The McGill Tribune Vol. 39 Issue 7

The McGill Tribune TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22 2019 | VOL. 39 | ISSUE 7

Published by the SPT, a student society of McGill University

McGILLTRIBUNE.COM | @McGILLTRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

FEATURE

TRIBUNE EXPLAINS

Construction is inevitable, accesibility barriers are not

Speak your truth

Academic appointment

PG. 5

PGs. 8-9

PG. 4

(Benjmain Joppke / The McGill Tribune)

Martlet hockey falls to Stingers in shootout

PG. 15

Protest held for Indigenous people traumatized by child-welfare system

The Canadian government appealed a ruling ordering reparations to Indigenous children Abeer Almahdi Managing Editor The Canadian federal government has appealed a ruling by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, that ordered them to pay reparations to First Nations

children and their families who were separated by the child-welfare system. In response, on Oct. 19, Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) Indigenous Affairs Commissioner Tomas Jirousek and the Indigenous Student Alliance (ISA) organized a protest in solidarity with the victims, calling on the

government to improve on reconciliation.

Jirousek, a member of the Kainai First Nation of the Blackfoot confederacy, began the protest with a land acknowledgment and spoke on the intense trauma that Indigenous survivors of the child-welfare system experience.

PG. 3

Gentrification falls on university administrations too Jonah Fried Contributor Urban universities take up a lot of space, and their presence has a profound impact on local neighborhoods’ economies.

When universities such as McGill, Concordia, or the University of Montreal (UdeM) expand their properties or develop new

ones, property values in the surrounding area tend to increase and developers pressure landowners to sell their properties. This is one example of gentrification, and it is directly abetted by Universities who fail to take preventative measures.

UdeM recently came under fire for gentrifying the Parc-Extension area with its Montreal Innovation

New gallery ‘No.01’ offers insights through experimental creations

Laboratory project (MIL).

While the project’s goal of turning Montreal into a hub for the growing AI industry is entirely legitimate, it has had unintended consequences.

Vacancy rates in the ParcEx this year hit an unprecedented low, and some residents of the area have cited the recent UdeM development as the cause for rising rents.

PG. 6

Student-run gallery provides space for new talent Jonathan Giammaria Staff Writer The Visual Arts Visuels’ (VAV) exhibition space at Concordia University may appear modest in its size and spare curation, but the industrial, Lshaped room presents artwork with the same sense

of ambition as those found in venues like the MAC and MMFA. It affirms that artistry isn’t found solely in institutions that project an aura of exclusivity. As one of Montreal’s few studentrun galleries, the VAV is a valuable outlet for burgeoning voices with new ideas.

The VAV features a rolling

catalogue of work made mostly by Concordia’s art undergraduates, and on Oct. 17, the venue held a vernissage for its newest gallery, No.01. The venue hosted a large audience, with the accompaniment of DJ Jacqui Beaumont and appearances by some of the featured artists.

PG. 11

2

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22 2019

NEWS

Discrimination and harassment complaints double from last academic year McGill addresses increased incidents with policy and education Deisha Paliwal Contributor According to the Annual Report on Policy On Harassment and Discrimination Prohibited

by Law, the number of inquiries and complaints increased from 78 cases last academic year to 161 in 2018-19. In the preceding five years, there has been an average of 33 complaints.

12 per cent of the complaints were filed on the grounds of discrimination, 45 per cent on harassment, 12 per cent on sexual harassment, and the remaining 30 per cent were classified as mixed or other.

Initially adopted in 2006, the purpose of McGill’s Policy on Harassment and Discrimination Prohibited by Law is to establish an inclusive environment through prevention and response to harassment and discrimination.

The university has appointed Sinead Hunt, a Senior Equity & Inclusion Advisor (SEIA) to act as the primary contact for initial inquiries and complaints. Following contacting Hunt, the individual decides between attempting an informal or formal resolution through investigation, through Senate-appointed Harassment Assessors.

Professor Angela Campbell, Associate Provost (Equity and Academic Policies), emphasized the importance of the SEIA. “The role of the [SEIA] is growing in scope and importance,” Campbell said. “This is a very positive development for the McGill community.”

The release of the Annual Report shows sharp increases in inquiries and complaints.

(Nina Russell / The McGill Tribune) Harassment and discrimination reports are investigated by Assesors: However, as of October 2018, reports of sexual violence are investigated by an external Special Investigator instead, in accordance with the Policy against Sexual Violence.

Whether the increase in harassment claims is due to an increase in complaints or higher awareness of the report is speculative.

“I have no evidence that more people are being subject to harassment at McGill, but [I] do see awareness of [the policy] increasing,” Campbell said.

Chloe Kemeni, Students’ Society of McGill

University (SSMU) Anti-Violence Coordinator, tied the increase in complaints, in part, to campus discussions rather than policy awareness.

“The current dialogue that has arisen from [student-driven policies and groups] has given folks the tools to define their experiences and advocate for themselves,” Kemeni said. “For those doing equity work on campus or in student governance, this is part of [our] daily discussions, but I’m not too sure that McGill has done an adequate enough job in communicating the policy in a way that is accessible to all.”

The report also proposes a working group to ensure that the policy is implemented in an

appropriate way for the university’s needs and goals; however, the group’s members are not specified. The group will undertake policy revision in the present reference year (Sept. 1 2019 – Aug. 31 2020).

“It would be baseless to have a committee that does not have representation from racialized students who are most impacted by discrimination and harassment,” Kemeni said. “I don’t know if there is a clear cut answer to the question [of what McGill can do to reduce incidents], since at its core is a settler-colonial institution with deep ties to slavery.”

The report also recognizes the demand to formalize the process for investigating complaints.

“Questions arise about whether our current model, which entrusts investigations to Assessors who have full-time positions disconnected to the Policy at the University, is sustainable, especially as the number and complexity of cases arising under the Policy grow,” the report reads.

As a result, a coordinating assessor has been assigned to this role on a full-time basis.

The report recognizes that measures of isolation cannot transform the culture that surrounds harassment.

“It would help to create a culture in which students feel comfortable reporting, but which also sends a signal to those enacting harm that their actions have recourse,” Kemeni said. “As of now, we tend to protect those who are most harmful, while isolating and retraumatizing those harmed.”

Marginalized American Sign Language: Disability and queerness Mat Kuntz lectures on deaf culture and the basics of queer ASL Magdalena Nitchi Contributor Mat Kuntz is an American Sign Language (ASL) teacher who works with several organizations including Seeing Voices, which seek to make communities more deaf-aware and deafaccessible. On Oct. 15, he presented the basics of queer ASL to attendees at Wilson Hall. After a short introduction by Meryem Benslimane, equity education advisor and chair of the planning committee of Queer History Month, Kuntz took the stage. Kuntz, who is queer and hearing-impaired, gave the lecture completely in ASL, with Sandra Saoumaa serving as an interpreter.

Kuntz first emphasized that ASL is only one of many sign languages across the world.

“Canada has two sign languages, ASL and LSQ, which stands for ‘Langue Signe Québécoise’,” Kuntz signed. “These languages were finally recognized under Bill C-81 as a primary languages for deaf people. Now that the government has recognized [sign language ], we can make some changes [in how deaf people are expected to conform to hearing society].”

Kuntz explained some of the difficulties deaf individuals face in everyday life. Since ASL is not widely taught, many spaces remain inaccessible for its

users if an interpreter is not present.

Even job interviews can be impossible unless someone else is there to translate.

“There is a lot of frustration around the lack of accessibility,” Kuntz signed.

“Communication is always an issue and I don’t always have the time [to educate everyone I meet]. So we are working on building awareness for that, and training [people] to make things more deafaccessible. I want to expose [people] to deaf culture and raise awareness about deaf people’s access and needs.”

When teaching ASL, Kuntz went over each sign slowly and carefully, demonstrating it several times. He encouraged the audience to practice, giving everyone a chance to repeat the sign until they felt comfortable. Kuntz also provided everyone with a paper handout with pictures of the signs before he proceeded to do demonstrations.

Kuntz introduced signs for a wide range of queer topics, from gender to sexuality. He presented all of the official queer signs, including words for “fluid,” “spectrum,” and “drag queen/ king.” However, Kuntz pointed out that the list was by no means complete, lacking terms like “nonbinary,” for example.

“The deaf community is behind in coming up with signs for everything, so just give us time to catch up with the vocabulary,” Kuntz signed.

Kuntz helped create the organization L-Expression, which works with artists to caption their performances. (Tasmin Chu / The McGill Tribune) At the end, Kuntz thanked everyone for coming, and participants responded by raising their hands and wiggling them, the ASL sign for applause.

While this workshop was only a brief introduction into ASL, there are many opportunities to continue learning sign language. Kuntz teaches sign language courses of different levels at the Canadian Hearing Society, which he recommends for anyone trying to learn more.

Jim Mejino, U4 Arts, and the main coordinator of this event, said that the idea for an an ASL event as part of Queer History Month plays an important role in raising awareness about intersectionality within the queer community.

“[Queer History Month] works with the Union for Gender Empowerment, and part of our mandate is intersectionality,” Megino said. “We want to celebrate the community and bring more awareness and education about how disability and queerness affects people.”

Benslimane stressed the importance of including events that address queer individuals with disabilities.

“Last year was the first edition of Queer History Month,” Benslimane said. “[We] wanted to have an event talking about being queer and folks with disabilities, so to have an event around queer ASL made sense [.…] We wanted to make the calendar as inclusive as possible. That is also why we decided to have it again this year.”

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22 2019

NEWS

3

Foreign policy panel hosted by Max Bell School wraps up elections

Panelists discussed the election, Canada’s non-democractic allies, and digital infrastructure Chloe Merritt Contributor The McGill Max Bell School of Public Policy partnered with the Canadian International Council to host a talk titled “Foreign Policy and Foreign Interference: The 2019 Canadian Elections” on Oct. 17. Jennifer Welsh, Canada 150 Research Chair in Global Governance and Security at McGill, moderated a panel of Canadian policy experts to discuss foreign policy issues and the country’s ability to address them.

Panelists discussed how foreign interference in the Canadian election may not have been as bad as it was in the 2016 United States’ election. Despite the decreased severity, Taylor Owen, Beaverbrook Chair in Media, Ethics and Communications Studies at Max Bell, described how digital infrastructure has shaped the nature of this election’s discourse.

“I think this might be the first real social media election that [we have seen],” Owen said. “[With] the parties, the media, [and] the public all participating on this plane of relatively superficial interaction. The election was small because our debate was small.”

Rohinton Medhora, President of the Centre for International Governance Innovation, also commented on the spread of misinformation and uninformed voters.

The panel was held Oct. 17, just before the Canadian Federal Election on Oct. 21. (twitter.ca) “If we had a thin, shallow debate on foreign issues is at least as important a fact as if the bad guys are interfering,” Medhora said. “We are woefully uninformed, from a Canadian perspective, on how the rest of the world is doing.”

Additionally, the panelists discussed the election’s failure to address major foreign policy issues that the next government will have to manage.

Medhora acknowledged that there has been plenty of discussion on major policy issues, such as Canada’s relationship with the United States and the incarceration of Canadians in China, but Canada’s foreign policy had so far failed to address allies who do not hold the same liberal values as Canada.

“We haven’t really had a deep discussion on how Canada deals with countries like China [....] who do not share our heritage values,” Medhora said.

When it comes to the trend of nations slipping towards non-democratic regimes, Marie-Joëlle Zahar Political Science Professor and Director of the Research Network on Peace Operations at the Université de Montréal, argued that Canada needs to reevaluate some of its alliances.

“We assume that we are operating in a liberal world and that therefore liberal countries are going to stand together on issues and that is not the case.”

Zahar said. “It becomes more difficult to have a

conversation with other countries with which we [believe] share [our] values, when in fact [we] are drifting apart.”

In response to a question about Canada’s role in protecting democracy, the panel highlighted the importance of matching Canada’s digital infrastructure to the realities of foreign policy.

“There have always been foreign powers in campaigns and in elections,” Owen said. “We need to focus on the [digital] infrastructure itself and how we make it as democratic and transparent as possible. If we do that, [then] we will reveal the actors that are attempting to manipulate us.”

The panelists also admitted that it is unclear why Canada has not seen the same democratic backsliding as is prominent in other Western countries.

“We have a firm sense of ourselves as internationalists,” Zahar said. “We are not a country that goes it alone. Not committing to unilateralism [...] is a good check against authoritarianism.”

Regardless, Medhora emphasized the importance of Canada’s foreign policy despite its size on the world stage.

“Canada, even if it might be a small player, should not shy away from doing something,” Medhora said. “We were two per cent of the war effort in World War II, that didn’t stop us from joining the war. [....] Small countries [like Canada] can contribute [to global discourse], and they should.”

Protest held for Indigenous peoples traumatized by the child-welfare system

The Canadian government appealed a ruling ordering reparations to Indigenous children Abeer Almahdi Managing Editor Continued from page 1.

“These aren’t just numbers on a factsheet,” Jirousek said. “These are kids who aren’t getting their childhoods back.

These are kids who are spending nights, years away from their parents [and] cultures, just because the federal government doesn’t think [that] they are worth the money.”

Jo Roy, a member of the Abenaki First Nation, student representative for the Social Work Students’ Association (SWSA) and a current member of the Indigenous Affairs Committee, began by telling the story of Dene siblings who were reunited after separation and foster care. BettyAnn Adam Dene was separated from her siblings during the ‘Sixties Scoop’, only to reunite decades later. Birth of a Family was a documentary was filmed about their reunion.

“Please don’t think that the pain of Indigenous peoples is far removed from your lives here in this city, because it is not,” Roy said. “It is experienced by [Indigenous people] around you. [This] is why we’re standing here together, because the pain must end [....] It is not right to challenge the collective right for First Nations children to have a future free of pain.”

The Sixties Scoop refers to a period of provincial child welfare policies starting in the 1950s, where thousands of Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families under false pretenses

and placed in foster homes or adopted into white families across Canada and the United States. Children within this system often fell into vulnerable positions, leading to systemic abuse and harassment.

As part of federal assimilation policies, children were forced to discount their languages and cultures. Residential schools, which were government-and church-run institutions, were created to forcefully assimilate Indigenous children.

Noah Favel, member of the Poundmaker Cree Nation and former co-chair of the ISA, spoke about the continued systemic discrimination by the Canadian government. Favel situated the protest in the larger conversation of structural barriers faced by Indigenous people. “[The federal government’s] decision [to cease funding] perpetuates a system of poverty for people who are already so impoverished,” Favel said. “[...] Issues with housing, food security, and healthcare. [To] place this trauma on Indigenous children, who are already grappling with so many other issues [...], people who are struggling to maintain our language, our heritage, [and] our customs. To put [this decision] on us when we have bigger things to focus on, it really hurts.”

The ruling specifies $40,000 for each child taken away from their family since Jan. 1, 2006 and for each of their parents or grandparents, amounting to an estimated $8 billion in compensation. Over 50 per cent of children in foster care are Indigenous, despite only representing seven per cent of children under 15. According to Indigenous Services Minister Seamus O’Regan, the federal government cannot

The TRC has 94 calls to action, Canada addressed 10. (Aidan Martin / The McGill Tribune) come up with a plan to identify survivors and provide compensation by the Dec. 10 deadline.

Nakuset, member of the Cree Nation and the Executive Director of the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal, has worked at the shelter for 20 years. She began by talking about her own experiences with family separation, as she is the first person in her family to have children who were not taken by the system.

“This is a really difficult subject, because my mother went to a residential school,” Nakuset said. “Because of her experience at residential schools, I ended up being a part of the Sixties Scoop, and being taken far away from my community [in Saskatchewan] and brought here to Montreal, where I was forced to grow up in a culture that wasn’t mine and to be ashamed [of my origins]. I was able to find that strength and go find my roots,

and get my Indian status back, and get my education.”

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was a report funded by residential school survivors in 2008 to help them share their stories, and to investigate the full lasting impacts of this system. The document came with 94 calls to action for reconciliation. According to Nakuset, the reports and recommendations still did not elicit government action.

“TRC came out a couple of years ago [...] when Trudeau came into power he said he was going to implement all 94 of the [recommendations.] He’s done 10,” Nakuset said. “Then the inquiry into [Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls] finished, with 231 calls to justice announced [....The] fact that all these recommendations have been put forward and no one is doing anything about it speaks volumes.”

4

NEWS

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22 2019

Controversial review accuses GotoCo summer program of dubious practices CEO and local representatives dismissed the claims as fraudulent Tasmin Chu Contributor GotoCo, which arranges summer teaching placements in China to university students, has been the subject of recent controversy online. The social enterprise is heavily advertised to McGill students through Facebook and by hosting events at and around McGill, such as their annual attendance at Activities Night.

The review, which was posted to Reddit, TrustPilot, and GoOverseas, claimed that GotoCo fraudulently advertised the experiences that they offered. According to the anonymous author, the company neglected to return a €300 deposit, placed the reviewer in mold-infested accommodations an hour away from their teaching placement, and paid participants €100 (CAD146) euros each for five-star reviews. The review also alleged that GotoCo’s communications only contacted the reviewer two days before they were expected to fly to China, which forced them to pay for expensive flights (GotoCo fully funds participants’ trips other than airfare).

McGill graduate Steven Hu, who went abroad in summer 2018 with GotoCo, said that parts of the review seemed accurate.

“I can see all of them being true except the [unreturned deposit claim] and the [paid review claim],” Hu said. “In general, there were things about my placement that, technically, GotoCo was dishonest about. Like, the volunteers at the summer camp

The social enterprise advertises to McGill students at Activities Night each year. (goto.co) being bilingual, or having translators [accompanying] the volunteers. [....] I ended up getting a 120-hour TEFL [Teaching English as Foreign Language] certificate from GotoCo, which is kind of dishonest on their part, because in our placement, we spent a total of, I don’t know, 30 hours doing teaching-related stuff? So not a lot.”

An account with the username “GotoCo_China” offered a lengthy rebuttal in the Reddit comments to the review. According to Mathilde Hourticq, a U3 Arts student and campus ambassador for GotoCo, the comment was written directly by GotoCo founder Richard Lloyd. Hourticq and another member of the GotoCo team also left a refutation of the review in the comments.

“Richard, one of the founders,

found the Reddit post, I’m not sure how,” Hourticq said. “And he contacted me being like, ‘Hey, would you mind sharing a bit of your experience?’ Because, you know, this post is all lies.”

Several users commented that the comments posted by the team members appeared to be manufactured. Hu concurred.

“It sounds like they’re not very familiar with Reddit,” Hu said. “You can see how old an account is [....] Just a general feeling I got from [GotoCo], they’re well-meaning, they’re just not very competent. [....] [GotoCo responding to this Reddit post is] not 100 per cent in good faith, but then, most companies aren’t acting in 100 per cent faith.”

According to Hourticq, the review was largely fraudulent. She

pointed out that the review was removed from Trustpilot for containing false and defamatory information.

Hu agreed that much of the review seemed far-fetched to him.

“First of all, I was awarded my TEFL right after I did my [placement],” Hourticq said. “And my deposit [was returned] completely, so I think those are like actual lies [....]

Yeah, [paying participants €100 for five-star reviews is] a completely terrible business practice.”

“This is hard to believe,” Hu said. “They threatened not to give them their TEFL because they left a bad review online? That sounds like bullshit.”

Hourticq admitted that there was truth to the fact that GotoCo had communications issues.

“They have quite a small team,” said Hourticq. “And also everything is like a 12-hour delay. There’s a time difference [....] They do take, sometimes, a while to reply.”

Hu stated that he experienced similar woes in communicated with GoToCo while still in Canada.

“Communications [on behalf of Gotoco] are pretty bad,” Hu said.

“Especially before the placement. For instance, I think I applied in January, and they tell you where you get placed in June. [...] You don’t really know when to book your plane ticket until they tell you.”

Charles Sirisawat, a U3 Arts student who went abroad with GotoCo in Summer 2019, said communication was faster within China.

“At first, when you communicate abroad, they won’t respond to you directly very quickly,” Sirisawat said. “But [in China], they respond quite fast. [I learned about where my placement was] almost a week in advance [of going].”

Hu also agreed with the anonymous reviewer that the accommodations GotoCo provides could be of mixed quality.

“The lodgings vary between places,” Hu said. “For us, we lived within [...] rooms within a summer camp [....] Electricity would go out sometimes, water would go out sometimes, which was kind of problematic.

It’s summer in southern rural China, you’re outside. [The problems are] placement-specific. I think that’s the frustrating thing about talking about GotoCo, is that experiences are very individual.”[I learned about where my placement was] almost a week in advance [of going].”

Hu also agreed with the anonymous reviewer that the accommodations GotoCo provides could be of mixed quality.

“The lodgings vary between places,” Hu said. “For us, we lived within [...] rooms within a summer camp [....] Electricity would go out sometimes, water would go out sometimes, which was kind of problematic. It’s summer in southern rural China, you’re outside. [The problems are] placement-specific. I think that’s the frustrating thing about talking about GotoCo, is that experiences are very individual.”

Tribune Explains: Academic appointment How McGill attracts and retains its faculty members McEan Taylor Staff Writer

with one may change a student’s life. One of the most substantial milestones a professor can achieve is academic appointment, but the process that guide appointments is complicated. By digging through the Secretariat’s website, any questions about academic appointment are answered.

What does “academic appointment” mean?

To be academically appointed is to receive tenure as a McGill professor. This is a contract between McGill and its professors that guarantees the tenured professor’s employment. McGill’s guidelines for tenured staff explains that professors can either be “tenure tracked” for a definite term, after which they are then considered for re-appointment, or tenured indefinitely.

In 2017, there were 1,664 tenure-tracked and tenured professors at McGill according to the McGill University Staffing Report. While almost half of the academic staff employed by McGill are women, they are underrepresented in the university’s tenured population, making up only32 per cent of tenure-track and tenured professors.

McGill employs 7,600 faculty and staff, with the majority being tenured and tenure-tracked professors. (Sabrina Girard-Lamas / The McGill Tribune) The intricacies of professors’ career paths often go unnoticed by busy students. Yet, students interact with professors daily, and a positive or negative relationship

What are the benefits of tenure?

Achieving tenure allows professors the freedom to explore areas of scholarly interest without the stress of an immediate deadline or fear of exploring controversial research topics. At the same time, the tenured professor cannot be employed by a different university or employer and must maintain the same quality of work as when they were appointed. This allows McGill to attract high-achieving

professors that can produce valuable research under the university’s name.

What are the responsibilities of tenured staff?

Academically-appointed professors are responsible for three major tasks at McGill. First, they are required to teach either lectures, seminars, or supervise individual students. Second, they must participate in research. Research can take many forms, but McGill professors are required to produce and publish academic work throughout their appointment at McGill. Third, professors must commit time to other communities at McGill, such as by participating in clubs, speaking at events, or sitting on academic committees.

How does one become appointed?

Achieving tenure starts with being nominated by their academic department head. If the nomination is approved by the dean of their faculty, the professor’s name is submitted to the Provost, who decides if the professor should be appointed or not. If they are successfully appointed, the first position that they hold is that of Associate Professor. Associate professors are on tenure-track for between three and four years. The professor is then considered for full tenure by the Departmental Tenure Committee, the University Tenure Committee, and the Principal. The group evaluates the dossier of material compiled by the professor and external evaluators to decide if the professor meets the standards for full tenure or should be given deferred tenure consideration.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22 2019

T

EDITORIAL BOARD Editor-in-Chief Caitlin Kindig editor@mcgilltribune.com Creative Director Nicholas Raffoul nraffoul@mcgilltribune.com Managing Editors Abeer Almahdi aalmahdi@mcgilltribune.com Miya Keilin mkeilin@mcgilltribune.com Sophie Brzozowski sbrzozowski@mcgilltribune.com

News Editors Kyle Dewsnap, Helen Wu & Nina Russell news@mcgilltribune.com Opinion Editors Lucas Bird & Johanna Cline opinion@mcgilltribune.com Science & Technology Editor Emma Gillies scitech@mcgilltribune.com Student Life Editor Leyla Moy studentlife@mcgilltribune.com Features Editor Gabe Nisker features@mcgilltribune.com Arts & Entertainment Editor Kevin Vogel & Katia Innes arts@mcgilltribune.com Sports Editors Ender McDuff & Kaja Surbourg sports@mcgilltribune.com Design Editors Erin Sass & Erica Stefano design@mcgilltribune.com Photo Editor Leanne Young photo@mcgilltribune.com Multimedia Editors Sarah Ford & Aidan Martin multimedia@mcgilltribune.com Web Developers Jad Hamdan & Jonathan Colaco Carr webdev@mcgilltribune.com

OPINION

Construction is inevitable, accessibility barriers are not The McGill experience would not be complete without campus construction. However, while some campus improvements are necessary, construction should not bar students or faculty with disabilities from participating in classes and campus life. Able-bodied people may see construction as damaging to the campus’ aesthetics, but for disabled McGill students, construction on campus can seriously threaten their academic experiences.

McGill has a responsibility to improve accommodations during construction and prioritize accessibility in future construction plans.

As long as construction impedes accessibility on campus, McGill needs to provide sufficient resources for the Office for Students with Disabilities (OSD). The OSD aims to support the inclusion of diverse learners and is responsible for tasks like finding note-takers, getting students testing accommodations and offering technological resources like computer labs. When building closures limit students’ mobility access and access to resources, the OSD is responsible for finding accommodations. This fall, the OSD stopped paying note-takers, meaning some students with disabilities might be left with lecture notes they desperately need. Responsibility falls on the McGill administration to make up for the lack of funding at the OSD and ensure students have the resources they need.

OFF THE BOARD

Copy Editor Keating Reid copy@mcgilltribune.com Business Manager Heela Achakzai business@mcgilltribune.com Publisher Chad Ronalds

TPS BOARD OF DIRECTORS Heela Achakzai, Isabelle Côté, Solomon Friedman, Katia Innes, Caitlin Kindig, Marie Labrosse, Katerine Milazzo, Falah Rajput, Keating Reid, McEan Taylor, Ahmad El-Zammar

STAFF

ublication is the sole responsibility ofThe McGilTri Kate Addison, Makena Anderson, Zoe Babad-Palmer, Adam Burton, Jonathan Giammaria, Sabrina GirardLamas, Alexander Hinton, Benjmain Joppke, Deana Korsunsky, Alaana Kumar, Ronny Litvack-Katzman, Kennedy McKee-Braide,Taja De Silva, McEan Taylor, Sophia White, Amir HotterYishay, Iman Zarrinkoub

CONTRIBUTORS Alex Arkilanian, Jack Armstrong,Vanessa Barron, Joey Caplan, Tasmin Chu, Jonah Fried, Corrina Greenler, Matthew Hawkins, Jackie Lee, Anna Mackay, Kennedy McKee-Braide, Chloe Merritt, Madison McLauchlan, Magdalena Nitchi, Falah Rajput, Gwenyth Wren

TRIBUNE OFFICE 680 rue Sherbrooke Ouest, suite 723 Montreal, QC H3A 0B8 - T: 773.680.8919

The McGill Tribune is an editorially autonomous newspaper published by the Société de Publication de la Tribune, a student society of McGill University. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of The McGill Tribune and the Société de Publication de la Tribune, and does not necessarily represent the views of McGill University. Letters to the editor may be sent to editor@mcgilltribune.com and must include the contributor’s name, program and year and contact information. Letters should be kept under 300 words and submitted only to the Tribune. Submissions judged by the Tribune Publication Society to be libellous, sexist, racist, homophobic or solely promotional in nature will not be published.The Tribune reserves the right to edit all contributions. Editorials are decided upon and written by the editorial board. All other opinions are strictly those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the McGill Tribune, its editors or its staff.

Please recycle this newspaper.

Gabe Nisker Features Editor We set the scene on a Sunday afternoon. Dinnertime is approaching and my family has elected to order in. We shuffle through a list of options, and settle on Eastern Twist, a sandwich shop a couple of blocks away that sells barbecue chicken wraps—a form of Americanized roti, an Asian fusion hybrid that we can not live without—and spicy fries. The fries are fine: They are hollow for some reason, but still ridiculously tasty. We call to place an order. We have to pick up from Eastern Twist but they are close enough that someone will walk the dog or

In addition to notes, lectures should be recorded and offered with closed captioning. Having lecture notes and recordings easily available will allow students who might have to miss class due to construction, health, or other reasons, to be able to stay on track. The decision to record lectures is currently left to professors’ discretion, but for students with auditory or visual impairments, these recordings should not be considered an asset but a necessity. Having the option to listen to or watch closed-captioned recordings could significantly improve students’ ability to succeed in a class, especially when construction makes noise disruptions commonplace.

Construction in big cities is inevitable. Many of McGill’s buildings, including Leacock and the William Shatner University Centre, were built at a time when asbestos was a common construction material, resulting in mandatory asbestos abatement now that its danger has become apparent. A Quebec government study found that 73 per cent of McGill’s buildings on its two campuses are in poor or very poor shape. Construction at McGill is also uniquely challenging because McGill lacks adequate government funding: If the Quebec government allocated funds proportionally based on university populations, McGill would receive an additional $26 million per year. Underfunding means that construction projects

get put off or take longer than they otherwise might. This fact, combined with the reality that many buildings on campus require refurbishing, makes construction at McGill an ongoing and seemingly never-ending process.

If the administration hopes to effectively support the student body, McGill’s construction and development planners need to be able to coordinate and plan ahead with the OSD. Being kept up to date about new accessibility barriers would allow the OSD to plan accommodations in advance and help them ensure disabled students have the necessary resources. For example, if a class gets moved to a less accessible area due to construction, the OSD can plan in advance to get note-takers for that course in order to accommodate students with mobility impairments.

Many students on campus also live with invisible disabilities including mental illness, arthritis, and autoimmune disorders that can make attending class significantly more challenging. For example, attending class in a building under construction may be difficult for a student who needs unimpeded access to exits or bathrooms. Lecture recordings and notes would allow students to focus on handling their illnesses or conditions without having to navigate campus on their bad days.

While some accommodations can be made right now, accommodation planning

5

EDITORIAL must accompany every step of construction at McGill. Loud construction, which can be triggering for people with mental illnesses and challenging for people with hearing impairments, should be planned outside of class time. Planning also means accommodating professors with disabilities so that they are well equipped to teach their courses; a professor in a wheelchair should not be assigned to a room with an inaccessible podium, for example.

Currently, McGill has an accessibility working group, however the group does not explicitly reserve a space for students with disabilities. McGill should invite students with disabilities to give their input and participate in planning accommodations. Student’s who experience accessibility obstacles on campus firsthand are in the best position to suggest how those obstacles might be overcome, therefore, it is imperative that the administration consider their input.

Construction is a part of campus life but it should not stop students with disabilities from participating in the McGill community. McGill must take immediate steps to provide accommodations for students with disabilities and be more thoughtful when planning future construction projects.

Contact (514)- 398-4555 to report accessibility and safety issues on campus.

Love at first bite hop in the car for a short drive.

We forgot that Eastern Twist is closed on Sundays, so we settle for something inferior.

We set the scene on a Thursday evening. Dinner is still undecided and we settle on Eastern Twist once again, since it feels as though it is a no fusskind of option. For a family with a lot of diverging tastes, it is remarkably easy to agree on it. We walk the dog, Vader, and pick up our sandwiches and fries and walk home. It is around the corner after all. It takes maybe 10 minutes to eat.

We set the scene on a game night. The Raptors are playing, and everyone’s eyes are going to be glued to the television. We have to pick dinner. There are maybe nine people coming over; how are we supposed to decide?

It feels impossible. Our solution: Eastern Twist.

We set the scene on my train ride home to Toronto in April, at the end of last semester. I’m sitting there looking out of the window. I feel reflective; it feels like one of those movie scenes when the rain comes down hard and your hand is on the glass and some beautiful music is playing.

The thing is, it is not raining and my hand is not on the glass; train window glass is probably really dirty. I am listening to Fleetwood Mac, though, and Fleetwood Mac rules.

“Well, I’ve been afraid of changing / ‘Cause I’ve built my whole life around you / But time makes you bolder, even children get older / And I’m getting older too / Oh, I’m getting older too” I return home to a family dinner, and I got to choose the restaurant. We placed a call to Eastern Twist, prepared to order barbecue chicken wraps and spicy fries; the specific craving had hit not long before exam season ended and I was excited to be home. The restaurant didn’t pick up the call, and it was not Sunday.

We tried several more times over the summer to no avail. We drove by one time late in the evening, and the walls had been papered up. Our beloved Eastern Twist had closed its doors.

Time to be honest: I fibbed a little bit earlier in the name of narrative flow. I was listening to Fleetwood Mac, but I wasn’t listening to the song “Landslide” off of their namesake album. I

was listening to “The Chain” off of their album Rumours.

But, “Landslide” works better here anyway, because my family has quite cheesily built its life around Eastern Twist. I used to be a picky eater, in part because I was a child who enjoyed chicken fingers and in part because of allergies. But as a family, we found a place that all of us liked.

We introduced friends to it and they liked it too. I honestly do not know anyone who did not fall in love with Eastern Twist at first bite.

As I grew up, I was raised alongside chicken wraps and spicy fries—I cannot tell you the number of times my lips lost feeling and I persevered for more. It was truly an addictive food in the best way.

But, Eastern Twist is gone now. I guess you could say I was afraid of changing, kind of like how Stevie Nicks was. The little sandwich shop on the corner of Bathurst St. and St. Clair Ave. is a sandwich shop that my family built its dinner life around.Time has made me bolder and a more adventurous eater. And anyway, a lot of the restaurants that I like are open on Sundays too.

6

OPINION

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22 2019

Gentrification falls on university administrations too Jonah Fried Contributor Continued from page 1.

ParcEx is one of the most ethnically-diverse neighbourhoods in all of Canada, and it is also relatively low-income. Workingclass families in the neighborhood lack the financial means to retain their properties under the economic pressure created by the development of a UdeM campus in the area.

Residents have already been seeing rising rates of evictions. Unless the university takes action now, people remain at risk of losing their homes. UdeM has argued that the project is a ‘lifeline’ for the struggling neighbourhood, and that increasing its attractiveness will improve the quality of life for its residents. However, as evictions have continued and expensive new condos have been established, it has become increasingly evident that the project is inaugurating a dramatic demographic transformation in the community.

Instead of improving the quality of life for the current residents of the area, the project forces them away from Parc-Ex and replaces them with higher-

A new UdeM campus sparks rising housing prices in ParcEx. (comitedactionparcex.com) income residents. Individuals who have been forced out face significant obstacles to finding affordable housing again: Montreal is currently experiencing a housing crunch, and housing vacancy rates in Parc-Ex are at an all-time low, leaving evicted residents without many options. The gentrification in Parc-Ex poses an existential threat to a neighbourhood in Montreal.

McGill students should be particularly concerned about this issue because they also contribute to gentrification.

While students are a vital

economic asset to the city of Montreal, entire districts of the city have turned into de facto residence areas for students.

Students have different needs than full-time residents that are satisfied by different enterprises, and they do not use government services that regular residents pay for with tax dollars. Neighborhoods like the Plateau, Saint-Henri, and the Gay Village have become increasingly expensive to live in, as “studentification” has grown. This is cutting some Montreal residents off from potentially affordable

housing, creating “student ghettos” that are not well integrated into local communities, and ultimately diminishes the quality of life for non-student residents.

MIL might not even be the most economically viable project for the UdeM according to an article by UdeM Professor Emeritus Jean-Claude Marsan, in à babord!. This fact notwithstanding, it would not be difficult for UdeM to curb gentrification resulting from its project anyway. Research has shown that universities can harness their economic power to

foster inclusive growth in local communities. The University of Toronto has launched an “Anchor Strategy” for its campus in Scarborough, which, like ParcEx, is one of Canada’s most multicultural areas. The strategy is geared to bring more diverse and local enterprises onto its campuses and to increase employment opportunities for nearby residents.

Similarly, Drexel University in Philadelphia demonstrated that its Hire Local campaign led to decreased turnover rates among staff.

University administrations have the most control over gentrification, but this does not exonerate students of responsibility. McGill students are a key factor in the issue and are therefore morally responsible for safeguarding the area’s unique atmosphere and accessibility. By spreading awareness on social media platforms, protesting with the residents of Parc-Ex, and petitioning the local government and university administrations, students can take action. University of Montreal’s failure to employ a strategy like UofT’s or Drexel’s is reprehensible, and we must hold McGill to a higher standard.

It’s time to abandon fast fashion Kennedy McKee-Braide Staff Writer Over the last five years in the fashion industry, an area dominated by gratuitous marketing, social media, and online shopping, consumers have increasingly rewarded brands that can keep up with rapidly-evolving trends. This phenomenon, dubbed “fast fashion,” refers to cheap clothing that becomes popular because of its accessibility and trendiness.

On Sept. 29, popular clothing retailer Forever 21 announced that it would be closing all of its 44 Canadian stores. While some shoppers are mourning the loss of the inexpensive brand, the downfall of Forever 21 and other fast -fashion retailers should be cause for celebration because of their poor labour practices and harmful effects on the environment and Forever 21’s closures should provide an impetus for people to rethink their purchases and avoid fast fashion.

There are many hidden costs behind the deceptively cheap pieces produced by brands like Forever 21. For one, producing cheap clothing requires cheap labour, which means that the manufacturing of these items is often outsourced to other countries that lack sufficient labour protection laws, leading to workers stuck in factories with sickening conditions and low wages. What’s worse is that some of these workers are children. These conditions are not unique to countries overseas either. In 2012, Forever 21 was accused of producing clothing in US factories with “sweatshop-like conditions.”

Fast fashion also wreaks havoc on the environment. Cotton, which requires an incredible amount of water and pesticides to produce in bulk, and polyester, which sheds microplastics when washed, which then get expelled into our oceans, are among the most popular fabrics for these brands. The dyes commonly used in brightly-coloured clothing can

also be toxic to the environment when dumped into bodies of water. Further, textile production leads to more carbon emissions than both shipping and aviation combined.

It’s important to note that the ‘fast-fashion’ phenomenon isn’t solely the fault of the average consumer. The fashion industry is part of a culture of mass consumerism, in which people are always surrounded by ads crafted to convince us to buy things and shame us if we don’t. Among fellow McGill students, one would be hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t use Amazon or a comparable service.

These kinds of services, which both provide a platform and fuel the culture that supports fast fashion, have massive registration rates with post-secondary students because they specifically cater to them.

Even in an academic environment, mass-consumer culture is never far away. Still, what keeps these industries in business is the demand for their products.

If enough people stop buying fast fashion, brands like Forever 21 will continue to go out of business.

There are many alternatives to fast fashion, including sustainable brands that use fabrics that are less harmful for the environment and have more transparent labour practices. Useful examples include the the website Good On You, which rates brands based on their environmental and labour practices. Ultimately, thrifting is the most sustainable way to shop. Not only does it give clothing a new life, it also avoids creating more waste. Thrifting can be more affordable for quality pieces and should be especially appealing for students on tight budgets. However, students must keep in mind that many low-income families rely on inexpensive thrift stores to make their purchases and be prudent when buying thrifted clothing. The rise in popularity of thrifting has led to a sort of gentrification, whereby wealthier shoppers seek to find the best deals and the

best pieces even when they don’t need to.

Considering that the average Canadian family throws out 46 kilograms of clothing per year, shoppers should consider donating clothes to thrift stores to make up for what they buy. Some shops will accept donations while others will pay you or offer store credit when you bring in your clothes. Many McGill clubs and associations, like SynesthAsia and

CARTOON

UNICEF hold clothing swaps or drives throughout the year, which can be another way to reduce waste, contribute to a good cause, and acquire new items.

Students should not underestimate their power to make a difference through seemingly small changes.

It is crucial that McGill students continue to educate themselves on fast fashion and do what they can to avoid purchasing this kind of clothing.

Dressing for fall

Sunny Kim / Contributor

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22 2019

7

Searching for the first stars

AstroMcGill hosts lecture on ‘cosmic dawn’ Amir Hotter-Yishay Staff Writer Astrophysicist Jeff Peterson of Carnegie Mellon University delivered a lecture on Oct. 9 about the quest to study ‘cosmic dawn,’ the ‘turning on’ of the very first stars in the universe.

Estimated to have occurred 150–300 million years after the Big Bang, physicists have sought to study signals from this crucial epoch for years—and now, they may have finally done so.

“This is a scientific adventure,” Peterson said. “But it’s also a physical adventure.”

From the origins of the universe to the atomic levels of hydrogen, Peterson’s freewheeling talk, hosted by AstroMcGill, gave a cosmological crash course on the long and winding road to cosmic dawn.

In 1964, armed with a supersensitive antenna, radio astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson set out to detect incredibly faint radio waves from space. The experiment hit a roadblock when they found that their data showed a mysterious disturbance spread evenly throughout the sky. Initially convinced that it was simply a problem with their antenna, they had, in fact, detected the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation. Given off by the Big Bang itself, the CMB is the oldest electromagnetic radiation in the known universe. A cosmic signature that fills all space, the CMB offers physicists a snapshot of the early universe as it was when a drop in temperature caused the formation of the first neutral hydrogen atoms.

Physicists believe that 370,000 years after

the Big Bang, these hydrogen atoms arose from the rapidly cooling, ionized plasma soup that comprised all matter. With time and gravitation, the atoms began to form clumps, growing in size and eventually collapsing into themselves to form the first stars. The light given off by these stars fundamentally altered the properties of the remaining hydrogen, allowing it to absorb some of the CMB at a radio wavelength of 21 centimetres. Theorists predict that this absorption of the CMB should manifest as a ‘dip’ in its thermal spectrum, so while it might not be possible to study these stars by their light, astronomers should be able to locate them indirectly by using this ‘dip.’

“So we have a quest,” Peterson said. “Can we measure this dip in the spectrum?”

Armed with radio telescopes and stationed in the most far-flung places on Earth, Peterson and his team set to work.

Radio telescopes pick up on the CMB, but in most places, the signal is disrupted by FM radio waves broadcasted by radio stations and the like around the world. To escape this disruption, scientists studying the CMB have travelled to such places as the Australian Outback, Marion Island, located 2,000 kilometres south of Cape Town, and in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

Singling out this infinitesimal dip from the pervasive radio disturbance of the universe is no small task. Yet, in February 2018, the Experiment to Detect the Global Epoch of Reionization Signature (EDGES) team, based at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory in Western Australia, reported the first possible detection of

Collapsing hydrogen clouds formed the first stars in the universe.

(Athena Ko / The McGill Tribune) the hypothesized dip.

“There are five or six teams around the world that are trying very hard to find out [if] this [is] correct,” Peterson said.

This announcement has generated a frenzy of speculation and excitement. Some believe that these results might prompt a reappraisal of scientists’ understanding of dark matter, the mysterious form of matter that remains unde-

tected despite being thought to account for 85 per cent of all matter. For now, Peterson advises caution: Until another team corroborates the EDGES findings, all of the excitement remains nothing more than conjecture.

“This will explode into a giant field,” Peterson said. “It may be 50 years before we map this, but human beings will do it [...] because we won’t be able to resist.”

Leaping into the sixth mass extinction

The causes and consequences of a massive decline in amphibian populations Alex Arkilanian Contributor Environmental scientists believe that most animal groups today are facing global population declines. The magnitude of the declines is so great that many are referring to this as the beginning of the sixth mass extinction.

Amphibians are one of the most affected groups: Their estimated extinction rate since 2007 is 211 times greater than the background rate of extinction, the base rate of extinctions that would occur without human influence. Furthermore, the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) estimates that 40 per cent of assessed amphibian species are threatened by extinction. In Quebec, blue-spotted and eastern red-backed salamanders, amphibians native to the province, are facing a decline even greater than the global average.

Dr. David Green, a professor in the Department of Biology, explained that scientists have long been aware of the world’s declining amphibian populations.

“The [phenomenon] of declining amphibians [was] first noticed by scientists who study amphibians 30 years ago at the end of the World’s First Congress of Herpetology,” Green said in an interview with The McGill Tribune. “It was written in Science and picked up [by] The New York Times, and that really started it off.”

While population declines are occurring across multiple animal groups, amphibians are particularly important to ecosystem health, particularly water ecosystems. “[Amphibian larvae] help to balance the nutrients in [the aquatic] system, [...] and then they transform, and they take all that material out of the ponds and [...] go out on the land,” Green said.

In addition to playing a crucial role within ponds, amphibian larvae are part of land-based ecosystems.

The estimated amphibian extinction rate is 211 times greater than the background rate.

(Daria Kiseleva / The McGill Tribune) They provide an essential link between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems and are an important food source for other animals on land.

Though scientists have been aware of amphibian population declines for decades, the causes are less clear and are still being investigated today.

“One of the major threats here and everywhere is largely habitat loss,” Green said. “That’s the elephant in the room.”

While the reasons behind these declines is not straightforward, disease may play a large role.

“The cause people are concerned with right now is diseases, particularly the chytrid fungal disease,” Green said. “Chytrid fungal infections have become nearly ubiquitous in the amphibians of the world, but this couldn’t have been possible without something causing the immune systems of the organisms to weaken.”

The amphibian immune system is unique in that its primary component is the skin. Glands under the skin of amphibians secrete compounds that attract a diverse collection of microorganisms, which serve as a strong line of defence against pathogens.

“So we have a succession of things,” Green said.

“Chytrid [...] is lethal as a disease. It’s also ubiquitous. You get diseased when you’re immunosuppressed. If part of your immune system is environmentally-based, [...] then habitat destruction and habitat change can affect the immune system.”

Today, conservationists tackling these declines are focused on raising larvae safely before returning them to their environment, but Green is skeptical about smallscale solutions to global problems.

“It’s not a frog problem,” Green said. “It’s a people problem.”

For Green, the solution is in the way we manage global society. People should be concentrating resources in urban centres, and trying to build up instead of out.

While experts have previously been optimistic about the state of amphibian populations, Green warns that dismissing their decline as simply a warning sign is a dangerous mentality. Since amphibians occupy such a central position in their respective food webs, their loss could be more than simply a cautionary notice. “[Amphibians] are not the canary in the coal mines,” Green said. “They are the miners.”

SPEAK YOUR TRUTH How multilingual students find the right words

WHEN

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden’s pregnancy made news in July last year, I was talking to a relative about how the former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was actually the world’s first elected head of government to give birth in office. While telling the story in Urdu, the language in which I usually talk to my family, I unconsciously switched to English to say the words “in office” to avoid the mental effort of searching for the right words to say in Urdu.

My relative was absolutely flabbergasted.

“No,” she cried, “Benazir gave birth in a hospital.”

She went so far as to name the exact hospital.

Constantly switching between two languages, which I learned simultaneously at a young age, means that I often find myself in such situations where I inadvertently imply a different meaning from what I had intended. English has been the primary language of my academic studies, but I speak Urdu with my family and friends, and even Arabic occasionally, depending on the circumstances. I find that my comfort level varies depending on the situation. I use English for academic and professional contexts, and Urdu for cracking jokes and narrating anecdotes.

At times, it feels as though I assume a different identity depending on which language I am speaking.

When I step foot on campus, I turn on my ‘English’ mode. This practice is not uncommon. The phenomenon of associating a ‘mode’ with a particular language has been observed among many bilingual and multilingual speakers. Abdel Rahman Sadaqa, U3 Mechanical Engineering, has had a similar experience navigating the use of multiple languages.

“I think I am a different person depending on the language I’m using,” Sadaqa said. “I feel I am more compassionate and expressive when I speak Arabic and more professional in my English mode.

This might be because I

mostly speak Arabic to my friends and family, while I use English in academic and professional settings.”

Professor Debra Titone, who leads McGill’s Language and Multilingualism Laboratory, thinks that there could be multiple reasons why multilingual people might feel this split.

“Multilinguals might be more comfortable in expressing themselves in their first languages, like knowing when to crack a joke in a conversation. But when you are speaking in a second language, you might find it slightly more effortful, and hence will have limited attentional resources spare left to think about other aspects that might impact how you come across,” Titone said.

Titone also suggests that the feeling multilingual people experience might be associated with the fact that language itself serves as a proxy for culture.

“Languages might encode different things about social interactions that reflect cultural implications,” Titone said. “For example, some languages such as Japanese, grammatically enshrine social hierarchy by the use of different pronouns for elders and children.”

Dr. Lydia White, James McGill Professor Emeritus in the Department of Linguistics, pointed to research on the difficulty of switching modes.

“Some research suggests that if you are in an environment where you mostly speak English and you receive a phone call from your mother and have to talk to her in your native language, say, Korean, you actually have to make quite an active adjustment between your [different language] modes,’” White said in an interview with The McGill Tribune. “The switch is more conscious when you are switching into a language in a context you do not normally associate that particular language with.”

Xin Yang, U1 Management, considers herself fluent in English, French, and Mandarin, but associates each language with different circumstances.

“For example, when I get home, I feel like my brain unconsciously clicks on the ‘Chinese’ switch and turns every other language off,” Yang said. “In contrast, as soon as I set foot on campus, I feel like I even forget how to say my name in Mandarin.”

White understands that context is critical to the ability for someone such as Yang to access any particular language.

“Context definitely affects how easy it is for you to access your other languages,” White said. “I speak both French and German, but I am very used to speaking French in Montreal. Anecdotally, when I go to German-speaking countries, my initial reaction is to speak French, and it takes some time to eventually shift to German.”

Sometimes, multilingual speakers can even switch between languages in the span of a single sentence or

FALAH RAJPUT Contributor conversation, a phenomenon which is known in academic circles as ‘code switching.’

Code switching is the practice of alternating between two or more languages or varieties of language in conversation. Bilingual speakers may shift from one language to another entirely, or they mix languages partially within the same speech. Research has also shown that mixing two or more languages is not a random process, and there are in-depth academic descriptions of code-switching across different multilingual contexts.

If someone is speaking English in a group meeting, and then switches to French to explain a particular point to a speaker, they are code-switching.

“I code-switch all the time,” Yang said. “It is particularly noticeable when I speak with people who speak and understand both English and French like I do.

I will find myself switching between the two languages, whether it’s for specific words, or sentences or even complete thoughts, without noticing.”

There has been plenty of research into what influences the choices we make about which language to speak on a particular topic. A number of studies have investigated the qualitative links between topics and the language choices multilinguals make. These studies have reached similar conclusions: Multilingual speakers use their native languages to discuss topics related to their ethnic identity and to reinforce intimacy and selfdisclosure, whereas they use their environment’s majority language, like English in most of North America, for topics like sports, education, world politics, and science and technology.

While the linguist's definition of codeswitching refers to the fluid nature with which multilingual people can switch between languages, it has since expanded to include how people from minority groups adjust all forms of communication and expression to navigate certain social situations or

audiences.

Recently, the surge in popularity of the New Democratic Party (NDP) leader Jagmeet Singh in the 2019 federal election has been partly attributed to his ability to switch between multiple speaking styles, from formal English to the socalled ‘multicultural Toronto English,’ depending on the situation. During the federal election debate earlier this month, Singh made the surprising choice to disrupt the otherwise sophisticated mode of the debate and address his opponent, Maxime Bernier, in a colloquial and casual manner.

“You could have just said ‘Hey man, I messed up,” Singh said.

Such switches between dialects and languages demonstrate how we customize our choice of words based on the occasion. Since humour, like conversational register, tends to be both culturally and socially-specific, many multilingual speakers also feel more comfortable making jokes in the language they associate more with a casual ‘mode.’

Owais Khan Ghori, a second-year Doctor of Pharmacy student at the University of British Columbia (UBC), is fluent in both English and Urdu. He finds that his ability to express himself varies between different languages.

“Urdu comes off as more expressive,” he said. “There is [a] greater variety of idioms and sarcasm that I can use, which can be not fully translated into English.

While talking with someone in English, I could slide in a comment in Urdu that sounds much funnier [than the equivalent of its English translation].”

Dr. Monique Bournot-Trites, an Associate Professor in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at UBC, believes that this is because language itself is a sociocultural tool.

“Expressions like idioms are cultural, because with one expression, you can understand exactly what the interlocutor means, which is much more than the literal meaning of the three or four words that form an idiom,” Bournut-Trites said.

“Also, the usage of expressions like idioms is also a way to belong. If one can learn to comfortably use these expressions, second language speakers can also gain a sense of belonging with that language.”

Multilingual speakers have observed that such expressions often lose their meaning in translation. In popular media, the representation of multilingualism, as a result, is rich ground for miscommunication and confusion. For example, the 1970s British comedy series Mind Your Language follows a group of adult learners from around the world who have signed up for an English as Foreign Language class, and their creative interpretations of the nuances of the English language lead to hilarious situations.

In one instance, the English teacher Mr. Brown thinks that a £5 bribe should be enough to free a student, who has been mistakenly arrested.

“It’s an old English custom,” Brown explains to another of his students, Nadim. “I scratch your back and you scratch mine.”

However, Nadim understands the proverb literally, and thinks Mr. Brown is asking him to scratch his back. These kinds of misunderstandings are not just limited to proverbs, but further extend to other socio-cultural experiences like humour.

In my own

experience, I occasionally catch myself cracking a joke with a friend in our shared language. Moments like these provide me with a sense of belonging and familiarity in the hectic and sometimes alienating campus environment. Dahye Jung, B.Com’19, finds that speaking Korean with someone gives her a feeling of belonging on a campus, where she normally speaks either English and French.

“When I meet someone with whom I can speak Korean, there is an unspoken bond and a certain level of trust that [forms],” Jung said. “Especially when you are the minority, it feels good to see someone who shares your culture.”

Jung finds that humour is a particularly special route to building a bond.

“When you can have ‘inside jokes’ in another language with someone else in class and no one else understands, it [is] fun,” Jung said. “[I like] to be able to have a little pocket of privacy with one other person through language.”

The Language and Multilingualism Laboratory has conducted research on the connections people make with language, when they looked at the emotional connotation of words when read in a first or second language.

“We learned that the emotional punch of a word is more profound when it is in one’s native language compared to when it is in a second language,” Titone said.

“Say for example, a speaker might find cursing in his or her first language more shocking but the same shock is not experienced when cursing in a second language.

This could be because speakers might not appreciate the linguistic nuances of profanity in the second language and this could lead to potentially grave social implications, say if a person curses in a social setting without realising the impact of their words.”

Language is more than simply grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. The languages we speak are connected with our identities—who we are now, who we were when we grew up, the places where we grew up, and how our experiences encode emotions.

For me, the nuances and particularities of language often come across in other scenarios when the situation reverses. In a job interview two years ago, the interviewer took a tangent from the standard behavioural questions that I had prepared for and asked me to tell a joke. It was in this moment I realised that the jokes I could naturally recall from memory—the ones which would have made my friends laugh—were all in Urdu and would lose both their meaning and proper context if translated into English. I ended up telling a personal story, and while the interviewer laughed, it was probably out of courtesy.

While it may lead to the occasional mishap, speaking different languages has given me an opportunity to transcend linguistic boundaries associated with humor and, more generally, language. And following my job interview, I committed to memory some standard jokes in English. One of these exhibits a play on English words that can often leave new learners confused.

“The past, present and future walk into a bar,” the joke goes. “It was tense.”

Design by Erica Stefano

10

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22 2019

Uncovering past climates through paleobotany

McGill researchers study fossilized flowers of the late Cretaceous period Madison McLauchlan Contributor Paleontology has long offered scientists insight into the mysteries of prehistory. Through excavations of colossal skeletons, petrified insects, and fossilized plants, researchers can uncover what life looked like long ago.

Despite the extensive study of animals from the Cretaceous period, which stretched from 145.5 million years ago to the dinosaur extinction 65.5 million years ago, little is known about the climate of this time, especially in regions of eastern Canada. Researchers at the McGill Redpath Museum have taken a different approach to filling in these gaps in knowledge, using paleobotany, the study of fossilized plants.

“The fossil record is rich in assemblages of fern, angiosperm, and conifer leaves that offer clues about the plant diversity of past ecosystems,” Alexandre DemersPotvin, a graduate student and National Geographic researcher, wrote in an email to The McGill Tribune. “Not only do fossil plants offer a glimpse of the vegetation of past landscapes, but some of them [...] can be used to predict the climate of that past landscape.”

This past summer, Demers-Potvin, the lead author of a recent study on paleoclimate reconstruction, and a team of researchers under the supervision of Professor Hans Larsson, director of the Redpath Museum, headed to Schefferville, a town near the Quebec-Labrador border. Among the researchers were Noemie Sheppard, an undergraduate student in Environment, and Michel Chartier, co-founder of Montreal’s Musée de paléontologie et de l’evolution (MPE), which also supported the study. They centred their analysis on angiosperm, or flowering plant, specimens from the region, known as the Redmond flora.

The research team studied fossilized plants to gather information on past climates.

(Amanda Fiore / The McGill Tribune) Among the ruins of an abandoned mine, the team found remnants of angiosperms preserved in sedimentary rock, which served as their first clue to what environmental conditions were like in the Late Cretaceous. The fossils’ broad leaves suggest that they formed at the bottom of a lake surrounded by a forest.

Demers-Potvin and Larsson discovered that Schefferville experienced an average yearly temperature of 13 to 17 degrees Celsius during the Late Cretaceous. Although this would have been on the cooler side for North America at the time, the creatures there would have enjoyed moderate humidity and hot summers.

Remarkably, this data was extracted from plant leaves. Since flowering plants of the Cretaceous are ana-

tomically similar to ones today, the researchers can extrapolate climate information from the fossilized plants in the same way that they can deduce this information from modern-day plants. Demers-Potvin and his team derived elements of the bygone environment using a tool called Climate Leaf Analysis Multivariate Program (CLAMP) . “[CLAMP] rests on the premise that some anatomical traits in leaves are correlated to some climate parameters [such as] temperature [or] precipitation,” DemersPotvin wrote.

As a system of data analysis, CLAMP uses a scoring method to track the ways in which modern plants adapt to their environment. Referencing fossil records, it then works backward to associate the same traits in older plants to their potential environmental context. The results can be used to understand the effects that drastic climate change had on species thousands of years ago, and how this translates to potential effects on species in today’s climate crisis.

In addition to sampling with CLAMP, the research team unearthed 15 new plant species that were previously unknown to the region. Surprisingly, the taxonomic record of the Redmond flora had not been measured in any meaningful capacity since the 1950s.

Beyond the Creataceous explorations led by DemersPotvin, who aims to continue the team’s research with insect fossils found in Schefferville, Larsson is overseeing multiple evolutionary field projects, ranging from studies of alligators off the coast of Mexico to Dinosaur Park in Alberta. Larsson thanked the Redpath Museum for allowing researchers to explore diverse interests.

“None of this would be possible without the Redpath Museum,” Professor Larsson said. “You’re not siloed in here.”

E-cigarettes could be the next big public health epidemic Understanding the risks associated with vapes Gwenyth Wren Contributor McGill students are no strangers to plumes of e-cigarette vapour, whether it is in class, at McLennan, or on the sidewalk. Created in 2004, vapes imitate the sensation of smoking and are often marketed as being completely safe. Ecigarettes have surged in popularity in the last few years, due in part to advertising campaigns of companies like Juul that target young people, offering products with fun flavours such as mango and mint.

According to Christopher Labos, a cardiologist and an associate with the McGill Office for Science and Society, regular cigarette-users inhale smoke, while e-cigarettes produce vapour.

“The difference between regular cigarettes and e-cigarettes is that regular cigarettes are a combustion product,” Labos said in an interview with The McGill Tribune. “With e-cigarettes, you have liquid nicotine that is usually in an oil solution, and you are producing vapour when it is heated.”

E-cigarettes were originally introduced to help people quit smoking: The first e-cigarette had water vapour but no nicotine and was intended to simply mimic the feeling of a cigarette in your hand. Now, the majority of e-cigarettes have nicotine content ranging from zero

to 87 milligrams. For example, one Juul pod contains as much nicotine as a whole pack of cigarettes.

“Nicotine [...] itself does have health effects,” Labos said. “It stimulates the sympathetic nervous system of the body and increases [...] heart rate and blood pressure.”

Recently, nicotine and marijuana vapes have garnered attention due to their popularity and potentially fatal consequences. As of Oct. 15, 33 people have died in the US and nearly 1,500 people suffered lung injuries associated with marijuana vaping. A Statistics Canada survey showed that e-cigarettes are more popular among younger people, with 23 per cent of high school students having tried them. Currently, scientists know little of the effects of long-term e-cigarette usage. While nicotine is known to be addictive, not enough time has passed to observe the full effects of regularly inhaling mass amounts of vapour.

“If you took a bunch of healthy 20-year-olds, and they started smoking today, the likelihood is in five years you would not see any effect to their health yet,” Labos said.

While vaping’s long-term effects are yet to be established, a study found that vapour can irritate and disrupt the protective layers of the lungs in mice. Due to toxins in the vapour, e-cigarettes also pose potential threats to young people’s

Twenty three per cent of Canadian high school students have tried vaping.

(Kaitlin Wong / The McGill Tribune) brain development. Still, companies often claim that they are safe in advertisements targeting young people.

Before the link between cardiovascular diseases and cigarettes was established by researchers, tobacco companies used to market cigarettes as safe and recommended by doctors. The consequences of this advertising are obvious now; whether e-cigarette advertising will cause the same effects in 40 years is debatable.

Lack of scientific certainty is not a reason to ignore warnings from public health officials and doctors to steer clear from e-cigarettes. Aside from causing a number of deaths and injuries in the US, vaping could potentially affect the lungs and the brain. Further, the nicotine in e-cigarettes puts young people at risk of addiction. Ultimately, the qualified opinion of health professionals is more valuable than that of companies trying to make a profit.

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22 2019

11

‘Ti-Jean and His Brothers’ brings Satan to centre stage at TNC TNC kicks off the new season with a tale of evil, trickery, and faith Joey Caplan Contributor Tuesday Night Café’s (TNC) performance of Ti-Jean and His Brothers, a modern Caribbean folktale written

by Derek Walcott and premiered at Morrice Hall on Oct. 16, is enticingly bizarre. The production is the first of the year from the entirely student-run theatre company and features plenty of up-and-coming actors from the McGill community, including actor and director Deneille Guiseppi.

The play itself is a surreal combination of traditional folk themes set in a more modern colonial context. TiJean and His Brothers takes places some time in the early-to mid-20th century and revolves around the eponymous characters Ti-Jean (Laura Quenneville), Gros-Jean (Deneille Giuseppi), and Mi-Jean (Ryan Chahri) as they clash with the Devil when he shows up on their doorstep. The Devil wishes to live as a human to experience all the horrible things that he has done to the world. He disguises himself as various characters, such as a white plantation owner and an old man, and torments Ti-Jean and his brothers in sadistic ways from behind a human disguise.

The overall atmosphere of the play is accentuated by simple, yet effective set design. The set consists of an arch of branches covered in leaves and some contemporary props, like a lantern and some wooden lawn chairs.

They create a fantasy-like setting while clearly being a thematic device representing colonial thinking.

Camille Simon stands out as the boys’ mother, heartbroken as each of her sons leave her in pursuit of a fight against an insurmountable adversary. Her markedly sympathetic disposition brightens this dark play full of tragi-

in the most maniacal, conniving and evil way possible.

When he gets angry, the sentiment is palpable.

Samantha Ling and Rebecca Turner introduce and lead us through the play as narrators. Taking the form of a frog and a firefly, respectively, Ling and Turner add a much needed touch of levity to a relatively serious production, adding to the play’s twisted fairytale-esque production.

Chahri and Quenneville give dedicated performances as the younger two children, Mi-Jean and Ti-Jean. MiJean is intellectual to a fault, lacking in common sense.

Ti-Jean, the smallest of his brethren, is the only one clever enough to have a chance at overcoming his great evil through his faith in God. Despite decent performances, the fact that their characters are written as black boys, despite both actors being white inherently challenges the audience. While this casting choice seldom gets in the way of a general understanding of the narrative, it does muddle the colonial undertones. It is unfortunate that these roles were taken up by white actors, when they could have offered valuable representation for Afro-Caribbean performers at McGill.

Guiseppi plays double duty as Gros-Jean and as the play’s director. Her character is the brawny and hotheaded brother, the first of the devil’s victims. Her direction has a clear vision, and though it is a respectable and ambitious one, the play falls short of achieving such The play features Deneille Guiseppi as a performer, and director. heights. Guiseppi attempts to translate an obscure Carib(Tuesday Night Cafe Theatre) bean folktale to a McGill stage while retaining all of its original integrity and historical value, and despite some cally flawed characters, and Simon presents this dynamic talent in the cast, many were not playing roles they apfaithfully. peared entirely comfortable in. Still, her Caribbean roots Jacob Berk gives a commanding performance as the shine through, and make Ti-Jean and His Brothers a Devil, channeling his inner-demon to perform the role pleasant viewing experience.

New gallery ‘No.01’ offers insights through experimental creations Student-run gallery provides space for new talent Jonathan Giammaria Staff Writer Continued from page 1.

Aptly titled, No. 01 marks the beginning of VAV’s Fall programming. Because the show doesn’t suggest a specific theme, it appeals to the variety of works on display. With an emphasis on experimentation, the gallery features artists who question rigid notions of prescribed mediums and materials while communicating ideas surrounding both public and personal spheres.

In one corner of the gallery, Philippe Vandal, currently studying intermedia cyber arts at Concordia, presents Thigmo, a dynamic piece that connects a motorized fan with an olive tree. While the fan spins, a set of strings pull at the tree in a cycle of perpetually opposing directions, a process that Vandal describes as the “animation of preconceived stillness.” As he explains in his bio, Vandal’s intent is to frame the process of thigmomorphogenesis—in which plants respond to mechanical sensations, usually natural in origin—in an artificial context. Vandal notes how the systematization of this natural process calls into question the human tendency to overlook our impact on our surroundings and the consequences that follow our interference.

Sharing Vandal’s concerns about in-

VAV offers valuable platform for student artists. (Jonathan Giammaria / The McGill Tribune) teractions between synthetic and organic matter, Jules Galbraith, a print media and computational arts student, contextualizes this relationship with our current fears surrounding climate change. Recent findings in the UN Climate Report, which posited a 12-year window to mitigate our effects of environmental abuse, motivated Galbraith to create Accumulations, a set

of monochrome scans of the plastic they use everyday. Their work, plastered on a rigid and uneven cast sprawled across the gallery floor, evokes the image of a discarded plastic bag or a pile of garbage.

The product appropriates the natural process of fossilization for synthetic matter, and it suggests the unsettling idea that the inventions of our downfall will, in their

permanence, outlive us.

Though several of the artists’ works reflect on current social and environmental issues, others chose to explore more personal subject matter. With Vanishing Point: The Icebook, fine arts student Le Lin captured an ice block melting by digitally scanning the block itself and documenting the process in a short booklet, likening this form of disappearance to their own sense of cultural disenfranchisement as it pertains to identity and belonging.

As written in their bio, creating an index for a state of transience was a way to ease the feeling of loss, an attempt by the artist to address the universal need for closure by rendering tangible, through paper and prints, what has disappeared.

Owing to its open-ended mandate, No.01’s strength lies in exhibiting the individual ways in which artists react to their surroundings. The context of the gallery allows for a discourse between artist and audience, where the work of art lies in the middle. With this gallery, the VAV is pushing its audience to consider new modes of thinking for shared experiences.

No.01 runs until Oct. 26, at Galerie VAV Gallery (1395 René-Lévesque Boulevard West), and features the work of Jules Galbraith, Djibril Morissette-Phan, Elisabeth Perrault, Alessia Signorina and Elizabeth Parent, Philippe Vandal, Le Lin, and Hannah Blair.

12

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22 2019

‘Pang’ is for crying in the ocean

Caroline Polachek’s latest album fittingly captures heartbreak Katia Innes Arts & Entertainment Editor

The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross

Star rating: 4/5 Caroline Polachek is no novice: The singer-songwriter has produced prolifically over the past two decades as part of indie synthpop duo Chairlife, released an album under the name Ramona Lisa, and even boasts a writing credit on Beyonce’s critically lauded 2013 self-titled release. Pang, her solo debut, is a nearperfect breakup album. Though Polachek recently divorced fellow musician Ian Drenna, Pang is about more than just that relationship. Polachek retreds well worn pop music fodder such as songs about dreams, lost youth, and the ocean.

Pang is produced by Polachek herself, along with PC Music’s Danny L Harle—a harmonious pairing. Harle’s exaggerated pop tendencies joyfully creep in. The glittering synth in the title track, and vocal sampling on “Door” demonstrate his handiwork, but the it is Polachek’s talent that dominates the album. It is her heartbreak to swim in, after all. Her vocals ground

Grab your friends and learn to paint masterpieces together like Bob Ross—with drinks!

Oct. 23, 7:00-9:00 p.m.

1455 Boulevard de Maisonneuve O $15

Déconstruction et reconstruction de l’industrie de la musique

A full day of educational conferences exploring how the music industry has changed and adapted in the digital age.

Nov. 6 9:00am-4:00pm 5255 Decelles Ave. Free ‘Pang’ was released on Oct. 18. (Paste Magazine) the album; Polachek has referred to the voice as “the ultimate analog synth,” and she uses her instrument deftly in Pang. “Ocean of Tears” contains perhaps this year’s most heartbreaking chorus, all thanks to Polachek’s shattering vocals.

Everything on Pang ultimately builds up to “So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings,” an uptempo, New Wave inspired track with an impossibly catchy

hook. It is hard not to get swept away in Polachek’s heartache and infatuation—the dreamy bassline provides a steady launchpad for Polachek’s voice to soar from, aided by dizzying auto-tune.

“And I’m out at a party, they’re playing our song / I cry on the dance floor, it’s so embarrassing / Don’t send me photos, you’re making it worse / ‘Cause you’re so hot it’s hurting my feelings,” Polachek

sings.

Embarrassment is central to Pang; Polachek chastises herself for loving too much on “Caroline Shut Up,” and frets about her predictable romantic tendencies in “Look At Me Now.” Ultimately, this embarrassment is fitting: Pang’s strength lies in its selfreflexivity and restlessness.

After all, no honest breakup album has ever been comfortable or picturesque.

MUPSS: Introduction to Film Development

Hone your skills in film photography with this workshop on how to develop negatives in a darkroom.

Oct. 23, 5:00-8:00pm 3471 Peel Street, Room 301 Free

McGill Book Fair 2019

Find your next favourite read at a quarter of the price. Books, vinyls, CDs, and DVDs will be on sale.

Oct. 29-31, 10:00am-9:00pm Redpath Hall Free

Dream-pop in bloom: In conversation with Sorrey

The PEI band tours Canada after their album debut Vanessa Barron Contributor As the saying goes, slow and steady wins the race. In the case of the dream pop group Sorrey, slow and steady can also produce a great album. On Oct. 18, the Prince Edward Island-based dream-pop band released their full-length debut album, In Full Bloom, their first release since their 2015 EP Thick as Thieves. The melancholic and melody-driven release will be followed by a tour throughout Quebec, Ontario, and the Maritimes.

Emilee Sorrey, the band’s namesake and songwriter, leads the group on vocals and guitar. She was working with Colin Buchanan of Paper Lons in 2015 when they began to collaborate on songs that Sorrey had written previously.

“As that project came to a natural end, we started to work on some of my solo songs,” Sorrey said in an interview with The McGill Tribune. From that point, Sorrey-the-singer slowly transformed into Sorrey-the-band, and they have been releasing singles and playing live sets ever since.

The band’s sound is dreamy and ethereal, while the lyrics are well-grounded in Sorrey’s personal experiences. On In Full Bloom, many songs deal with relationship troubles and miscommunication, but in a lighthearted, contemplative tone that makes for a pleasant listening experience.

Sorrey will be playing La Vitrola on Nov. 6, along with Russel Louder and Lizzy and the Fanatics.

(Canadian Music Week) “Songwriting is me working my emotions out through a song,” Sorrey said. “I start writing with a mood in mind, and then the other band members tighten up my ideas until we have a well-balanced song.”

Patience was key when it came to recording the band’s debut album. All the band members live in the Maritimes; besides influencing their sound, it grounded them in an islander mentality, and within a dedicated community.

While they recorded some tracks outside the

island, most of the work was done at The Hill Sound Studios in Charlottetown.

“You might think that [the proximity] would make for a quicker recording process, but we took our time with it,” Sorrey said.

“Sometimes it can take years to finish a song.”

As the last song the band recorded, the singer sees title track “Full Bloom” as an encapsulation of the entire process of making the album.

“It’s about waiting for the right moment,”

she said. “And when the moment is right, everything is in full bloom.”

The song’s moderate tempo and easybreezy melody evokes an image of lounging in the sun on a summer day, with nowhere to go in particular and just enjoying the moment.

Sorrey’s relaxed vocals and catchy melodies give the band its dreamlike quality, while the backing instrumentals often feature bright guitar riffs and warm synths.

The band’s love for live performance reflects the wider Maritime musical community. According to Sorrey, the music scene in P.E.I. is tightly knit and full of energy—an atmosphere that musical groups can thrive in. As all of the band members are either from or currently live on Prince Edward Island, their local music scene provides opportunities for collaboration and musical development within the community.

“Three nights out of the week, you can find a lot of good live music, and not just within our genre,” Sorrey said. “It’s really popping off.”

Despite the comforts of home, going on tour provides a chance to bring their music to new audiences along with a change of scenery.

“No matter how big a crowd is on the island, you’ll know everyone there” Sorrey said. “It’s always exciting to see new faces.”

In Full Bloom is available now on most streaming platforms.

STUDENT LIFE

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22 2019

13

Vertical gardens brighten residence cafeterias Hydroponic towers grow hyper-local produce Leyla Moy Student Life Editor As the long Montreal winter approaches, students are dreading the months of monochrome monotony to come, from cement buildings to white walls. The SSMU Environment Committee, in partnership with Montreal-based hydroponics company Nutritower and the Sustainability Projects Fund, hopes to change that by bringing greenery to residence cafeterias. Sustainability Commissioner Dasha Gousseva started the project last year. She explained how the hydroponic system that underpins the towers works.

“The idea of hydroponic gardening, and these vertical towers specifically, is very low-input local agriculture that maintains itself in a closed system,” Gousseva said. “Plants, instead of needing soil, [get] fertilizer and nutrients from the water itself, [which] is pumped through a system that comes included in the towers [....] LED lights installed in the tower [provide plants with lighting].”

With help from students alongside SSMU Environment Committee members and a representative from Nutritower, the vertical gardens setup event on Saturday revealed the towers for the first time. The team set up towers in three McGill residence cafeterias: Royal Victoria College, New Residence Hall, and Bishop Mountain Hall.

Locating the towers in dining halls will allow for

the vertical gardens to serve as both an educator about the process of growing food and an actual food source. Given that harvests will be small in comparison to the number of students who frequent these cafeterias, the project plans to incorporate cafeteria-grown produce and herbs into side dishes. “[We’re currently growing] leafy greens and herbs, which include lettuce, kale, parsley, [and] basil,” Gousseva said. “We’re even trying [to grow] some tomatoes.”

In the future, the SSMU Environment Committee plans to borrow seeds from the MacDonald Campus seed library to expand the range of produce being grown. The Nutritower system allows for plenty of flexibility for what can be grown, which was one reason the Montreal-based company was chosen for the project.

Nutritower was founded by Montrealer Bryce Nagels in 2014, who grew up with fresh produce and was inspired to introduce gardening to city-dwellers. Originally launched on Kickstarter, the growing hydroponics company seeks to address climate change and urban population growth issues. In his campaign statement, Nagels expressed that to secure our future, we must embrace creative technological solutions to feed our population, and that his vertical gardens could be a step in the right direction, however small. He contextualizes Nutritower within the global trend

The presence of greenery has well-studied mental health benefits. (mcgill.ca) toward a greater proportion of the population living in urban areas and hopes that it will help people better adapt to this transition by bringing home food production to people living in cities. “[Nutritower’s] goals aligned [...] closely with [ours], those goals being to connect people to their food systems and to educate people about how food is grown because [many] don’t realize the steps and all the inputs it takes to get something from [farm to table],” Gousseva said.

“They’re also focused on education, primarily [young] students, but they’re also working with universities. [Since they’re also] local, it made working together easy and [...] sustainable.”

The vertical gardens will also incorporate much-needed greenery into residence spaces as part of a campus-wide trend toward adding plants to academic spaces.

The Sustainability Projects Fund has backed a number of related projects, including the Spin Bike Gardens and Garden Inside, which placed three Nutritowers in the Office for Students with Disabilities (OSD).

The project will also complement existing sustainability initiatives in McGill residence cafeterias, including Waste Educators and Local Food Days, which incorporates seasonal produce and other ingredients from less than 500 kilometres away.

Gousseva plans to work with Student Housing and Hospitality Services to create educational opportunities around the towers and hopes that students will continue to follow the vertical gardens’ progress. Future harvesting events will be posted to the SSMU Environment Committee Facebook page.

THE PERFECT ROAST CHICKEN Recipes to try this Fall Matthew Hawkins Contributor Roast chicken is, in my opinion, the best dinner ever—full stop.

Not only does it taste incredible, but it’s versatile: One chicken can become a week’s worth of dinners, a few days of lunches, and, eventually, it can simmer down into stock for soup. It’s the meal prepper’s dream. Below, you’ll find a particularly adaptable roast chicken recipe, a few ways to use it, and a knockout side dish.

INGREDIENTS

1 chicken 1 bunch rosemary 1 lemon, cut in half 5–6 garlic cloves 2 large onions, chopped into medallions Oil (preferably olive) Salt Pepper • • • • • • • •

Optional Spices: Cayenne Steak spice Paprika

•

tray. Using a wooden spoon, press down on each potato to flatten it so that the outside crumbles a little, but the potato remains mostly intact. Alternatively, to smash them all at once, use a second baking tray to push down, flattening them all.

Roast again for 15-20 minutes until the outsides are crisp and golden. Serve warm alongside roast chicken.

Quick Leftover Fixes Chicken BLT Roast chicken makes for simple meal prep. (pixabay.com)

Smashed potatoes

INGREDIENTS

1 chicken breast (roasted) 2 slices of bread Bacon Lettuce Tomato

Anyone can roast veggies, but if you’re looking to upgrade your basic potatoes as a side for chicken or on its own, smashed potatoes are Preheat oven to 425°F. the way to go. This extra bit of effort yields a dish with all the best qualiToast the bread and butter each side. Put the bread butter-side Pat the chicken dry with paper towels. Season with salt and ties of both roasted and mashed potatoes. down on a pan on medium heat until it’s golden brown. Assemble the let sit for 30 minutes to allow salt to permeate.

BLT with chicken on top.

Give the chicken a coating of oil and rub it to ensure that it’s INGREDIENTS fully coated.

1 lb baby potatoes Chicken stock Season with other spices and herbs to give an even coating.

Salt Bruise the rosemary with the blunt side of a knife and place Pepper INGREDIENTS inside the chicken cavity along with two cloves of garlic and Oil 1 leftover chicken carcass a lemon slice.

2 carrots, sliced into medallions Lay onion medallions flat on bottom of skillet or sheet pan.

• Preheat oven to 425°F. 2 stalks of celery, sliced, with greens (If using a sheet pan, only cover the area where the chicken • Fill a large pot halfway with water and bring to a boil.

2 tbsp salt will be).

• Wash potatoes and add to pot. Let boil for 30-40 minutes Pepper Put the chicken on top of onions. Place lemon cut-side down until potatoes are soft, but not entirely mushy. You should be on the pan (not on onions) and add two to three cloves of able to flatten a potato without it crumbling.

Place the chicken in a large pot and cover with cold water. Bring garlic around the outside.

• Drain water and cover potatoes with oil and season with salt to a simmer. Add veggies, salt, and pepper and let simmer for two hours Roast for 60 minutes. Let sit for 30 minutes before carving. and pepper. The potatoes will be hot so use caution and, if until broth has a pale colour. Use a pair of tongs to remove the larger needed, wait for them to cool. pieces of vegetables and chicken, then strain to remove everything else.

• Once potatoes are cooled and seasoned, place on a baking This dish can be stored frozen for months.

14 STUDENT LIFE

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22 2019

Exploring Les Quartiers du Canal

Three Sud-Ouest neighborhoods to visit outside of the downtown core Corrina Greenler Contributor Les Quartiers du Canal consists of three neighbourhoods: Griffintown, Little Burgundy, and SaintHenri. Situated along the popular Lachine Canal in southwest Montreal, the historically industrial area is quickly becoming a collection of trendy neighbourhoods, each with their own unique character.

The McGill Tribune compiled some of the exhibits, restaurants, cafés, and shops to explore throughout the neighbourhoods of Les Quartiers du Canal.

Griffintown

In the heart of the neighbourhood’s evolving landscape of old and new buildings, the Montreal Art Centre showcases work from local artists. The “Emerging Artist Exhibition” is an upcoming show that will run Nov. 16–28, displaying the work of Montreal-based artists who are new to the scene.

They also offer a variety of events, from concerts to comedy shows.

For more contemporary art, head over to Arsenal. Inside a repurposed shipyard, the space houses many exhibitions from both Canadian and international artists. This fall, the “In Conversation” series of events provide an opportunity to learn more about current artists’ collections and creative processes.

There is no shortage of good places to eat in Griffintown. One of two locations in Montreal, Griffintown’s La Bête à Pain is a large, colourful café. Their open kitchen allows the customers to get a peek into the baking that goes on behind the scenes. La Bête à Pain serves both breakfast and lunch, along with numerous tasty pastries and

breads available throughout the day.

For an evening out, the upscale Bird Bar is best known for its unique combination of fried chicken and champagne. However, its extensive menu includes vegan options, ensuring that there is something for everyone in this restaurant. Bird Bar’s warm atmosphere and live DJ makes it a great spot to celebrate a special occasion.

Little Burgundy

While the Atwater Market and Corona Theatre are popular staples of this neighbourhood, many visitors overlook the many antique shops along rue Notre-Dame. Wander into Milord Antiquites Inc. for a one of a kind collection of furniture spanning three centuries, or try Baronne de l’Insolite to find an eclectic mix of old and modern decor, including vintage items from the 19th century and the Art Deco era.

Central to the neighbourhood, Little Burgundy has a number of unique places to grab a drink or a bite to eat. Drinkerie Ste-Cunégonde, a retro bar, is a popular evening spot for people in this neighbourhood, offering a large assortment of drinks and a terrace in the summer season.

Though food options are limited, it is surrounded by restaurants and within walking distance of the canal, making it a great place to relax with a drink after a day out. Just across the street from the neighbourhood’s famed Joe Beef restaurant is Burgundy Lion, an English pub with a Montreal twist. This lively spot hosts a variety of events throughout the week. They often have soccer matches playing on their TV screens, making it a perfect place to enjoy a drink and camaraderie

A crisp autumn stroll along the Canal offers a welcome respite from campus.

(Ruobing Chen / McGill Tribune) while cheering on your favourite team. Swing by on Monday nights to catch the bar’s weekly trivia night or try their Sunday afternoon high tea service in their year-round solarium.

Saint-Henri

A little further from downtown, Saint-Henri offers lots of green space to relax in. The Lachine Canal is a well-known spot to enjoy views of the water and city. However, tucked between two metro stops, Parc du Premier-Chemin-de-Fer runs through the neighbourhood parallel to rue Saint-Jacques and provides a nice area for an af-

ternoon stroll or bike ride. On a side street off of rue Notre-Dame, Librairie Saint-Henri Books is an independent bookstore that offers a wide collection of English and French books for all ages. A corner with some armchairs gives the space a homey and welcoming feel. Numerous cafés scatter Saint-Henri, but for those looking for something sweet, check out Rustique. The small café offers a wide selection of delicious cakes, pies, and cookies. Drop in to sit and enjoy a cup of coffee with a sweet treat. Rustique is best known for its excellent selection of pies, including seasonal flavors such as blueberry camerise, pumpkin, or lemon meringue.

The problem with true crime

How crime entertainment can erode our empathy Anna Mackay Contributor As cooler weather approaches, many McGill students will replace evenings on a terrasse with evenings spent watching Netflix; they will store their bikes and begin spending bus rides listening to podcasts.

These shifts raise an important issue: The increasing demand for true crime media, which promotes violence as a source of entertainment, often with little regard for victims. True crime media has become astoundingly popular in the last five years, and this is particularly true for college-age individuals like McGill students. Despite criticism, many people continue to tune into true crime media because of the thrill they provide.

In 2014, the true crime podcast Serial became the podcast to hit five million downloads on iTunes the fastest, a “flagship moment” for a genre that had previously been viewed as sensationalist and not-quite mainstream. In the five years since, true crime media has become incredibly popular, with Spotify listing over 100 different podcasts in its true crime category and Netflix churning out critically acclaimed docuseries and full-length films focusing on real life

Exposure to violence can decrease our sensitivity to it over time. (flickr.com) tragedies. Many of these are characterized as “highbrow” true crime, which satisfies consumers’ desire for drama while taking an investigative journalism approach, portraying true crime not as a guilty pleasure, but as a legitimate and intelligent genre.

Some of these shows are well-executed, exploring larger issues of justice and who is allowed access to it. On the other hand, the very nature of the

genre makes it fundamentally flawed.

True crime provides consumers with an adrenaline rush and feeling of suspense that keeps them hooked on the genre, and the drive to create addictive content can be directly opposed to the objectivity required for credible journalism. Making a Murderer, a hugely popular Netflix-produced true crime miniseries, has been criticized for its strategic omissions in attempts to

prove the accused’s innocence, framing the show as a quest for justice while lacking neutrality.

Even more worrying are the fans that are eager to try and impose justice themselves and take part in investigating as if it were a game, as is evidenced by multiple Facebook pages for these communities. It’s easy for these shows to compose a certain narrative, because they aren’t supposed to be sources of news, but rather sources of entertainment. This gives them a certain license to stretch the truth, but the contortion of someone’s real and painful experiences into a compelling ‘whodunit’ is disrespectful to victims and their families.

Experts have found a variety of reasons for true crime obsessions. Humans have evolved to pay attention to things that can hurt us and feel a sense of relief when we remain unscathed, even if there is no imminent danger.

This makes true crime both compelling and somewhat rewarding. Trying to solve true crime mysteries satisfies our need for solutions, providing us with proxy closure for all the problems in our environment—like mass shootings, terrorism, and a flawed justice system—that we cannot solve. Additionally, the consumption of true crime can subconsciously act as a preventative measure for people, especially

women. Being able to detect traits or patterns of killers seems like a way to avoid them, and avoid being murdered.

Despite the natural reasons for our attraction to true crime, we shouldn’t let psychology excuse a lack of empathy and respect. Highbrow true crime obscures its shock value with intellect, so it is crucial that consumers make a conscious effort to face their attraction to violence and reflect on its dehumanizing effects. Increased exposure to violence can decrease our sensitivity to it, and when stories and images of violence are so proliferous in the news, any immunity to it is an implicit acceptance of its place in society. There is no way to be an informed citizen without being occasionally exposed to images and stories of violence and evil, but they should not be something that’s actively sought out for enjoyment.

Whether a consumer indulges in true crime to avoid harm, simplify a more complicated world, or just for a thrill, doing so requires a degree of self-awareness. There is no reason to view violence and injustice with anything but an empathetic eye, so make sure that the next time you sit down to unwind from midterms with a true crime show, you see it for what it is: A narrative of real-life suffering for your entertainment.

SPORTS

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22 2019

15

Martlet hockey falls to Stingers in shootout Cross-town rivals face off in season opener

Pressure-wise, teammates are the most helpful.”

The Stingers came out victorious in the shootout, handing the Martlets their first loss of the season. However, Smith is not worried.

“It’s just about the little details, and we’re still early in the season, and we still have lots of chances to work out those details,” Smith said. “We’ve got 19 games to go in the regular season. I suspect that most of those 19 games are going to be exactly like the game we had this afternoon, so this game will make us better.”

The Martlets face off against the Montréal Carabins (1–0) on Oct. 25.

Miya Keilin Managing Editor Martlet hockey (0–1) hosted the Concordia Stingers (1–0) in their regular season home-opener on Oct. 19. A goal each in the second period was the only scoring in regulation, sending the game to a shootout. Concordia stopped all three of McGill’s attempts, while the Stingers found the back of the net on their third shot to claim the victory. Despite a disappointing loss for McGill, both sides played well, showcasing the best of what their rivalry has to offer.

“I think [that] both teams are highly motivated, and I think we like playing each other,” Martlet Head Coach Peter Smith said. “I thought it was a real good game today, and I thought our team played real well.”

Concordia set the pace in the opening minutes of the game.

About halfway through the period, the Martlets found their rhythm and started dominating the play, stringing together several quality scoring opportunities. Unfortunately, none of their chances found the net, and the period ended with no score.

Play evened out again in the second period, with Concordia having the better scoring opportunities of the two sides. Late in the period, however, a delayed penalty call against the Stingers gave McGill a six-on-five, and the Martlets capitalized on the opportunity. Fourth-year centre Jade Downie-Landry scored McGill’s first goal of the regular season, assisted by first-year forward Anna MacCara and third-year forward Stéphanie Desjardins. Downie-Landry was called for a penalty a minute later, and the Stingers responded seconds into their power play to even the score at one apiece.

In the third period, McGill took a four-minute penalty but played excellent defence, aided by a strong forecheck forcing key turnovers in their offensive zone to run down the clock. Though

Fourth-year centre Jade Downie-Landry scored the Martlets’ only goal of the game in the 2–1 loss.

(Benjamin Joppke / The McGill Tribune) McGill had most of the chances in the final minutes of the game, fourth-year goaltender Tricia Deguire, who remained as solid as a rock on the penalty kill, came up with a huge stop in a two-on-one with just over a minute of regulation time to play.

“Your best penalty killer has to be your goaltender, and I thought [Deguire] did a real good job,” Smith said. “That fourminute kill that we had, I thought she was outstanding.”

With the score tied at 1–1, the game went into overtime.

Both teams had a few opportunities to end the match, but neither could seal the deal, and a shootout ensued. With the pressure building, the Martlets leaned on each other to remain calm and focused on the game plan.

“It’s all a game of emotions, so we got our mental coach that comes in [and] tells us to breathe when we are too stressed,” Deguire said. “But sticking together, that’s what helps the most, [keeping] all our cheering up, [...] helping each other [....]

MOMENT OF THE GAME

A shot from the point found its way around the crowd in front of the net to fourth-year centre Jade Downie-Landry for McGill’s first goal of the regular season.

QUOTABLE

“We knew it was the home opener so we wanted for sure to perform, and give the crowd a good game.

It was also an emotional game against Concordia. We actually wanted to make sure that we could get out there, and play as hard as we could.” - Fourth-year goaltender Tricia Deguire on the significance of the home-opener against Concordia.

STAT CORNER

Fourth-year goaltender Tricia Deguire made 30 saves thoughout the game.

Point-counterpoint: Video Assistant Refereeing The use of VAR has sparked controversy in soccer

Video assisted referee (VAR) was introduced to professional soccer in 2017, garnering mixed reactions from fans and players alike since. Some say it makes calls more accurate, while others argue that it disrupts the game.

VAR disrupts the flow of the game Jack Armstrong Contributor Since the introduction of VAR in the German Bundesliga and Italian Serie A at the beginning of the 2017-2018 season, it has negatively changed the sport of soccer.

Instead of the once free-flowing game, matches are now filled with stoppages that take away from the spectator’s enjoyment.

Last summer’s FIFA Women’s World Cup saw over 800 minutes of VAR-caused stoppages, and because the clock never stops in soccer, both the players and the fans lose valuable game time, even with stoppage time added to the end of each half.

VAR scrutinizes every small detail, which often leads to decisions based on things that have virtually no impact on the game. For example, a one centimetre offside offense by Heung-min Son in a Tottenham game this year nullified a fantastic strike by Serge Aurier, despite Son not being directly involved in the play that led to the goal. VAR even needed a computer program’s help to make the decision. If the call cannot be decided immediately, then the game should continue, because at that point the stoppage

will cause more disruption than the referee’s choice.

Much of the enjoyment has been sucked out of the game for fans with the overanalysis of minute details. Every time a team scores a goal, supporters are hesitant to celebrate out of fear that the goal will be retroactively overturned. VAR is taking over the headlines for far too many soccer games, and the focus is now more on the officiating than the play.

This is not to say that improvements should not be made to the sport; however, VAR poses far too many issues to the game of soccer to be worth the controversy.

Referees can now make the right calls Ender McDuff Sports Editor While still imperfect, VAR is a critical step in the right direction for soccer. It helps ensure play is fair and called correctly by giving the in-game referees much-needed technological support, which ensures that games are fair and free from the undue influence of referees’ natural human error.

Take for instance what is widely considered the worst missed call in soccer history: The infamous “hand of God goal” by Diego Maradona that decisively put Argentina up one over England in the 1986 World Cup quarter-final. While in real time, the play is challenging to call, the support of VAR would have correctly overturned the unearned goal.

VAR caused enormous controverrsy when it was used in the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup. (Getty Images) VAR is also only used in limited instances and is consulted at natural stoppages of play so as to minimize its effect on the flow of the game. It is only used to ensure that goals, penalties, and red cards are correctly assigned. These are all crucial plays to get right in a sport like soccer, where scores are significantly lower than in other sports. As such, every goal is critical meaning it is not worth getting the call wrong in the name of reduced stoppage time.

During the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup, however, there were some issues with the implementation of VAR. People felt that the zero-tolerance policy for goalkeepers stepping off the line during penalty kicks was too stringent. But, the International

Football Association Board was responsive and quickly addressed the issue. In this way, VAR can continue to be refined until it is truly serving its mandate of “minimal interference for maximum benefit.” Other sports leagues like the NBA have successfully done this with their instant replay centers; there is no reason that soccer cannot also use technology to produce fairer, less subjective games that both players and fans can enjoy.

Editor’s Pick

While VAR may have potential, its current use is causing more harm than good to the game of soccer. Disruptions to games due to overuse of VAR by on-field referees has made the game more stressful for both fans and players.

16

SPORTS

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22 2019

In conversation with Denbeigh Whitmarsh

‘Offside’ tells the story of history and hardships in women’s hockey Zoe Babad-Palmer Staff Writer Third-year French Literature major and author Denbeigh Whitmarsh has always had strong opinions about women’s hockey.

Two summers ago, Whitmarsh’s greataunt—and women’s hockey pioneer— Rhonda Leeman Taylor asked for help writing a memoir. Taylor organized the first Women’s Canadian National Hockey Tournament in 1982 and was the first woman to sit on the board of the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association.

“She knew it was special, what she was doing way back in the ‘70s and ‘80s,” Whitmarsh said. “She’s always wanted to write a memoir.”

Taylor and Witmarsh self-published the memoir, titled Offside, on Oct. 5. The pair spent the summer of 2018 looking through a box of memorabilia with articles and photographs from Taylor’s time on the ice. Because Taylor suffers from focus problems due to a career-ending spinal injury in 2004, Whitmarsh wrote most of the book.

“I made notes of everything and then organized those notes into chapter ideas,” Whitmarsh said. “I’d call my aunt, and she would tell me all these stories about what happened, and who was who, and how everything went down [....] Writing a book and publishing it in four months is quite a task, but [...] we made it happen.”

With recent developments in women’s hockey, Whitmarsh believes that Offside

Denbeigh Whitmarsh spent the summers of 2018 and 2019 with her great-aunt, Rhonda Leeman Taylor, working on the memoir.

(Global News) was written at just the right time.

“It’s a critical time for women in hockey currently, because of the media attention that is being received following the folding of the [Canadian Women’s Hockey League] and the creation of the [Professional Women’s Hockey Players’ Association] and the Dream Gap Tour,” Whitmarsh said. “[It’s] allowed us to start a widespread conversation about the discrimination that still exists at multiple levels, and what we need to do to move forward.”

Despite the fact that women’s hockey has been around for over 100 years, Whitmarsh found that there was often very

little information to work with.

“I think the most challenging part [about writing the book] was that there was a lack of documentation for that era,” Whitmarsh said. “Being in History [at McGill], I was looking for everything to back up what [Taylor] said, [...] but I couldn’t find anything. That [...] itself [speaks] to the discrimination.”

As Whitmarsh researched the era, she found surprising stories about what women like her great-aunt faced. Worries that women might get breast cancer from getting hit in the breast with a puck had to be dispelled by studies. Dozens of girls, like Olympic runner Abby Hoffman,

secretly played on boys’ teams and were kicked off and even taken to court when they were discovered.

These stories profoundly affected Whitmarsh as an athlete.

“I wanted to play hockey, I wanted to be a part of that, but I knew that I couldn’t because I was a girl,” Witmarsh said. “It wasn’t until I was 12 that I started playing in a girls’ house league in Uxbridge, [Ontario] [...] and I was like, ‘Oh, I can play hockey too. It’s not just for boys.’”

Although Whitmarsh only plays the occasional pickup game of hockey nowadays, she is still heavily involved in athletics, running cross-country and track for McGill and training for triathlons in the summer. She knows that she will keep playing after she graduates next spring.

“I’m a sports person for life,” Whitmarsh said. “I think I would like to do some longer [triathlons], join another women’s hockey league when I can [....] I don’t know exactly what form it’s [going to] take yet, but I definitely want to continue in some way.”

Whitmarsh, like her great-aunt and generations of female hockey players before her, found ways to continue to play the sport she loves despite the world telling her that she couldn’t. Her exploration of women’s hockey’s not-too-distant past strengthened her beliefs in equality and the importance of strong female role models.

Offside is available in ebook and print forms on Amazon, at Chapters, and in other libraries and bookstores across Canada.

2019 World Series Preview

An underdog and a powerhouse meet in the 115th Fall Classic Miya Keilin Managing Editor The 2019 World Series begins Oct. 22, when the Houston Astros host the Washington Nationals at Minute Maid Park. The Nationals, who had never won a playoff series before 2019, are undoubtedly the underdog: Their 93–69 regular season record was only second-best in the National League (NL) East and 14 wins worse than the Astros.

Nevertheless, the team has captured the hearts of many baseball fans this postseason, from taking down the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL Division Series (NLDS) to fun antics from 20-year-old Juan Soto, who has to drink grape juice instead of champagne with his teammates to celebrate because he’s still underage. On the other hand, the American League (AL) was always between the Astros and the New York Yankees, so Houston’s spot in the World Series comes as no surprise.

Fangraphs gave the Nationals a 7.2 per cent chance of winning the World Series at the beginning of the season; by May 24, that number had fallen to just 1.5 per cent. However, the team went 73–38 for the rest of the season to clinch the first NL wild card spot. They defeated the Milwaukee Brewers 4–3 after eighth-inning heroics from Soto to advance to the NLDS against the 106-win Dodgers. It took them all five games, but the Nationals upset Los Angeles with a Howie Kendrick grand slam in the tenth inning of Game 5. Washington then dominated every moment of the NL Championship

Series (NLCS) against the St. Louis Cardinals: They allowed just one run and four hits through the first two games in St. Louis before returning home to win 8–1 and 7–4 in Games 3 and 4, respectively.

The Nationals have relied heavily on starting pitchers Stephen Strasburg, Max Scherzer, Patrick Corbin, and Anibal Sánchez and relievers Daniel Hudson and Sean Doolittle, so their extra four days of rest are a critical factor. Beyond Hudson and Doolittle, however, their bullpen is lacking, so they will need long outings from their starters for a chance at the title. Elsewhere, they have solid players in Soto, Trea Turner, Anthony Rendon, and Victor Robles, but their lineup is otherwise unremarkable.

If the tale of a team that went from a .392 win percentage to NL champions in five months is not compelling enough for fans wondering who to root for in the 2019 World Series, perhaps their quasi anthem is. Since Gerardo Parra made the Billboard Hot 100 single “Baby Shark” his walkup song in mid-June, Washington has gone all-in. From the little shark keychain hanging in their dugout to adult fans wearing shark costumes to games, “Baby Shark” has an awesome presence at Nationals Park, which has got to be worth something.

The Astros have a kid-friendly creature of their own: Their mascot Orbit is notorious for playing pranks on opposing teams’ players. However, they also have arguably one of the best teams of all time.

Fangraphs gave them a 17.8 per cent chance to win it all before the season even began and a 35.2 per

If the Washington Nationals win the World Series, 20-year-old outfielder Juan Soto won’t be able to join in the champagne celebrations.

(Adam Davies / EPA-EFE). cent chance before the start of the playoffs.

The Astros have few weaknesses. Starting pitchers Gerrit Cole and Justin Verlander have been lights-out from the mound, and though Zach Greinke has had two bad outings this postseason, he is still a good option to turn to. AL MVP candidate Alex Bregman owns the second-highest Wins Above Replacement by Baseball Reference (bWAR) in the league, and George Springer, Jose Altuve, Michael Brantley, and Yuli Gurriel all

put up strong offensive numbers this season. Josh Reddick, Robinson Chirinos, and AL Rookie of the Year candidate Yordan Álvarez have been struggling in the postseason, however.

According to Fangraphs, the Astros have a 72.1 per cent chance of winning, but Soto and the Nationals will not go down easily. This series will feature outstanding pitching performances, lateinning dramatics, and a lot of emotion. Ultimately, the Astros will claim their second World Series title.