with lawsuits or public tribunals. It’s to be conceived not in terms of present reality but in terms of the process this country was going through to try and get straight about this whole business.

During the fall of 2013 the students and I went to the Fisher Rare Books Library. Then we went to this pub on College for lunch. It was our last class. In between the library and the pub, I smoked a spliff. It was not an issue, it was not a complete surprise to anybody. It doesn’t need to be be talked about, it’s not important.

That’s the thing which was really absurd to me. It never was important.

We’ve known that since the ’70s.

This is far below the level of importance that should accrue to criminal matters.

It’s the mixing up of criminality in this business that’s caused all the problems, because professors can’t be criminals. You can’t be writing references for law school or med school if you yourself are a criminal.

In strict honour, if I was convinced of a criminal offence I would quit;

I would resign. It’s not compatible with this status. The reason I didn’t, was because the law was the

rather alienated from my local environment, as a consequence of that. But, you know, it’s not an issue anymore, I don’t think. tn: Do you have any plans for your retirement?

The essential idea is I’m proposing to keep on teaching philosophy in a de-institutionalized way, such as public unofficial courses like evenings in pubs and evenings in cafes—discussions about death and about new books, and sequences of meetings on Seneca.

But I’m also interested in getting experience from more experienced councillors, and developing a practice in applying philosophy to those who can really benefit from it. By that I mean people like me whose job is to help others: teachers, professors, administrators, also doctors, nurses, people working in hospitals, as well as psychologists.

It quite often happens that people need some kind of counselling which is not psychology and is not psychiatry, but has the same good effects as a good psychology would or a good spoken psychiatry would, because it takes away confusion and distress. It’s this overlap between counselling, psychology and applied philosophy that I’m interested in developing. n

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HART HOUSE PUTS NATIONAL TREASURES ON DISPLAY

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BY YUKON DAMOV

Image: David Stokes

century ago, Tom Thomson and the men who would later form the Group of Seven lived in a Canada which had a population roughly equivalent to the current size of Toronto. They took what they saw of Canadian nature and painted it through their point of view: "Canada," as formed by the landscape of northern Ontario, but a place that could only be Canada.

Their work would eventually come to be stereotyped as the only worthwhile art ever produced in this country. But at the time their fall colours earned them notoriety as the "Hot Mush School," and drew comparisons to Hungarian goulash and "the insides of a drunkard's stomach."

Now they’re the venerable, sturdy classics, “the ones that got out” and announced the nation’s artistic potential on the international art stage.

Along with many of their contemporaries, many Group of Seven paintings are on display at the University of Toronto Art Centre as part of A Story of Canadian Art: As Told by the Hart House Collection, curated by Dr. Christine Boyanoski. It’s a story of the symbiotic relationship between Hart House and contemporary artists, and the promotional effects of Rt. Hon. Vincent Massey, in the early days.

The Group of Seven was founded and celebrated its first exhibition in 1920, a year after Hart House opened. Massey, like Lawren Harris, was a principal descendant of the Massey-Harris fortune and the House was Massey’s gift to the University of Toronto, in honour of his grandfather, Hart Massey.

Vincent Massey would then go on to play a major role in building Hart House’s collection, as a part of his foundational contribution to Canadian cultural enterprises. When not busy gallivanting to the United States or United Kingdom on ambassadorial duties in the 1920s and 30s, or serving as a trustee at the National Gallery, Massey was involved with the House’s collection. He was present at the meetings in 1925 which led to the House’s mandate to buy

the best in contemporary Canadian art, and his special grant in 1934 was used to purchase Charles Comfort’s Young Canadian (pictured), among others.

Even before the House opened, Massey had encouraged the creation of the U of T Sketch Committee (later the Hart House Art Committee) by promising it a dedicated space in new student centre. Its barren walls needed interior decorating, and the students on the committee would become responsible for purchasing “the best in contemporary art,” committing the institution to living artists.

The committee’s first acquisition, A.Y. Jackson’s Georgian Bay, November (1921), signalled the direction the House’s collection would take. With the exception of the National Gallery of Canada, no other institution was purchasing Group of Seven in 1922.

Every Group of Seven member except for Frank Johnston is represented in the exhibition’s 41 items.

“What I think is very interesting is that as they began to collect beyond the Group, it was still very much in terms of the Group’s point-of-view,” said U of T art history professor and former AGO Chief Curator, Dennis Reid. This could be attributed in part to the Group’s direct influence on the collection: Lawren Harris and A.J. Casson sat on the acquisitions advisory committee from 1924-1935,

“Their fall colours earned them notoriety as the “Hot Mush School,” and drew comparisons to Hungarian goulash and ‘the insides of a drunkard’s stomach.’” and then A.Y. Jackson joined the committee from 1934-1948.

Despite being a very male and Toronto-centric exhibition, it included Emily Carr from British Columbia, some paintings from Quebecois artists, and Prudence Heward.

“They’re not all in the top echelon,” said Reid, “but still some real zingers.”

Heward is represented by her incredible portrait Dark Girl (193535). Professor Reid: “Up until recently, everyone thought that the young woman was in a tropical setting. Then someone pointed out that in fact these are sumachs. It is one of the most perceptive portraits. You just feel the personality so strongly, to such a degree that you don’t even think of her sitting there nude.”

Comfort’s Young Canadian (1932) is one of the most referenced and reproduced Canadian paintings of the 1930s. It sets his friend and fellow painter Carl Schaefer in the middle of a field during the Great Depression. Professor Reid: “There’s a funny realism to it, though it’s so stylized. There’s an element of despair, but at the same time—visionary eyes. You don’t write it off as somebody lost and wondering, “What the hell next?”, due to the very fact that he’s sitting there with

the brush in his hand. … I always really liked the hues in this one. A very limited range of hues but still an incredible tonal range within that.”

“The way they’ve installed [the exhibition] helps a great deal because it is related work together and the work resonates together for various reasons, and that’s really impressed me. Christine [Boyanoski] has really hung them beautifully.”

Not everybody is as impressed.

“The nostalgic and overwhelming power of the natural landscape seems to trump all other modes of visual expression in the Canadian consciousness,” said contemporary Canadian artist Charles Pachter, when asked for his thoughts prior to seeing the exhibition.

“I would say that Charles is probably looking at it in a singular way, or looking too closely at the myth of it,” responded Barbara Fischer, chief curator for the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery and University of Toronto Art Centre, which federated into a single entity this year. She would credit the paintings’ appeal instead to “a sense of familiarity … a part of a sense of collective belonging.”

By the ‘70s, security and curatorial concerns forced most of the collection into storage. (Incidentally, three paintings of far less value were stolen from three separate locations on campus this February.) Many of the paintings in this current exhibition were taken on a national tour in 1987-88, and many have been lent out, most frequently Tom Thomson’s The Pointers (1916-1917) and Lawren Harris’ Isolation Peak (1930).

Like many major museums, U of T can only display so many of its roughly 600 pieces at a time. Chief curator Fischer dreams that UTAC and JMB eventually conjoin spaces in a single, dedicated building, but adding space in order to display the national treasures is not a priority.

“We don’t want to make the museum a shrine, so when you only show the one generation—that was never the idea.”

Rather than making long-term loans to larger spaces, or selling the national treasures, which Fischer explained is an ethically dubious proposition, the current exhibition is arguably a more progressive way of dealing with accessibility issues.

“Museums are pledged to take care of the works that they have,” she said, and the paintings’ national tour exposes them to a maximum number of eyeballs, while the loan fees generate revenue which is in turn used to keep the paintings at a high standard of maintenance.”

And just as the collection is called A Story of Canadian Art, and was never meant to encompass the whole country or tell the whole story, so the acquisitions process remains Toronto-centric, and arguably just as influential in writing the contemporary tale, as an invitation for a Fischer-commissioned piece to represent Canada at the 2009 Venice Biennale can attest.

The touring exhibition began its national criss-cross in Alberta in 2013, and will finish in Ontario at Queen’s University in Kingston in July. n

PREPARING TO WRITE AN E$$AY ∞

CAMPU S

Images by Alexander Kershaw

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Four Dudes Try To Avoid Dying Beneath A Toronto Cemetary

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BY PETER LIAKHOV

rban exploration is not a pastime for the faint of heart. Leaky sewers, dilapidated hospitals, and towering half-built skyscrapers are not the safest places to explore. But for the brave few who do, and come out in one piece, there is a joy to this adventure that is unparalleled in our cosseted and safety obsessed culture. A couple of days ago, I spoke with Brad Pope, one such explorer, and he told me the cautionary tale of his closest brush with death.

That particular adventure began when Brad’s urban exploration buddies, John and Justin, came to him with the proposition of scouting out the storm-drains that run below Toronto. Specifically, they wanted to explore the storm-drain below Mount Pleasant Cemetery, which they knew how to break into. Brad couldn’t help but say yes.

That Saturday, they packed their gear (one set of rubber boots, three flashlights, a camera, and a pack of cigars), and after the sun had set, went off to begin their underground adventure. John, the leader of their company, also made sure that they did nothing too numerologically inauspicious; when Brad had asked him if he could bring Zoey, his girlfriend at the time, John shot down the idea, arguing that that would make four of them. One doesn’t go exploring grated-off storm drains with such an unlucky number of people.

Though when Brad expressed reservations due to the dismaying weather report promising “heavy rains” that evening, John brushed him off: “Come on man, don’t be such a wuss.”And so, with luck on their side and the weatherman against them, the three intrepid adventurers headed to the Rosedale ravine.

At the very bottom of the ravine, built into the slope was the old storm-drain, its edges coated in moss, with a dribble of water spilling through its rusty bars. On the far left of the grate was their entrance, a loose bar, broken off from the cross beam.

They pulled the bar aside and one-by-one they clambered through the narrow gap into the drain.

Turning on their flashlights they were reminded that they were far from the first explorers in that place.

The cavernous walls of the drain exit chamber were covered by stratae of graffiti. At the very end of this subterranean art gallery, smack in the middle, there was concrete tunnel about five feet 10 inches in diameter, the portal that connected that cavern to the labyrinth of the Rosedale drainage system.

After taking a brief moment to admire the art, the trio filed into the tunnel. With John in the front, Brad in the middle, and Justin at the back they walked deeper and deeper into the winding darkness. There was no sound, except for the echoing voices of the adventurers and the constant trickle of water beneath their feet.

What most surprised Brad was the graffiti on the tight concrete walls of the tunnel. “The deeper we went, the older and sparser it got, ‘so and so was here, 1973,’ or Satanic graffiti from the 1980s.” They even found semi-natural formations, stalactites of what Brad could only describe as “goo”, dripping semi-solid from the ceiling and forming glistening mounds on the floor.

Along the sides there were smaller tunnels, pipes and passageways that snaked off into blackness. Occasionally they passed an alcove with a ladder that ascended to the cemetery above.

About an hour in, Brad began to notice that something was amiss. The water, which had been a trickle as they entered, had now more than quadrupled its former depth. They had to spread their steps wide and duck walk curved sides of the cave if they wanted to avoid stepping in the water. The water was, by the way, disgusting. As Brad recalls, “it smelled like old hay, but metallic” and “had a strange sheen

Splash! Plop! “Eww, corpse-water!!!” to it.” Looks and smells aside, what really made them avoid stepping in it was the thought of where it drained from—the cemetery above.

After about an hour, the small concrete pipe opened up to another cavern, and a fork in the road. Like something out of an old Slavic fairy-tale, the three travelers were faced with three paths. Having talked it over for a little bit, they picked one at random, and continued walking.

As they continued exploring, spirits were high, but Brad couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that something was wrong.

“Hey, wasn’t the water level lower when we came in?” he asked his friends.

“That’s just because we’re going deeper, that’s just how it works.” John responded.

“Yeah…I guess that makes sense.”

They continued onwards, and the water kept rising.

Eventually their legs began to hurt, as their wide steps turned into a straddle, and the straddle turned into near splits—walking while avoiding the water became a literal pain in the ass. The more Brad’s legs hurt the more his thoughts returned to the weather report.

Suddenly, from behind: Splash!

Justin had mis-stepped and stumbled into the water.

“Ew, corpse-water….whatever, I’m over it.” said Justin, resigning himself to walking straight through the dirty stream.

The other two took a moment to weigh their options: Cemetery Ground Water vs. Pain in the Ass. Plop, plop, splash.

They chose the corpse water and continued through the tunnel with a normal, if unusually wet stride. John was happy that he brought rubber boots.

The next time they stopped, the water had reached almost to their knees and threatened to undo John’s good decision. Justin ran off to see if there was anything interesting up ahead.

Brad piped up, “Think about it, when we came in there was just a trickle of water. Even if the water is deeper here, it’s moving towards the exit. There’s this much water there now.”

A moment of silence.

“Yeah…I guess you’re right.”

“I think we should turn back.”

Justin returned, “This tunnel is crazy! It just keeps going and going and going.”

They chose not to go any further.

As they headed back towards the exit, the water was rising faster than they could make progress. Each step became harder and harder to take as the water level got ever higher. The water was cresting white around their legs. They had to yell now to hear each other over the din of the rushing water.

Brad shouted, “Guys, perhaps we should be going a little faster?”

John shot back, “What? I’m not going to run.”

They reached the ante-chamber with the fork.

Except now it had turned into a thigh-high raging whirlpool.

“Hey guys, do you remember which tunnel we came from?”

Fuck.

There was no time to deliberate. They chose one of the tunnels and pressed onwards, hoping that they picked right, not wanting to consider that it meant if they picked wrong. Whatever pretence of calmness they tried to show for each other’s sake was now gone.

They started to run, or at least the closest possible approximation of running that one could do when waist deep in churning sewer water.

Suddenly—a yell from behind, “Woaaah!” There was a loud splash. Justin had been swept off his feet by

“That Sat-

urday, they

packed their gear (one

set of rubber boots, three flashlights, a camera,

and a pack of cigars), and after

the sun had set, went

off to begin

their underground adventure.”

“This is the

point when

the fear really set in. We

were then in

the hands of a hopefully

benevolent God.”

the water. The current threw him into Brad who then smashed into John. In the confusion, John lost his light while Brad’s went under and short-circuited. Miraculously, Justin’s light survived his fall; they were not in total darkness. None of the three regained their footing, they were completely at the mercy of the current.

“At least we’re going faster!” Justin yelled with stubborn optimism.

At this juncture in the story, Brad looked me in the eye and says, “This is the point when the fear really set in. There was nothing we could do. We were then in the hands of a hopefully benevolent God, or at least at the whim of a hopefully benevolent sewer planning company. In other words, shit had gone full Goonies.”

As the trio was carried by the water, their feet were touching the ground less and less, and the ceiling inched closer to their heads, the concrete segments that line the tunnel every twenty feet or so were whooshing past.

There was now absolutely no chance of going back. And they still didn’t know if they chose the right tunnel.

“What about the manholes?!” Justin shouted when his head bobbed out of the water yet again.

“There’s one!” John called back.

“Where?!”

Woosh.

“We missed it!” John yelled as the ladder flitted by them.

At this point the terror was almost overwhelming: that ladder they just passed, that might have been their only chance for escape. That’s it, they were done. They were goners. Brad’s mom was going to read about him on the news.

The water had now almost completely filled the tunnel. Their feet were not touching the ground at all; their heads occasionally and painfully scraped the ceiling. The gentle bends became hard corners; the current smashed them into the walls.

They were blasting through the tunnels like cannon-shot, and in the flickering darkness they began to scream.

Then, when death seemed so certain they rounded another painful bend, and saw far off but fast approaching, a rippling point of light—moonlight.

The tunnel exit was right in front of them. As they got close, they saw it, a churning wall of foam where the water was shooting out into the exit chamber, the moon-light rippling through the foamy top. One by one the pipe spat them out like a fire hose. Back-to-backto-back it threw them into the grate. Dazed but unhurt, they pulled themselves free of the flow of water, and fell off to the side onto the wet concrete floor—a veritable river raging beside them.

Brad remembers that moment with a grin, “We all just lose it, we start cracking up laughing. We’re high-fiving and cheering. We’re just so happy to be alive! I’ve never felt elation like that.”

With near-hysterical joy, the trio proceeded to go through the casualties of the night.

“Hey look my boots are ruined!”

“Haha! Look at my phone, its dead too!”

They were laughing the whole time, the fact of their survival eclipsing any worries about dead gadgets or ruined clothes.

John pulled out his cigars; they were mush in his hands. He suggested they get some others to celebrate the successful adventure. The three crawled out of the grate, and, covered in corpse muck, went off into the night in search of a good smoke. n

THE VOYAGE OUT EXPLORING THE PLACES

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BEYOND U OF T

ike so many other Canadian universities, the University of Toronto operates campus food services primarily through private partnerships.

These agreements are supposed to help the university save time, money, and better serve the student body.

The biggest beneficiary is Aramark Ltd. A multinational corporation that grossed $13.5 billion in sales last year, Aramark runs food services across campus, which is what allows you to use meal plans at seemingly independent restaurants. Pizza Pizza, Tim Hortons, Bento Nouveau, they all seem like seperate entities, but in reality all them on campus are franchises owned and operated by Aramark.

If a company is grossing such massive numbers, and operates on campuses across the country, does that make them best suited for the job? The answer is not so simple, because while it does free up university resources for other activities, the motives of a profit-driven company on campus are dubious at best.

For one thing, multiple franchises operating under the same corporation in close proximity raises some interesting issues about competition.

Though university contracts are explicit about price-fixing and fair market practices, it is a bit hard to believe that this truly happens with such a massive corporate presence on campus.

Then there is Aramark’s questionable track-record. Aramark has been the centre of a number of troubling scandals across North America, oftentimes for prioritizing profit over quality. For example, they are one of the largest providers of meal services to prisons in the United States, and last year a number of legal cases were brought against them for misconduct and endangering inmates. In August 2014, Aramark was fined $200,000 by the state of Michigan due to “unacceptable” problems, including serving food containing maggots and employee misconduct. Then in October, allegations were brought

Going into a totally dark box filled with water

I’m

BY DAVID STOKES

have entered the doors of Float Toronto, this city’s first recreational sensory deprivation facility.

The Float Toronto vestibule, where you await your voyage into nonbeing, is chic. It feels similar to a yoga studio, which Float wants to be treated like: a thing you do every once in a while to help untangle the clotted sphere of everyday being. Quickly sign a thing stating that you won’t sue and that you don’t have medical conditions and that you’re not high (here John Lilly scowls and looks bemused). I’m sober as teacup, and in perfect health.

Sean is the co-owner.

He is friendly and soft spoken and tells me that he had a desk job before he got tired of that and opened this place with a friend. We glide through space and time down the hall to one of their five float rooms. Inside is a surprisingly stout fiberglass box, the float chamber. It looks similar to a basement freezer. I sense the fierce logic of the refrigerator or the toaster. My parents dragged me to appliance showrooms throughout my childhood. Here, finally, an appliance with aspirations. There is a pool-filter apparatus beside the chamber, and a shower. A purple LED behind the chamber christens the scene with a mystical glow. Sean tells me to that there’s “no right or wrong way to float,” and then leaves. I lock the door, strip and shower, and then climb in and close the hatch... n David Stokes

L

BY CAROLINE KAMM

HALLUCINOGENIC APPLIANCES

Sensory Deprivation Tank at Float Toronto

lying inside a tank filled with water and salt and the total darkness of a distant parsec. I float here because this is Float Toronto. To get here, go to the U.S. Naval Institute in the 1950s. Find a scientist named John C. Lilly. He is there inventing the sensory deprivation flotation tank. He is now attempting to communication with dolphins by using the tank; now he is putting a little tab of paper on his tongue. O, true apothecary! Mr. Lilly emerges from the tank saying he has had a conversation with Shakespeare.

“He suddenly ‘became’ a chimp,

jumping up and down and hollering for twenty-five minutes. Watching him, I was frightened. I asked him later, ‘Where the hell were you?’ He said, ‘I became a pre-hominid, and I was in a tree. A leopard was trying to get me. So I was trying to scare him away.’” It’s obviously going to be fun to let the military industrial complex fall in love with the psychedelic movement.

Being utterly sentimental for the Cold War and psychedelic research, always on the hunt for novel perceptual experiences, eager to slough off my identity, and being a journalist—full disclosure—getting all this for free, I

against the corporation for allegedly firing an employee after she alerted them to quality control issues with the food.

I make no claims that health and safety practices at U of T even approach these examples. However, it is troubling to know that in simply buying a coffee on campus I am contributing to a corporation that participates in such immoral business practices. Perhaps from the practical perspective of the university, private-public partnerships are a

necessary evil, but as a student these are things that we at least have the right to know about. If you don’t want to contribute to these practices, then the first step is to become aware of U of T’s relationship with Aramark and that you have the option not to participate in it. Take the time to think about your buying power, what you want it to represent, and whether you would be better served by taking your money elsewhere. n

four middle-aged Vietnamese men gathered together to play cards while discussing their new iPad with me, and telling me, in broken English, that I was “very smart” for knowing how to use the wifi. In the subway station, a bespectacled boy with cropped black hair named Kelvin, a drywall construction worker, told me all about his high school life and the new skincare products he bought from T&T because he was bored on the subway train, and before I left told me that he was glad to have a conversation with a “young, impressionable girl like me.”

The next time you feel bored, go somewhere random. There’s more to Toronto than the “ U of T downtown bubble.” n

LAB-ONA-CHIP

H

BY EMILY POSTERARO

ave you ever wished you could move and manipulate minuscule droplets of a liquid on a chip so you could analyse that liquid?

This is what a Lab-on-a-Chip (LOC) device does. If you’ve ever had your blood tested, they probably took a lot of blood and sent it off somewhere.

But with LOC tech, you’d only need a drop of blood and you could do the test potentially on your smartphone. LOC tech is just that: it shrinks the pipettes, beakers and test tubes of a modern chemistry lab onto a microchip-sized wafer of glass or plastic. The technology behind LOC devices is microfluidics, which involves the study, manipulation, behaviour, and analysis of very small volumes of liquids.

At the Wheeler Microfluidics Laboratory at U of T, their LOC is a thin, square piece of glass with a simple network of metal pathways. Since it uses static electricity to move liquids, another glass piece with a conductive layer is placed on top of the chip to

Wikimedia image

mark hit just south of the roaring Highway 401, on a nice little place named Kennedy Commons Mall.

A week later, I found myself a pinBY PRISCA LAM sized dot in that territory, which hosts a number of furniture stores, a Tim Towards the deep east of the city Horton’s and a very large Chapter’s. of Toronto, Scarborough is a place There were signs for daycares where TTC busses don’t come until each claiming to be the best and centhey’re half an hour behind schedule tres for Aikido martial arts lessons. and there are factories as far as the Scarborough has character. In my eye can see. few hours there, I had conversations Many of us don’t know that, with several people who seemed though–we hardly ever leave our eager to forge human connections.

University of Toronto “bubble.”

There was a plump, Italian-accentAnywhere from Yonge to Bathurst ed security guard who was very and Bloor to College is our territory, eager to talk about the coldness of but beyond that, it’s almost like an the weather and the boredom of his entirely different country. job, who let me cut in line in front One night in the newspaper office, of him for a hot chocolate because I spun around and threw a Sharpie “I’m gonna be here all day—I’ve at a map of Toronto on the wall. The got nowhere else to go.” A group of

Microelectromechanical chip close the electric circuit. This conductive layer is made of indium tin oxide, which is also used in smartphones.

The Wheeler Lab currently develops LOC techniques for clinical, technological, biological and chemical applications. To exemplify the diversity of applications, consider the issue of cooling in personal electronics. DMF technology can be used to move liquid to the “hot spots” in a device in order to cool it down. n

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BOOK REVIEW

The Cheese Stealer’s Handbook

S

BY DEAN McHUGH

hoshaku Jushaku’s first novel, The Cheese Stealer’s Handbook, tells of an alcoholic drug addict who continually fails at living. (“Shoshaku Jushaku” is a Buddhist phrase meaning “mistake after mistake.”) Set mostly in Toronto, with parts in B.C., the unnamed protagonist and first-person narrator lapses in and out of heroin use, stays loyal to cocaine and MDMA, hits weed when those aren’t available, and is always, always drinking. In between he finds a girlfriend, studying at U of T, who heroically supports him. He enjoys stealing cheese, but it’s such a minor facet of his personality that the title ends up mocking its own insignificance.

The narrator spends most of his time fixated on his greatest failure of all: his inability to write a novel. For him, writing is just another addiction. He warns us how “a bunch of great writers were raging alcoholics.” The narrator refers to The Cheese Stealer’s Handbook as his “masterpiece,” all the while documenting his inability to execute it. Writing seems to

only distract him from sorting out his life.

Worse, writing is a source of despair.

His girlfriend continues to suggest that he should write for his own moral betterment, to “write a future, be constructive… write a destiny.” If that’s possible, the protag-

with the novel’s always fresh dark humour, the narrator encourages us to do so. But, like a fit of laughter that leaves your sides hurting, Jushaku only uses these ironies to offset the brute psychological torment of

narrator reaches yet another breaking point, writing, “I’m not a person anymore, only a wave of craving—just a skeleton, a shell, an addict.”

This personal intervention, of course, does not lead to real change, although his roller-coaster of hope and defeat creates a certain kind of beauty. The romantics talk about the sublime being the experience of witnessing immense destruction from a secure location, like seeing waves crash hurl against cliffs. But Jushaku demonstrates that sublime destruction A portrait of an addict as a young man addiction. At is much closer to home: bar hopping, onist’s writing is the end of both disease and texting dealers, or making homemade cure. His attitude to writing is a tortured a chapter called “In the Realm of Hungry fudge at 4am with the munchies. parody of classical patterns of addiction, Ghosts”—a reference to Gabor Maté’s And for U of T students, the novel Canadian best-seller documenting addiction should feel very intimate. Part of The causing and relieving its pain. in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside—the We can laugh at such ironies, and Cheese Stealer’s Handbook set at U of

T, the reader is able to see some everyday sights through the narrator’s bloodshot eyes.

The reality of the place names (including Rotterdam Hall, bp Nichol Lane, and Coach House Books) blurs the distinction between fact and fiction. It’s as if the reader is looking on from the perspective of being high or drunk, where imagination blends with fantasy.

It took the author five years to write its 104 pages, and the time spent maturing shows. There isn’t a single flat sentence. A great deal of reflection and wide reading also made its way in. Towards the start of the novel there are references to literary theory, not so the narrator to show off how ‘meta’ he is, but because he’s having difficulty beginning. Grasping for abstract statements is less painful than telling an honest story of personal vulnerability. The Cheese Stealer’s Handbook combines sincere suffering with a dark, almost cynical humour that makes the pain of addiction bearable. The novel’s ultimate tragedy is that, in making this pain bearable, the narrator learns to live with it. nv

BBDO INTERNSHIP MAKES CHRISTIAN GREY LOOK LIKE A CHOIRBOY. Your friends will turn 50 shades of green when you win the National Advertising Student Challenge.

Winning slaves get an internship at BBDO. Enter March 2nd-27th at nationaladvertisingchallenge.com.

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THE SKYSCRAPER LABORATORY WHEN YOU SEE A BUILDING, THINK OF THIS PLACE.

The torturing is done by monstrous machines that live in a cavernous laboratory space in the Civil Engineering building off St. George. There are two huge labs, U of T’s largest. One of them is three stories tall and 70 feet long, and the other beside it is even larger.

These labs are like permanent construction sites: on the regular, enormous steel beams and concrete pads are brought in, assembled, and strung together. But then this construction site becomes one located in the most catastrophe prone place in the world. With the help of a host of huge, enormously powerful machines, each day the horrific is simulated. The machines can replicate the forces of wind that would topple an unsound tower, earthquakes that would level Toronto, faulty concrete mixes that would turn buildings to dust, and even the effect of terrorist explosives, among many other catastrophic scenarios that could befall a building. Concrete, steel, and other materials all meet their nightmares here. Some people love it.

“It’s one of the nice aspects of my job: I get to see things break,” says Mr. Renzo Basset, the director of technical services at the lab, and the warden of this place. He tends to the monsters and watches them destroy.

Mr Basset has seen some incredibly violent material collapses. He points to a huge shattered and cracked piece of concrete that’s been tested already. In another context, if that piece had been in a building and ended up looking like that, thousands might now be dead. But here it’s almost funny how ruined it is: overkilled, the concrete block looks almost pathetic, like it had been destroyed out of spite. “We can actually compress or pull the concrete. Or we can bend the concrete. Or we can twist the concrete.”

The biggest of the testing machines is the Baldwin Universal Testing machine. A behemoth manufactured in another era, it is so large and powerful that it is in the category of the mechanical sublime.

It generates force through pumping thousands of gallons of oil to it’s hydraulic pressure heads.

It can carry out what Mr. Basset called “shock loading” of 400,000 pounds of pressure, and it “can move that head 1 meter per second” while applying that weight, akin to punching concrete Tekken style.

But for such an awesome machine, it can be controlled extremely precisely: its control computer knows the displacement of oil to fractions of a millimeter. And, how hard is it to crack concrete?

“The concrete specimens are so stiff that it doesn’t take a lot of displacement to actually crack it. It takes a lot of load, but not a lot of movement.”

Where’s a safe distance to be when testing with the Baldwin? “It depends. For most things, you can be a few meters away and be perfectly safe.

Sometimes though we essentially clear the lab…”

Dust goes everywhere and sometimes pieces of concrete fly off.

Earlier I said that some concrete looked like it had been destroyed out of spite. It isn’t so. It had been destroyed more out of love. Professor Constantin Christopoulos, the Canada research chair in seismic resilience, has an office filled with engineering books, a print of the Golden Gate Bridge, heavy metal joints at the foot of his desk, and an asbestos warning on the wall above his chair. He has seen what can happen when buildings aren’t built right. For instance, he travelled to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake and saw the devastation. He tells me that he wanted to work in this field because it has the lives of people as the basic element. “If one type of [building] causes human death and destruction, it’s important we learn about it and change it.” One cool thing is that if they come up with a nice upgrade here at the lab, it can be applied to thousands of buildings worldwide.

It’s because of the stuff they do here that you don’t need to be a genius to make most buildings; the findings from labs like this are translated into standard building codes and engineering guidelines. Hence, we can build a lot of buildings, quickly, efficiently, and most importantly, safely.

Towers can proliferate like weeds across the world. Though you can’t blame these engineers for so many condos being ugly; that’s the builders and designers fault. At the lab, they are working on a lot of cutting edge research, such as super lightweight carbon fibre rebar. Jokingly, Mr. Basset does credit his lab for our huge class sizes, some of which are maybe too big in an unexpected way.

“For example, across the street you have a large classroom, with this huge girder across it holding up the floors above. But the design formulas were based on tests done on smaller samples, and strength doesn’t scale linearly as you build larger and larger. So maybe that’s not as safe as you think it is.” Not to worry, though; further research has waived this particular concern. But the point is taken: as Mr. Basset says, “I don’t think people appreciate the amount of research, the amount of thought, that goes into these structures.”

The fact that we don’t think about the thousands of tonnes of mass above our heads and survive almost 100% of the time is a testament to the lessons learned in this lab. Professor Christopoulos tells me that his engineering students take the experience of seeing concrete and steel fail to heart. “For our undergraduate classes, they get to see how a piece of steel breaks, for example. They get a real appreciation of that. And they learn how aluminum is different and cast iron is different than structural steel, and so on.” It is this first hand knowledge of destruction that keeps us safe. After touring the lab, when I walk around Toronto, I now see our buildings taken apart and twisted and crushed by enormous metal hands, controlled by people who want to keep catastrophe only a fantasy. n

Image: Lehigh University

We are surrounded by improbably large stone objects: buildings. We humans build so excessively for our size and scope. Compared to the heights of buildings, we are ants; compared to their weight and mass, we are microbes. Since we’re so small, how can there be so much city, so many buildings, mass-produced like architectural mcnuggets? And how do they all stay up—these billions of tonnes above us straining with gravity every second to stand—and don’t routinely crush us like tiny worms? Both of these questions can be answered at U of T, where they essentially torture test the component parts of buildings.

BY DAVID STOKES

Vintage photo of a Baldwin Universal Testing Machine

“A behemoth manufactured in

another era, it is in the category of the mechanical sublime.”

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Interview with Arina Moiseychenko of Cunt Punt

BY ASTORIA FELIX

something embraced?

Arina Moiseychenko: Masculinity should be embraced like anything else, but you shouldn’t ever be treated differently or get special privileges because you are masculine or male-pre-

of violence towards me or anyone else, I felt alienated because the same people are constantly asking for space when they are already given plenty in the outside world.

I had trouble answering this question so I asked the lead singer of Fathers, JJ Reynolds-Tabobondung, a gender non-conforming person of color that has been a part of TOHC for the past +4 years and this is what they had to say: “The competitive nature of dudes who view female/ non-binary fronted bands as “ok”, “short lived” or act generally condescending and in a competitive way. I literally feel so much safer when there is space made, like I know these dudes

the newspaper: How does your gender identity and sexuality influence your music?

Arina Moiseychenko: I mean, I’m angry!

My gender identity and sexuality influences my music just as much as being a lower-class recently-landed immigrant. Being a queer woman in the scene definitely manifests into me constantly reassuring people are giving me enough space. A lot of people were surprised with how bass-driven Cunt Punt songs are but we were everything-driven because we came to shows to get mad and break walls and not apologize for taking up space or for being who we are.

tn: Is there something about hardcore specifically that makes the community particularly open-minded and willing to embrace queer musicians? Do you feel that queer musicians are treated similarly in other scenes?

Arina Moiseychenko: I mean, punk was founded by people that felt severely misrepresented in mainstream, it was started by a lot of queer women. It’s one of those instances where it’s not bad to look into the origin of a genre. Punk can be especially aggressive at times which is often appealing to people that feel and have been mistreated their entire lives for being something outside of “the norm.” It’s a great way to express yourself and your anger in a somewhat positive way. There is something specific about punk because a lot of people in it are “outsiders” and everyone can relate to each other in one way or another. In a lot of other scenes, queer musicians aren’t as embraced or vocal about their identity, maybe because they don’t feel as understood but, I haven’t been a part of a different scene so far so I wouldn’t be able to tell you. tn: As a queer band in a scene that is typically looked at as male dominated, what are your views on masculinity within the hardcore scene? Do you believe masculinity is something that needs to be dismantled or

tn: Band recommendations?

Arina Moiseychenko: Some of my favourites are Anti-Vibes, Triage, Chlorine, Naamahk, Braurer, Vixens and the band I recently started called Fathers.

Arina Moiseychencko in the wild

senting. Masculinity in the hardcore scene is a bit old school, and there is a lot of the same bro-ey stuff that’s been done over and over. A lot of people have trouble getting out of that mold. But for a lot of people that’s, like, really who they are! Everyone should just be themselves without invading anyone else’s space or alienating them in any way. I’m for the balance between dismantled and embraced, really. tn: In the song Submission, the lyrics are, “Just because I’m into bondage doesn’t mean I’m into you, don’t blame me for your elitist point of view”. Do you feel that there are issues with consent within the punk community? What kinds of elitist views have you encountered within the community and outside of it, and how have they shaped your music and your identity?

Arina Moiseychenko: These experiences are inherently different for everyone in the scene.

In my personal experience, I often face these problems when men think that bands made up of queer people aren’t as worthy or long-lasting as bands made up of straight white dudes, especially when it comes to their importance.

I remember recently seeing a performance of a band that was made up of all white dudes.

Even though they had made no explicit acts

but they don’t realize how much dominance they have over the space around them. It’s hard to actively police in the moment. The best pit I was in was when Cunt Punt played Smiling Buddha and all the boys were asked to step back.” tn: Would you recommend young queer people to get into the punk scene? Any advice on how someone can get involved in the scene or even start up a punk band of their own?

Arina Moiseychenko: I would, definitely! Feeling that you are a part of something bigger that’s constantly evolving and growing can be incredibly helpful to someone that’s just coming to terms with being queer or has always known.

It’s definitely helped me.

tn: What are your current and future plans?

Arina Moiseychenko: Current and future plans are to make more and grow as I think I am right now. The consistent progress from Cunt Punt to Fathers inspires me to constantly make more knowing my drive pays off in personal and general success. n

by As to ria Fe lix

tn: Did you ever find Cunt Punt being put into the role of a token queer punk band within the Toronto punk scene?

Arina Moiseychenko: I wish I could say no, but we’ve all definitely felt that sometimes we were asked to play shows just so there is more “diversity,” when all the other bands consist of middle aged men. We have turned down shows when we felt like we didn’t fit the bill at all and didn’t want to be the reason some folks pay $10 just to see us then leave. Those shows weren’t made up of bands that really play a lot of TOHC shows though.

It can be hard to get involved at first, but the best advice I can give to someone that’s just started going to shows is remembering that everyone has started going to shows at some point or another. Punk is one of the most welcoming scenes because it lives on people’s curiosity. If people stop being curious about the constant new stuff that’s being put out it would die really quickly. Most people that are a part of the scene realize that and won’t hesitate to show you around or introduce you to their friends. If you think someone’s cool, let them know! If you think someone’s band is fucking sick or you just enjoyed their set, tell them! The great part about TOHC is that it’s all handmade and there is no hierarchy, and it is in my greatest doubt that anyone will look down on you for talking to them or asking them to play an instrument for you.

Ill us tr at io ns

Arina Moiseychenko is a Toronto queer punk who has been laying down hard bass lines since she was 13. She originally exploded into the Toronto Hardcore scene (TOHC) playing with Cunt Punt, an unapologetic band fucking shit up. She now plays bass in the band Fathers.

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Executive Candidate Elections Forum UTSU is holding its Spring 2015 general elections

The forum will be held: Thursday, March 19 at 6:00 p.m.

Medical Sciences Building in room 2170

To run for a position, pick up a nomination package during the nomination period at the UTSU office and return it by 5:00 p.m.

by March 13. Please keep in mind the dates and deadlines.

For more information, visit your Students’ Union website at utsu.ca or contact the Chief Returning Officer at cro@utsu.ca