The McGill Tribune Vol. 40 Issue 2

The McGill Tribune TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15 2020 | VOL. #40 | ISSUE #2

McGILLTRIBUNE.COM | @McGILLTRIBUNE

Published by the SPT, a student society of McGill University

EDITORIAL

FEATURE

STUDENT LIFE

Zoom University threatens to leave students behind

Super Marché Brito, the last dep on earth

Student ingenuity on display at virtual Activities Night

PGs. 8-9

PG. 5

PG. 14

(Caroline Shelton / The McGill Tribune)

How professors and students alike are faring with remote instruction

PG. 12

The McGill Scientific Writing Initiative introduces students to science writing New club aims to fill gaps in education on science communication Shafaq Nami Contributor There exists a common stereotype that people in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM)

departments do not like to write. Even though students in STEM fields conduct groundbreaking research, many have no idea how to present their findings in a clear and concise manner, let alone an interesting one.

The McGill Scientific Writing Initiative (MSWI) aims

to support science students in developing their writing skills. MSWI is a new student-run initiative, started in the summer of 2020. It was co-founded and is led by Marina Nysten and Joyce Wu, both U3 Science students.

PG. 7

RSEQ cancels fall seasons, athletes await news on winter sports

From The Viewpoint: The Festival of Marionettes

Cancellation announcement comes after two-week delay

Local artists and performers showcase puppeteering skills on the Wellington Noami Mirny Contributor No one likes marionettes. In my mind, a marionette is one of three things: A lying rascal named Pinocchio, a demon-possessed puppet that haunts an abandoned Opera House, or,

simply, entertainment for children. Marionettes are uncanny—miniature human figures stripped of all bodily autonomy, hanging limply with lifeless eyes. I never thought there was any artistic merit in puppetry, that is, until I saw it performed.

Le Festival Mari-

onnettes Plein La Rue - Édition 9.5 is a multiweek event featuring pop-up performances and scheduled shows on Saturdays and Fridays at the Wellington Promenade in Verdun.

PG. 14

Sarah Farnand Contributor On Sept. 14. the RSEQ announced the cancellation of all university sports in Quebec, adding to the June 8 U SPORTS announcement of the cancellation for all national championships in the Fall 2020 season.

No RSEQ-sanctioned

competitions will take place until at least Dec. 31.

The league was originally scheduled to make an announcement about the potential fall season on Aug. 31, but decided to push it back by two weeks in order to monitor the effects of students returning to Montreal.

Stéphane Boudreau, Deputy Director-

General of the RSEQ, had previously emphasized the fluidity of the situation.

“As of today, they’re supposed to be able to play on [Sept.] 14, but everything could change the Friday before,” Boudreau told The Montreal Gazette in an article published on Sept.1.

PG. 16

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TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2020

NEWS

Dozens gather at Palais de Justice de Montréal to protest against PEQ reforms Protestors condemned new labour restrictions against international students

Protests against the PEQ reform have been recurrent since July.

(Pascal Hogue/ The McGill Tribune)

Pascal Hogue News Editor Approximately 50 people gathered by the steps of the Palais de Justice de Montréal on Sept. 12 to protest the recent reform of the Québec Experience Program (PEQ). The small but vocal crowd cheered speakers on while remaining socially distant. The protest was organized by the activist group Le Québec c’est nous aussi, which advocates for inclusivity in Quebec.

The PEQ reform, implemented on July

22, has tightened the immigration program’s eligibility conditions, requiring increased work experience for international students and temporary foreign workers in Quebec.

Andrés Fontecilla, a Québec Solidaire Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP) for Laurier-Dorion, spoke with verve about his opposition to the new reforms. “[With] the reforms being fundamentally unjust, there are always reasons for us to mobilize […] and we will mobilize [...] until we correct the principal injustices of this program,” Fontecilla said.

Fontecilla also outlined the group’s

principal demands to the CAQ government. “[The government] must respect its word,” Fontecilla said. “The Quebec Premier François Legault and the former Immigration Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette gave their personal word as minister and Premier [that] international students would have a granted right [to work]. This means that, despite the reforms, the people that are already here will be able to apply following the old rules of the PEQ program. [The government] has to respect its promise. It is a state promise.”

Ramatoulaye Diallo, treasurer at the Conseil central du Montréal métropolitainCSN, an organization that represents the rights of over 100,000 workers from nearly 400 syndicates across Montreal, explained the importance of standing up for foreign students and workers.

“Fighting against injustice is what we do,” Diallo said. “[We’re] here today because we think that the PEQ reform is an unjust reform towards racialized people and […] immigrants.”

Diallo noted the importance of foreign students to Quebec, highlighting that their participation in the economy is undervalued by the CAQ government.

“My impression is that if we create an injustice like this, we will be missing workers, and in that sense, it can affect my work,” Diallo said. “I want young people, especially young graduates to be able to come here in Quebec and to be able to find work [so that] they can contribute to the development of this country.”

Saïd Apali, who is part of the Syndi-

cat des étudiants salariés de Montréal, felt that while his syndicate represents many international student workers at the University of Montreal, he took part in the protest because he believes it is also an important social cause.

“There are already many studies that demonstrate that people who are ethnic minorities […] and women [...] face structural barriers on the labour market, that are discriminated against, [be it] direct, indirect, or systemic,” Apali said. “But now [instead of helping], the Legault government is saying, ‘we will put even more barriers’ […] which will make it even harder to integrate into the labour market [....] We see that this has many different ideological motives and that these are racist ideological motives.”

Fontecilla explained that the PEQ reform, which was introduced by the CAQ in mid-July, was able to pass under the radar because the public was primarily focused on the pandemic. “[The government] profited […] from when everyone had their eyes turned towards the healthcare system, the CHSLD, and the number of [COVID-19] deaths,” Fontecilla said. “The government, especially the former Immigration Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette took profit from this to pass the reform in […] hiding—and his operation hasn’t worked—but he’s profiting from the mediatic attention being elsewhere to pass this reform. It’s a rather sad political tactic, pretty unimaginative, but heck, it’s politics.”

All interviews were conducted in French and translated by the author.

SSMU Clubs and Services forced to adapt amid COVID-19 regulations Social distancing has forced clubs to come up with creative methods for engaging newcomers Pia Mikhael Contributor While students around the world have begun to adjust to the new normal of online classes and socially-distanced gatherings, the COVID-19 pandemic still affects almost every aspect of our lives.

In particular, the pandemic has impacted student’s social interactions, including their ability to participate in clubs and societies. Activities night, held on Sept.

9 and 10, transitioned from being a gym jam-packed with booths into an online portal where students could sign up to interact with the clubs they were interested in.

Student-run clubs not only serve as convenient ways for students to meet others with similar interests, but also create opportunities for students to escape their daily class schedules. Furthermore, clubs serve as ways for students to help their communities or be exposed to and work within more specific fields.

MEDLIFE McGill, a club dedicated to advocating for accessible education and healthcare globally, is one of many student organizations impacted by COVID-19. MEDLIFE McGill’s VicePresident of Finance and Sponsorship

Being involved in SSMU clubs is an integral part of student life at McGill.

(Simon Poitrimo/ The McGill Tribune) Elise Goncalves explained how McGill’s transition to online learning has affected the club from running as it once had.

“Our meetings have gone online,” Goncalves said. “We use Slack to talk to each other and regular Zoom meetings to keep each other up-to-date, [whereas], we used to hand [out] flyers [...] and set up booths on campus to raise awareness for our cause.”

One of the more notable barriers to the club has been the lack of opportunities for outreach, as the only readily available

communication tools are Facebook and Instagram. This has made it more difficult for MEDLIFE McGill to collect donations, as normal fundraising activities are not feasible due to COVID-19 regulations.

There have, however, been some positive aspects to the transition to online platforms. MEDLIFE McGill hosted an online Q&A session in which students were able to ask questions relating to the club. In addition, MEDLIFE McGill also hosted an Instagram fundraiser, where team executives completed challenges to reach fundraising goals.

Krista Mahler, the co-chair of McGill Students for UN Women, explained how their fundraisers were similarly affected by the move to virtual resources.

“We have been trying to accustom our club [members] to virtual changes,” Mahler said. “We will hold events and panel discussions online. It has been hard to generate money for the club itself, including being able to donate our money.

Moving forward, [McGill Students for UN Women] will be doing virtual volunteer work, like sending letters out to women’s shelters, particularly Chez Doris, to create ties and inspire them.”

Another organization that has been

affected by the COVID-19 pandemic is Desautels Management Achievement Awards (DMAA). Kaitlyn Lynch, the director of Marketing, expressed that DMAA would be forced to reconsider how it would host events.

“Our club works towards having an event in February, an award ceremony, which was held at the Four Seasons [hotel] last year,” Lynch said. “We don’t know whether or not that is going to happen in-person yet. We have been looking at alternatives for the event and [whether we will] still be able to get sponsorship money to hold this event, but right now it is all up in the air.”

Although the pandemic forced student clubs to implement new methods of outreach, it is not all negative. The silver lining comes from developing more creative strategies that can reach a wider audience, such as the use of listservs, social media, and online events. Online meetings and events also allow students to avoid commuting to campus, and makes it more convenient and easier for students to get involved. It remains to be seen if these strategies will continue after the pandemic and as life returns back to normal.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2020

NEWS

3

Certain international graduate programs see sharp tuition hike

Some international students in non-thesis masters’ programs face a 30 per cent increase in tuition Sarah Farnand Contributor International students in some non-thesis masters’ programs will see their tuition rate jump by 30 per cent, compared to a 3.1 per cent tuition increase for students in other programs relative to the 2019-2020 school year.

The increase comes after the Quebec government announced a policy in May 2018 that allowed public universities to deregulate international tuition rates, meaning that McGill was able to set its own tuition rates without legislative oversight. The policy came into effect in Fall 2019.

Although the increased tuition will help McGill run programs and research, the rise in tuition for some programs was thought to be drastic by many.

Michael Overton, a master’s student in the Sound Recording program, expected to pay approximately $11,100 in Fall 2020 tuition fees. When his tuition increased by more than 28 per cent to over $14,300, Overton was alarmed.

“It makes me feel as though international students are simply seen as a revenue stream instead of people that come from different economic situations,” Overton said.

For many students, this increase came as a surprise. Connie Shen, Financial Affairs Officer of the Post-Graduate Students’ Society (PGSS), believes that many students were not given enough notice to financially plan for the tuition fee spikes.

“Many students did not anticipate such a large increase, and therefore did

Many international students believe the recent tuition hike will exacerbate their financial stress.

(Olivia Yu / The McGill Tribune) not get the chance to budget and plan accordingly,” Shen said. “Some students were not even aware of this increase until it appeared on their bill in August.”

Given that the COVID-19 pandemic has already exacerbated the financial strain for many students, the massive increase added unnecessary stress for many of Shen’s classmates who were expected to pay their bills by Aug. 25. Shen would have prefered if McGill had implemented the increase gradually and communicated the

changes more clearly.

“The timing of this increase is very unfortunate,” Shen said. “There will be many students who will be unable to pay increased tuition due to the pandemic. There are many students who relied on income from part-time work in order to pay tuition. Many graduate students also have dependents, and the added pressure of caring for children during the pandemic has made it difficult for student-parents to work as they normally would.”

Although not all students experi-

enced a tuition increase as drastic as 30 per cent, all 2020-2021 tuition rates increased by 3.1 per cent compared to last year. International student Ahmad Hendie, U1 Engineering, is concerned that these increases may force students who are already struggling to pay tuition to study at another university.

“McGill needs to expand its financial aid offerings for returning [international students] in need,” Hendie said.

“As [even] the annual three to four per cent fee increases might squeeze out internationals who are stretching to afford

McGill.”

However, Hendi also acknowledged that the tuition increase will help McGill stay competitive among other top-tier universities in Canada.

“Funding, of which a large [percentage] comes from international tuition, is vital for [McGill’s] rankings as it highly affects research output.”

McGill Media Relations Officer Frédérique Mazerolle explained that the increase in tuition would help to fund academic programs and services.

“This policy change will allow McGill to retain tuition paid by international undergraduate students to support academic programs, services, and financial assistance delivered to McGill students,” Mazerolle wrote to the Tribune.

The Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies (GPS) society will be helping the affected students, such as those in Overton’s program, to offset the increased costs. In addition, McGill’s administration noted the creation of certain programs to help students pay for their elevated tuition rates, such as a “line of credit” for students in critical need. The administration also offers the McGill Student Emergency Support Fund, which serves to assist students affected financially by the COVID-19 crisis. While these programs can potentially help international students afford attending McGill, the tuition increase continues to burden many.

McGill Max Bell graduate students bridge borders with comparative policy tool

New project emphasizes international discussion and cooperation during COVID-19 pandemic.

Ella Milloy Contributor

Many international students believe the recent tuition hike will exacerbate their financial stress.

(Facebook.com) The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has prompted graduate students at McGill’s Max Bell School of Public Policy to create the Bridging Borders project, an interactive policy tool that compares the effectiveness of pandemic response plans from regions around the world. Since the project started in May, graduate students Henna Hundal and Sai Rajagopal have interviewed the Prime Ministers and Presidents of over 40 countries on camera about their responses to the pandemic.

Both Hundal and Rajagopal studied and conducted research at Harvard University during their undergraduate years. Hundal’s academic background in health policy and clinical medicine and Rajagopal’s studies in biomedical and mechanical engineering provided them with the experience necessary to develop Bridging Borders.

When the COVID-19 pandemic started affecting regions of the United States differently, Hundal and Rajagopal sought to compare how policy responses and epidemiological outcomes varied from state to state. Recently, their project has expanded to include countries around the world.

“When we saw that some developed countries had worse policy responses than the developing countries in which we worked, we realized there was a space in which to inform listeners about COVID19 policy responses across borders,” Rajagopal wrote in an email to The McGill Tribune. “That’s how the project was born.”

By interviewing international leaders directly, the Bridging Borders project has brought attention to regions of the world that are not regularly discussed in mainstream media. Discussions with President Jonathan Nez of the Navajo Nation and Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. of the Cherokee Nation highlighted the importance of facilitating dialogue within communities hit harder by the COVID-19 pandemic, and outlining the infrastructural issues that have contributed to these regional differences.

“Those stories don’t get reported,” Hundal said. “There’s all these nuances and granularities that the [Bridging Borders] program is able to reveal. We’re hoping that after this pandemic we get serious about solving some of these issues.”

Weekly interviews with global leaders posted to the Bridging Borders website provide the primary data needed to create their comprehensive policy comparison tool. Launching on Sept. 18., the tool examines the policies implemented by each country, such as social distancing guidelines and mask and quarantine decrees. These policies are overlaid with the caseload and death charts of each region, so that users can see the effectiveness of different public health guidelines in real-time.

Director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada and professor of Political Science Daniel Béland shared his perspective on the Bridging Borders project.

“The various episodes posted on the website features interviews with world leaders and policymakers that allow us to better understand both the global and the local COVID-related public health and policy challenges [that] they face,” Béland wrote in an email to the Tribune “COVID-19 is a global pandemic but the policy responses can vary significantly across the world, and taking stock of fast-evolving national strategies to cope with COVID-19 is potentially important to improve responses to current and future pandemics.”

The Bridging Borders project focusses on core questions during each interview, including asking leaders about the severity of the pandemic in their own countries or regions, the death tolls, and what basic measures have been implemented since the onset of the pandemic. With the help of listener feedback, the project has worked to better contextualize their interviews, and aims to give users a more well-rounded picture of what the pandemic response is like in a given region.

“We’ve been very pleased by the level of engagement among the leaders who are interested in coming together on this platform and pooling their policy ideas,” Hundal said. “That’s a function also of the need to work together during a pandemic. It’s not a problem that stops at borders.”

All of the Bridging Borders’s interview episodes can be found on their website. Episodes are released weekly and the project’s policy tool will be updated as each episode is uploaded. Bridging Borders can also be found on social media with @bridgingbordersproject on Instagram, and with @bridgingproject on Twitter.

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NEWS

TUESDAY, MONTH DAY YEAR

SSMU holds the first legislative council of the semester

The council announced new standing rules to improve SSMU’s functionality Kate Addison News Editor The Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) held its first legislative council meeting of the Fall 2020 semester on Sept. 8. As McGill has transitioned to online learning platforms, student organizations such as SSMU have similarly adapted to social distancing restrictions by holding their meetings via recorded Zoom calls. While the meeting lacked the usual energy of in-person SSMU assemblies, the council introduced new standing rules for future legislative council meetings and provided updates from the summer.

Speaker of the Council Lauren Hill outlined changes to these rules that, when passed, will officially supersede SSMU’s pre-existing parliamentary procedure. Seeking to make council proceedings more efficient, another motion proposed banning late additions to the agenda.

“Up to one motion submitted after the deadline shall be considered as a late motion,” Hill said. “This is new from last year, [...] but if you were on council before, you understood the issue with late motions, so we’ve decided that we’re essentially going to ban the practice [altogether].”

SSMU further increased its commitment to decorum within SSMU proceedings by instituting penalties for late or absent council members.

“If [a member of the council is] unexcused twice, [they] are automatically suspended,” Hill said. “If [they] are late, four times excused, [they’re] automatically suspended. All committees and reports must be submitted by the Sunday prior to Legislative Council [....] If [a council member] submits a late report, [it will] be equivalent to half of one absence since failure to submit a report will be equivalent to one absence in total.”

SOUND BITE

SSMU legislative council meets next on Sept. 24.

(Leanne Young / The McGill Tribune) Closing Tuesday’s meeting were executive reports from SSMU President Jemark Earle and Vice President of University Affairs Brooklyn Frizzle. Earle summarized SSMU’s progress over the summer and addressed issues with the absence of a French translation of the new SSMU constitution.

“This summer, there was a Judicial Board hearing on the validity of the 2020 Constitution that was approved last year [that] went to a referendum because it wasn’t submitted in French,” Earle said. “The results of the case are that the 2020 constitution that was voted on was declared invalid because it wasn’t approved in French. But the judgment won’t come into effect until Nov. 1, giving us enough time to run a special referendum which will be coming soon to approve both the English and French versions.”

The meetings can be accessed on the SSMU Livestream Youtube channel.

“There’s a tech drive [...] to raise awareness and collect technology for folks who might not have it this year, given that at least the fall semester is going to be conducted remotely. So basically, we’re looking to collect old laptops, or iPads, whatever that people have lying around or are not using. We’re hoping to hire someone who’d be able to fix them up if they’re broken. And then we would be delivering [the electronics] to students or community members in need so that they can study appropriately given the [online] semester.”

- Jemark Earle , SSMU President

MOMENT OF THE MEETING Notable during the SSMU livestream was the upbeat game show-like music that played for a total of over 35 minutes during the three-hour meeting.

Played as a lengthy musical interlude to open the proceedings and to punctuate each recess taken by councilors, the whimsical soundtrack truly set a fun tone for the student council meeting.

Scholars strike to call for an end to systemic racism within academic institutions Scholar Strike was an act of solidarity with BIPOC victims of police violence Respina Rostamifar Contributor Scholars across Canada and the United States took part in a collective action on Sept. 9 and Sept. 10 to protest anti-Black, anti-Indigenous, and colonial violence within academic institutions.

Known as the Scholar Strike, workers in academia boycotted normal class schedules for the two-day period to organize teach-ins on police violence and social justice.

The Scholar Strike initiative, which calls for an end to anti-Black police violence and discrimination within academia, was initiated in the U.S. by Dr. Anthea Butler, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Butler’s call for a strike was motivated by the recent actions by players in the NBA and WNBA, who boycotted games in response to police brutality in the U.S. and Canada.

Butler then started the Scholar Strike initiative on Twitter.

As in the United States, thousands of Canadian scholars took this opportunity to advocate for an end to systemic racism. Additionally, Scholar Strike Canada was dedicated to addressing systemic and institutional forms of violence, which have resulted in the underrepresentation of Black and Indigenous scholars and students in Canadian institutions.

Aziz Choudry, a professor in the Faculty of Education, has been involved in anti-racist and anti-colonial activism since the 1980s. Choudry spoke to the Tribune about his participation in Schol-

Over 5000 academics across Canada participated to show support for racial justice.

(Eve Cable / The McGill Tribune) ar Strike Canada and highlighted McGill University’s own institutional racism.

“I’m supporting Scholar Strike Canada as one action in the ongoing fight against racism and colonialism that those of us working in universities can take part in by interrupting ‘business as usual’ and uplifting anti-racist education work as the new university term starts up,” Choudry said. “Institutional racism continues to permeate McGill, Canadian higher education institutions, and broader Canadian society. At McGill, the struggles and work of racialized students, faculty, and staff against racism

have been frequently erased or forgotten.

Much of the anti-racist work has been and continues to be done by relatively few racialized faculty.”

Dr. Mehri Ghazanjani, a professor in the Department of Sociology, stated that her participation in Scholar Strike Canada provided professors with the opportunity to educate their students on forms of systemic racism that exist within postsecondary education. “[The] Scholar Strike for Black lives in Canada has been a great teaching and learning moment for all of us,” Ghazanjani said. “Not only should we stand

in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, but we also should take it upon ourselves to understand and respond to social injustices in our society.

The teach-ins provided us with an important opportunity to learn more about systemic [and] inferential racism and discrimination and to reflect upon our role in it. It is time to stand together and push for long-overdue changes in our institutions.”

Canadian educational institutions, including McGill University, occupy unceded traditional territories of Indigenous Peoples and have a long-standing history of racial and institutional discrimination. Scholar Strike Canada hopes that their actions will call attention to systemic racism, as well as educate individuals in the hopes of sparking progresisve change.

For Robin Vochelet, a U4 Arts student, the Scholar Strike’s provided an opportunity to have an important conversation about dismantling stereotypes and discriminatory academic structures.

“I genuinely believe there’s a need for a discussion on the way academia perpetuates white supremacy,” Vochelet said. “To me, this is a crucial point that we need to keep in mind moving forward in our academic careers, mostly because Canada is too often deemed as better than the United States regarding systemic racism. It is about time we break these harmful stereotypes down and start working on building an environment that is, in fact, inclusive and free of systemic racism.”

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14 2020

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EDITORIAL BOARD Editor-in-Chief Helen Wu editor@mcgilltribune.com Creative Director Aidan Martin amartin@mcgilltribune.com Managing Editors Katia Lo Innes kinnes@mcgilltribune.com Nina Russell nrussell@mcgilltribune.com Kaja Surborg ksurborg@mcgilltribune.com

News Editors Kate Addison, Pascal Hogue & Sequoia Kim news@mcgilltribune.com Opinion Editors Jonah Fried & Kennedy McKee-Braide opinion@mcgilltribune.com Science & Technology Editor Sophia Gorbounov & Ronny Litvack-Katzman scitech@mcgilltribune.com Student Life Editor Alaana Kumar & Leyla Moy studentlife@mcgilltribune.com Features Editor Kevin Vogel features@mcgilltribune.com Arts & Entertainment Editor Vanessa Barron & Jonathan Giammaria arts@mcgilltribune.com Sports Editors Adam Burton sports@mcgilltribune.com Design Editors Ruobing Chen & Chloe Rodriguez design@mcgilltribune.com Photo Editor Caroline Shelton photo@mcgilltribune.com Multimedia Editors Sarah Ford & Alexandre Hinton multimedia@mcgilltribune.com Web Developer Benjamin Alexandor webdev@mcgilltribune.com Copy Editor Jackie Lee copy@mcgilltribune.com Social Media Editor Marie Saadeh socialmedia@mcgilltribune.com Business Manager Marilie Pilon business@mcgilltribune.com

TPS BOARD OF DIRECTORS Helen Wu, Caitlin Kindig, McEan Taylor,Tara Alami,Yara Shaheen-Abuelreish, Deana Korsunsky, Sequoia Kim, Kennedy McKee-Braide, Shreya Rastogi, Marilie Pilon, Heela Achakzai

CONTRIBUTORS Sepideh Ashfar, Valentina de la Borbolla, Michael Dickinson, Sarah Farnand, Lilly Lecanu-Fayet, Signy Harnad, Zoe Karkossa, Claire Latendresse, Adam Menikefs, Pia Mikhael, Ella Milloy, Naomi Mirny, Shafaq Nami, Zoe Babad-Palmer, Mackenzie Pereira, Respina Rostamifar, Josephine Wang, Gabrielle Wasco, Sophia White, Lowell Wolfe

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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.

OPINION

Zoom University threatens to leave students behind During the last two weeks, students were welcomed back to a McGill that no one had ever seen before. Across time zones throughout Canada and around the world, frantic searching for class locations was replaced with anxious scrambling for Zoom links as students and academic staff struggled to adapt to the realities of remote course delivery.

Despite the notable efforts of many professors, teaching assistants, and other instructors to prepare for the online semester, students have experienced issues that should alarm educational staff.

Inconsistencies in regulations on course delivery methods have sowed widespread frustration and confusion. From onerous assessment procedures to unusual departures from normal class scheduling, these inconveniences caused by remote delivery are rapidly mutating into an accessibility issue. McGill must act now to address these concerns and work to ensure that its policies are more equitable, responsive, and accessible to students.

Aside from a handful of Zoom town halls, students have been left to make sense of the vague descriptions contained in emails sent via Deputy Provost (Student Life & Learning) Fabrice Labeau’s listserv alone. Assessment policies

OFF THE BOARD Jonathan Giammaria Arts & Entertainment Editor Back in February, one month before Montreal’s lockdown began, my therapist explained to me that I was in a perpetual state of distress, constantly scanning my surroundings for threats. At its worst, this is how my social anxiety works: For fear of others’ judgments or interactions gone awry, I monitor everything I say and do, obsessing over all the what-ifs that might lead a conversation towards disaster. As a subtle undercurrent in my life, my anxiety is a shrug of resignation to the potential for lasting social connection. So when lockdown set in last March, and daily interactions started to fall away, it was with a hint of cool and pride that I told myself, this isn’t that different.

I wouldn’t fully admit it early on, but life in quarantine was a near total reprieve from the encounters I’d tried to minimize in my day-to-day. Often, those I’d wanted to talk to most were the ones that I found interacting with most paralyzing. Still, even minor exchanges, like group work in class or attending meetings for this newspaper, could become unexpectedly stressful.

(It took me a full academic year before I could bring myself to attend my first meeting at The McGill Tribune.) This

vary widely at the departmental level, and with different conference and lab facilitation formats, scheduling has become a nightmare for some students who have had to account for these discrepancies in their planning. Moreover, many professors have been uploading lecture recordings outside of scheduled course times, further complicating matters. Some have also exceeded the allotted time for their lectures while others have uploaded lectures as little as half as long as a normal one.

Such inconsistencies have only added further confusion and stress to the already strained circumstances of remote learning.

Some professors have mandated— or structured their courses as to nearly necessitate—attendance in conferences, notwithstanding McGill’s policies designed to accommodate students living in different time zones. Professors are not to blame for these problems, however: They stem from misunderstandings resulting from poor communication between faculty, administrators, and other academic staff. Clear articulation to students and staff alike of the policies currently in effect is evidently necessary.

It is imperative that students no longer be left in the dark, especially as plans for the winter

semester are finalized. Whether online or in person, McGill is paid for in great part by student tuition dollars. In fact, considering that McGill has not reduced tuition this year, despite the online format, and that international students’ tuition has actually increased, consulting students and clearly communicating operations ought to be the bare minimum.

Broader accessibility concerns are even more prohibitive. Students who require accommodations through the Office for Students with Disabilities (OSD), for example, are particularly vulnerable to falling behind with coursework. Consequently, services such as those provided by OSD Note Takers are more critical than ever. Students were calling for McGill to compensate notetakers fairly before the pandemic.

For McGill to continue to ignore their demands now, when their work is so obviously essential, would be careless and disgraceful.

Of course, internet inaccessibility and distracting or unstable home environments remain equally formidable barriers to students this semester.

Instructors must be cognizant of these obstacles and accommodate students experiencing such difficulties. But the onus is on faculty administrations to

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EDITORIAL responsibly guide their students and staff. And while clear communication of policies and plans is important, it alone is not a solution. Nor is hiring students to help facilitate remote instruction, though this may be helpful, because many of these problems extend beyond technical difficulties.

McGill should consider reinstating the Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory (S/U) option for all courses, as was done at the end of the Winter 2020 semester. Above all, McGill must make an effort to prevent misunderstandings by coordinating departmental guidelines and enforcing scheduling structures.

At the same time, students must recognize professors and staff who are taking measures to combat these problems.

McGill’s librarians, for instance, should be commended for using software such as HathiTrust to make print resources available to students around the world.

Through mutual compassion and diligent communication, the McGill community can navigate the online semester. A return to any semblance of McGill as we once knew it can only be assured through effective solutions to the problems already apparent from the last two weeks, and the entire McGill community should be united with this goal in mind.

My summer of rest and relaxation exhaustive fear causes social anxiety to run in a cycle: The relief of isolation follows the anxiety over socialization.

a few solitary bike rides—and I felt comfortable. But that comfort was steeped in avoidance. Social anxiety

(Jonathan Giammaria / The McGill Tribune) For a time, it calms the need for social connection, which inevitably resurfaces, and the cycle restarts.

The pandemic helped to break that cycle. Quarantine restricted social interaction while also doing away with any communal onus for that interaction—staying inside wasn’t just expected, it was commendable.

All that was left was my own personal drive for connection, and it lingered, though quietly. For two months, my life shrank to a series of rooms and hobbies—endless days spent reading,

feels like an outward problem facing in: Your fear exists in reaction to delusions that you believe are real.

Removing stressors as a break from your anxiety is therefore a fallacy, because that fear is inborn. Sooner or later, the fear adjusts itself to the conditions of your surroundings, even if they’re different than before. In August, I found myself in that familiar state of paralysis, trying and failing to contact a former co-worker, even though all communication was virtual.

What’s obvious to say now is

something I chose to ignore in the moment: Quarantine is not a solution for my social anxiety. Now that the semester has begun, its restrictions on how we interact with each other have sometimes worsened my anxiety’s expression. Zoom classes are a foreign landscape where the knowledge that my classmates are watching me whenever I speak worries me at the start of most sessions. In a recent Zoom meeting, I spoke in rapid staccato, nearly incomprehensible, trying to divert the eyes on me as quickly as possible. These are new phenomena.

Somewhat ironically, though, the harmful effects that the pandemic has had on my mental wellbeing may be coupled with a renewed drive to begin addressing it again. What I felt indifferent about during the beginning of lockdown—the necessary barriers that prevented social interactions—are what have galvanized me to reclaim what’s been missing in my life. For many working through new and challenging realities, the solutions to our problems still feel out of reach, even if we’re making strides to improve. But living now through the unending isolation that I sometimes believed my future holds, I’m more intent than ever on making sure that that future remains hypothetical— as a distant and harmless what-if.

6

OPINION

COMMENTARY

TUEDAY, SEPTEMBER 15 2020

BIPOC voices will no longer be silenced

Sepideh Afshar Contributor Content Warning: Racism On Aug. 29, protestors toppled a statue of John A. Macdonald in Montreal. Besides serving as Canada’s first prime minister, Macdonald is infamously known as the creator of the residential school system and as someone who starved Indigenous groups to forcibly relocate them. Macdonald’s treatment of Indigenous Peoples was reconsitiuted as cultural genocide by the Canadian government in 2015, due to the work of Indigenous activists. The distress caused by statues of those who contributed to the marginalization of minority groups is not new. On McGill’s campus, there is a growing movement demanding the removal of the statue of James McGill. The calls to remove statues honouring Canada’s colonial legacy is a direct result of the inaction of those in positions of power to denounce the harmful acts of those before them. Silencing minority voices and ignoring their labour to build a more equitable society will no longer be tolerated by BIPOC and their allies.

The conversation surrounding harmful commemoration is not unique to Montreal; rather, it is one being held all over Canada.

In 2018, the City Council of Vic-

COMMENTARY Michael Dickinson Contributor Since gaining a majority government in the 2018 election, the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) has advanced a nationalistic agenda for the province, with one of their principal initiatives being the reinforcement of the primacy of the French language. Most recently, a report found that 40 per cent of Quebec businesses prefer employees who are fluent in English, agitating party officials such as French Language Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette. In response, he pledged to implement a series of stringent measures to protect the French language, particularly in Montreal, where the rate of companies that prefer English fluency stands at 63 per cent.

Among these proposed measures is Bill 104, a new measure that compels government bodies and crown corporations to deliver written communications exclusively in French. However, it is clear that such policies would harm businesses and minority populations, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is difficult to believe that the French language could be under threat in a province where nearly 95 per cent of people speak the language fluently.

Protestors toppled a statue of John A. Macdonald at a protest on Aug. 29. (Pascal Hogue / The McGill Tribune) toria, British Columbia, voted to remove their statue of Macdonald. Those who want statues of racist historical figures to remain often argue that removing them is equivalent to erasing history, insisting that there is no middle ground between commemoration and erasure. This argument fails to acknowledge that many Black and Indigenous people face the harmful legacies of residential schools and slavery in their everyday lives. One cannot celebrate the societal contributions of men like Macdonald and McGill without considering the harm that they have also perpetuated and acknowledging the fact that

their success came at the expense of Black and Indigenous peoples.

There may have been alternative solutions to the removal of these statues when concerns first arose, but the government’s reluctance to acknowledge its racist past has led protesters with no other choice than to force change. Montreal activists have been asking for the removal of Macdonald’s iconography through petitions and peaceful demonstrations but they have been ignored by those able to authorize its removal. The tearing down of the Macdonald statue demonstrates a shift: Marginalized voices are tired of inac-

tion and are now taking matters into their own hands. BIPOC are no longer waiting for white men to make the right decisions.

Politicians have been largely ignoring the protestors but have spoken out about the statue’s fall, insisting that it was not their own inaction that led to the toppling of the statue. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau condemned the protestors’ actions, arguing that vandalism does not pave the way for progress or addressing injustice in Canada. Previously, Trudeau has apologized to Indigenous groups for Macdonald’s actions but the Prime Minister’s acknowledgement of Macdonald’s legacy as important only highlights his unwillingness to listen to Indigenous groups’ need for justice—the bare minimum of which would be to stop honouring Macdonald’s racist legacy.

Both Trudeau and Quebec Premier François Legault argue that removing a part of our history is not productive, but their tactics to ignore marginalized voices demanding change is also stalling progress. The government’s neglect of the needs of BIPOC and their unconcerned attitude while making decisions that harm Indigenous groups, such as approving the Trans Mountain pipeline, emphasizes the performative activism in their response to Black Lives Matter and other such social justice movements.

McGill’s administration has added a statement acknowledging their namesake’s role in enslaving Black and Indigenous people, but still has yet to mention that they were Black and Indigenous.

The university has had more than enough time to listen to BIPOC students’ needs in regards to McGill’s racist legacy but as time passes, students are getting tired of waiting. The administration is blatantly disregarding Black students’ demands for equity. Other than an emailed statement about the Black Lives Matter movement, the university has yet to comment on the statue of James McGill. McGill’s lack of tangible action is reminiscent of the Canadian government making blanket statements and ignoring their active role in perpetuating the marginalization of people of colour.

McGill students are losing patience. The administration’s inaction is leaving many students of colour uncomfortable with the institution that they attend and questioning the values that it holds. Protesters should not have needed to tear Macdonald down; the government should have listened to the people that his legacy has harmed and cooperated to remove the statue peacefully. It is now time for McGill to take action. Passivity only leads to escalation, and there is nothing to say that the James McGill statue will not be next.

Quebec’s businesses and linguistic minorities need protection during COVID-19 Jolin-Barrette argued that stronger measures are necessary to maintain French as Quebec’s official language of business, but the statistics that he cited to illustrate this need were misleading.

He created a false equivalence between a business requiring a knowledge of English as opposed to merely ///preferring/// it. The survey found that only nine per cent of Quebec businesses turned down a candidate because they could not speak English. Although these studies are reminders that bilingualism is an asset for employees in a globalized economy, they are not sufficient evidence to suggest that French is at risk of being replaced as the primary language of business in the province.

The legislation that Jolin-Barrette is suggesting would be detrimental to a provincial economy that has already been devastated by COVID-19.

Quebec was hit harder than any other province by the pandemic, causing a record deficit in the provincial government’s budget. With the economic situation still so dire, the CAQ should instead focus its attention on rebuilding businesses, not hampering them with bureaucratic measures such as legislating which languages

they communicate or advertise in.

Moreover, the CAQ’s policy of cutting English services to promote the French language could have serious consequences for McGill students.

Restricting these services to historic anglophone communities, which Premier François Legault defined as individuals whose parents attended English schools in Quebec, would exclude many members of McGill’s Englishspeaking community. This could make it difficult for them to understand notices from government agencies such as Hydro-Québec or health services.

Indeed, the CAQ’s language politics have already had serious consequences during the pandemic. Despite promising that historic anglophone communities could continue to receive English services, certain COVID-19 information pamphlets were distributed exclusively in French throughout the province, putting those who do not have access to online information at risk.

The policy of denying many English speakers access to English services markedly differs from the treatment of linguistic minority populations in other parts of the country. Consider Ontario’s French Language Services Act, which

Instead of regulating companies’ language composition, Jolin-Barrette should instead be focussing on helping them recover from COVID-19.

(Jacques Boissinot / The Canadian Press Files) protects the right of citizens to receive government services in French. The Act applies to counties and districts with francophone populations of at least 10 per cent, as well as any cities with a population of five thousand or more francophones. This means that native francophones in Toronto can receive services in French even though they comprise only 1.3 per cent of the city’s population. By contrast, 13 per cent of Montrealers speak English as a first language, yet not all of them

can be counted as part of the historic anglophone community that is to be exempted from the CAQ’s measures.

Bill 101 has already ensured the primacy of the French language in Quebec. Ignoring demographic realities, hampering economic growth, and reducing English services is unfair and dangerous, especially during this current time of crisis. The French language is already protected and the CAQ must shift its priorities to protecting all of its citizens and their livelihoods.

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2020

7

Unearthing an epidemic: The birth of Canadian public health The 19th-century cholera epidemics reflect the challenges of COVID-19

Claire Latendresse Contributor Diseases are one of humanity’s greatest blind spots, an enemy that always reappears. Fears of loss and death can lead to dramatic societal turmoil, from economic troubles to civil unrest. They remain, however, pivotal moments in history, providing valuable opportunities for comparisons between past and present disease management tactics.

A team of archaeologists were recently called to document the remains of a 19th-century church discovered by construction workers underneath a parking lot in the district of Sainte-Rose, Laval. The archeologists carefully recorded the outlines of the old church, cemetery walls, and graves in what was once the churchyard.

Interestingly, the team observed that the graves were small, tightly packed, and located quite close to the surface. By accessing the cemetery’s records, which spanned from 1788 to 1890, they learned that over 7000 people were buried in the small plot, primarily children less than a year old. The archeologists also noticed an intriguing spike in deaths on two occasions, in 1832 and 1834.

Archeologist Justine Tétreault tied these spikes to dates in the church records.

“Well, we know the exact

The cholera epidemics of 1832 and 1834 completely disrupted what little medical infrastructure existed in Montreal; even Montreal General Hospital refused to admit cholera patients.

(McCord Museum) numbers [of burials] through records, but what we saw on the site is a very high density of burial pits,” Tétreault said in an interview with The McGill Tribune.

In fact, the 1830s were pivotal in the history of public health in Canada. In 1832 and 1834, two cholera epidemics swept through North America, causing mass casualties in Lower Canada—now Quebec and Labrador.

Cholera is a gastrointestinal disease caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. Highly infectious, it causes diarrhea, massive dehydration, and is often deadly. In

the early 1800s, however, the cause of the illness was still unknown.

In the winter of 1831, government officials in Lower Canada learned that cholera had hit the British Isles and could spread to Canada. This information effectively prompted the birth of Canadian public health legislations, culminating in Canada’s first Quarantine Act in 1872. The famous Grosse-Île quarantine station was established during the 1832 epidemic to mitigate the impact of cholera’s arrival.

Despite these newly implemented measures, the

illness’s toll was devastating.

Cholera claimed over 5,000 lives in Lower Canada alone, a significant loss for a region with a total population of only 500,000 residents at the time. Jean-Philip Mathieu, a PhD candidate in the Department of History and Classical Studies, noted that fear was prevalent in the population at the time.

“It was a catastrophe for human health. It was absolutely catastrophic,” Mathieu said in an interview with the Tribune.

“This was a major fear for people.

It strained the system of proper Christian burials because the mortality rate doubled over a few months.”

Frightened and underprepared, Canadians were left to improvise.

Government officials responded by creating a Board of Health, but also fired cannons and burned tar to cleanse the air—a futile effort, especially when fighting a waterborne pathogen. As with the COVID-19 pandemic of today, people dreaded the misunderstood disease, and their fear translated into a distrust of the government and other experts.

“The improvisation of trying to deal with this [pandemic is] very familiar,” Mathieu said. “People not complying, not following directives, not trusting doctors. A major thing people [thought was] that doctors [were] actually giving

them cholera—there’s a distrust of expertise. There are a lot of commonalities [with COVID-19], and all pandemics have certain things in common.”

The apprehension caused by an unknown disease now seems eerily familiar. Yet, throughout history, epidemics and pandemics have always brought about two things: Tragedy and change. Many of the health measures implemented in 1832 persisted far beyond the end of the outbreak.

“This particular epidemic really changed things,” Mathieu said. “People realized how improvisational this was, and that you need better planning and better regulations because you [can’t] escape epidemic disease [....] And a quarantine station is just one example of that, of these governments with very limited tools and technologies, [and without] a very strong state structure. I think that’s really important contextually.”

History is cyclical. Every so often, we unearth glimpses of the past that help us understand similar experiences of those who came before. Today, like in 1832, it may seem as though the world lingers in a perpetual state of fear, distrust, and uncertainty. Yet, these same fears will push experts to change the face of public health, even if such changes only become visible in retrospect, 200 years from now.

The McGill Scientific Writing Initiative introduces students to science writing New club aims to fill gaps in education on science communication Shafaq Nami Contributor Continued from page 1.

As universities shifted to online classes in April 2020, many science courses replaced multiple choice final exams with end-ofterm papers. This was a difficult transition for some science students, many of whom were never required to take writing-intensive courses at McGill and thus lacked experience in scientific writing.

Observing these challenges that their peers faced, Wu and Nysten began to brainstorm ideas on how to bridge this knowledge gap.

“Last April, we both noticed a lack of science communication resources at McGill,” Wu and Nysten wrote in an email to The McGill Tribune. “MSWI’s purpose is to act as a supplementary resource to support students and professors, especially considering the transition to writing-centric assessments this semester.”

Throughout the upcoming

At just under 40 pages, MSWI’s ebook, “A McGill Guide to Scientific Writing,” is an easily accessible resource for STEM students in need of a writing refresher.

(Megane Pepin / The McGill Scientific Writing Initiative) academic year, MSWI will be organizing workshops on a variety of topics, from how to expertly read research articles to presenting scientific material and communicating science to the public.

MSWI will also provide comprehensive online resources on its website, including a concise ebook on scientific writing that Nysten and Wu penned over the

summer of 2020 in collaboration with faculty members, TAs, and students.

According to Nysten and Wu, the club’s main goal is to become a “hub” for science communication at McGill. One of the ways they hope to achieve this is by supporting as many students as possible through their partnerships with faculty members and

other student organizations.

Some student clubs and organizations such as the Student Research Initiative and McGill Science Undergraduate Research Journal have missions that broadly align with that of MSWI, creating a cohesive network of writing-centric student support opportunities. Whether as a part of their personal research or as a result of the increased writing requirements in many online classes, Nysten and Wu predict that students from across disciplines will benefit from MSWI’s services.

“We hope to offer unique services and resources that fill in the gaps that currently exist at McGill,” Nysten and Wu wrote.

“An essential factor in this goal is to listen to what students are looking for, which we achieve by conducting surveys and creating online feedback forms.”

There are plenty of opportunities for students to get involved with MSWI, such as attending monthly workshops, contributing

a blog post to the MSWI website, or by helping to create learning resources in a subject they have experience in.

Their first workshop, entitled “Reading Research Articles,” is on Sept. 24 and will be co-hosted by Tommy Markopoulos, a graduate student in the Integrated Program in Neuroscience.

One of the biggest events that MSWI planned for this year is the first annual MSWI Science “CommunicaScion” Case Competition set to be held in the winter semester. With this competition, Nysten and Wu aim to challenge students to effectively communicate a scientific topic to three different ages and educational backgrounds. This year’s theme remains a secret, but will be revealed in the coming months.

If you are interested in learning more about the MSWI and what they offer, you can stay updated on future events and resources by following their social media and subscribing to their newsletter.

Super Marché Brito, the last dep on earth

Katia Lo Innes Managing Editor

A friendly neighbour’s look into the local depanneur’s history.

In the summer before my third year of university, the nearest dépanneur to my apartment was Super Marché Brito. During late June, my roommates and I approached the owner, Tim Maherpour, asking him if his store was going to be open on Canada Day (in case we needed to get more beer and charcoal for our grill).

“Ma’am, we are open seven days a week, on Christmas, on all holidays, no matter what,” Tim Maherpour said to us.

Afterwards, my roommates and I would joke that if there was an apocalypse, Super Marché Brito would still be open as the “last dep on earth.”

Fast forward through a year punctuated by personal dramas and capped off with a pandemic, by the end of my lease in April, it was chilly, everyone was wearing masks, and I felt lonely in the city. But, I could still pop into Super Marché Brito to buy myself Red Bulls. It truly seemed like the last dep on earth.

I’ve lived in three different apartments during my time in Montreal, each one bringing with it a new “nearby dep.” Super Marché Brito, if it was not already obvious, is my favourite one. It might be best known to McGill students as “The Café Campus Dep.” Beyond being my dep, it was shared with everyone on my block, which was, at the time I lived on it, a jarring mix of students, established Francophone families, and AirBnB sex tourists.

Super Marché Brito stands out because of the sheer size and breadth of their selection of products. But in many ways, it’s the same as any other dépanneur you’d find in Montreal: It serves beer until 11 p.m., and you can find basically any snack you’d crave. It feels familiar and personal, but very universal; stepping inside, Super Marché Brito could be located on any street in the city. The fluorescent lighting, stacks of beer cases, and wall of cigarettes are pure modern Montreal iconography.

Super Marché Brito is operated by Tim, along with his son, Ramtin. Prior, Tim owned the 25 Hour Dépanneur on Avenue du Parc—an infamous staple in the Milton Parc community. He parted ways with his old business partner to take up Super Marché Brito in 2005. Maherpour prides himself on his meticulously clean store and vast inventory that includes a deli counter and fresh produce—rarities amongst standard issue dépanneurs.

“We know we have a lot of students here, and we know we have many single people,” Maherpour said. “We try to make something very convenient for those who don’t need to buy [a lot] of groceries. We try to have good prices and be convenient [....] We are not a grocery and we are not a Super C, we are something between.”

This in-betweenness is exactly Super Marché Brito’s strength. Its exterior gives no indication to the tidy rows of citrus fruits that greet you when you enter, nor the clean shelves of wine bottles near the checkout counter. For me, it was the perfect place to stop by on my way home, avoiding the clinical pressures of a grocery store. It was perfect because it was innocuous and comfortable, a place you could go to late at night to buy something insignificant and stupid when you were high, like a single reheated Jamaican patty and an Orangina.

Dépanneurs owe their advent to their ability to stay past regular business hours. According to Judith Lussier’s Sacré Dépanneur, it was really the passing of Bill 24 in 1969, which permitted small businesses to operate past 6 p.m. with reduced staff, that birthed the dépanneur as we know it today.

Before there were dépanneurs, there were épiceries and tobacco-stands (or tabagies)—small businesses that served prepared foods, but also sold alcohol and cigarettes, amongst other things. When modern chain grocery stores began to emerge in postwar middle-class neighborhoods, and populations began to vacate urban centres for the suburbs—a demographic trend that persists today—many small grocers in the downtown area faced new challenges in attracting clientele.

(Marie Saadeh / T he McGill Tribune)

“The law introduced in the 1970s was one of the ways in which the government was trying to [...] provide some sort of lifeline [to] these smaller businesses and the commercial streets and neighborhoods which relied on them to survive and compete,” Joanne Burgess, professor of History at l’Université de Québec à Montréal (UQÀM) said.

“Obviously they weren’t competing with [big companies like] Steinberg’s, but they could offer certain services beyond the hours when these other commerce were open by being able to sell beer and wine more liberally than other kinds of businesses.”

According to Lussier, the first dépanneur in Quebec was Le dépanneur SaintZotique, which was previously an épicerie, and is now called Marché 7 Jours, located on Saint-Zotique and 1ère Avenue. The owner, Paul-Emile Maheu, felt it fit to rename his épicerie to a ‘dépanneur’ to better suit what he saw as its function, given that it could now focus on selling liquor and snacks at later hours. ‘Dépanner’ translates roughly to fixing or troubleshooting something, so before, a ‘dépanneur’ would be used to describe a place to get your car or machinery fixed but it is now used to describe these little stores which too can help with a quick fix. The word ‘dépanneur’ was even adopted by the Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF) in March 1983, replacing the Anglophone “convenience store.” This iteration of the corner stores—replete with Loto Quebec scratch cards and Boreale—makes the dépanneur unique to Quebec, a sibling to New York’s bodegas or Japan’s konbinis.

Before it existed as Super Marché Brito, the space that it occupies—67 Rue Prince Arthur East—was home to many. According to fire insurance maps from 1961 to 1976, it was an épicerie. It is unclear exactly when it became a dépanneur: Tim claims that a Greek family had operated the depanneur under the name Dépanneur Extra & Brito for roughly two decades before him, and prior to that, it was allegedly a butcher’s shop.

No public records can detail the exact owners and names of the businesses beforehand, but regardless of the specifics, it’s clear that the space at 67 Prince Arthur has played a continuous role in the Plateau’s urban food system. Small local businesses can uniquely thrive in a neighbourhood like the Plateau, creatively finding ways to respond to the area’s needs.

Design: Chloe Rodriguez / The McGill Tribune

“This in-betweenness is exactly Super Marché Brito’s strength. Its exterior gives no indication to the tidy rows of citrus fruits that greet you when you enter, nor the clean shelves of wine bottles near the checkout counter. For me, it was the perfect place to stop by on my way home, avoiding the clinical pressures of a grocery store.”

“How do you make a living in the city, right?” Burgess said. “There’s all these different ways for people, for women, for immigrants, for people who are marginal in terms of the urban economy, [to find] ways to fit in, meet certain needs, but also make their own living.”

The lower Plateau, where Super Marché Brito calls home, has evolved since the store served as a butcher’s store to a primarily Jewish working-class population, having seen increases in rent due to gentrification. Even in the past two decades that the Maherpour’s have overseen Super Marché Brito, there’s been a rapid change in demographics due to the expanding student populations and the 2008 recession. They recall a younger Rue Prince Arthur, one that bustled with nightlife and was a major artery of the lower Plateau.

“It was, like, the best place in Montreal by far,” Ramtin Maherpour said. “People would come into the city to actually go out. Saturday nights, weekends, and you could not walk on Prince Arthur. It was almost impossible. It was hell. It was so packed that you couldn’t move.”

Now, many shops have since closed, and the downtown core is emptier than it was before. Students who come and go, only living in the Plateau for a year or two, are often not privy to the bigger picture of a neighbourhood’s evolution, as they only pay attention to their surroundings in the present and do not consider the histories of the spaces that they inhabit.

“McGill’s gotten bigger and bigger, [as well as] UQÀM,” Tim Maherpour said.

“They’re selling these apartments to the students, so the neighborhood has changed.

They’re selling to AirBnBs. Since 2011 when all the restaurants closed, [the municipal government is] changing it a little bit and making it commercial, so we’re getting more people working downtown. It’s kind of a mix of students and people working downtown.”

Downtown Montreal’s shift away from a residential area towards a commercial zone is precarious: Parking zoning makes it difficult for suburbanites to transit in, and this, coupled with expensive rent, dissuades many business owners from setting up their shops in the area. In the wake of the 2008 economic recession, Super Marché Brito, much like other similarly run family businesses, struggled to remain afloat. Ultimately being a family business has given them an edge, Ramtin believes, which allows Super Marché Brito to endure times of duresse.

“In those hard times we could have basically just [let go] all our employees, but we decided to [reduce] our salary a bit and our hours so that they can still have a job because they all have problems too,” Ramtin Maherpour said.

Super Marché Brito has remained, first and foremost, a family business.

Ramtin, now in his late twenties, began working at the store alongside his sister and cousin. Maherpour’s wife Marie, now retired, started the deli counter, packaging salads and sandwiches to go. The Maherpours like to say their employees have become an extension of their family, a fact that I can attest to, having encountered familiar faces behind the counter on days when the family was not in the store. They recognize that as a family business, many customers are responsive to having a reliable store staffed by people that they can come to know, and see it as one of their strengths.

“I see so many businesses closing, and I see [that] I’m still working, so this to me, the people in the neighborhood, they like me, they like us,” Tim Maherpour said.

“My business, they’re happy with whatever we serve them [....] Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here for 16 years.”

In those 16 years, Tim thinks that the COVID-19 pandemic was the most difficult challenge that he has encountered, more so than the economic recession.

“It was hard at the start, because all my employees are scared to work,” Tim Maherpour said. “So me and my son had to put in more hours and stay here. It was very tough because I didn’t want to put [my employees] at risk. If they wanted to stay [and work], they could stay. If they wanted to leave, they could leave. But I can’t close [the store] because I have rent to pay.”

The challenges posed by the pandemic have forced many small businesses to close. Most dépanneurs, however, have remained open. They have a resilient business model—often staffed by family members, they require little capital to start-up and produce a steady stream of revenue. Furthermore, dépanneurs were in a unique position during the beginning of the pandemic, being granted permission by the government to operate as essential services.

As an integral part of the Plateau’s fabric, Super Marché Brito, along with the other dépanneurs in the neighborhood, acts as an unequivocal equalizer: Pandemic or not, people of all social classes or backgrounds can find themselves at a dépanneur.

Everyone’s going to run out of toilet paper in the middle of the night, at some point.

”You really see from all the spectrum of the clients possible,” Ramtin Maherpour said.

“That’s something that’s cool because it opens my mind, [and] it makes me see the public completely different. If you’ve only been to school, or you’ve only worked in a certain area, you kind of always are limited to the people you see. But in this situation, I can see really everyone, les gens du peuples, but I [also] see the really rich ones.”

I’ve since moved from the block that I shared with Super Marché Brito. I still often find myself there, picking up chips on my way to sit in the park—the dépanneur I live nearby now is of markedly worse quality, with a disappointingly limited beer and wine selection. They don’t sell dried lentils, either.

There will come a time when I won’t be able to take the extra 10 minute walk to Super Marché Brito, and maybe there will be a time when it won’t be there at all. But there will always be a nearby dep, and a dep at the end of the world, for you.

10

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2020

Detecting tiny cracks can reveal the potential of new technologies

Researchers employ microscopes and lasers to identify defects on nanoscopic surfaces Zoe Karkossa Contributor The properties of materials, from the plastic in water bottles to the metal beams of skyscrapers, are determined by their microscopic structure. However, most substances are not perfectly uniform and rather contain a significant number of minuscule defects. These imperfections play a large role in determining the physical properties of the material, including its strength and durability.

These faults can be extremely difficult to discern, particularly with regards to optical technologies that function using light to observe nanoscopic surfaces. To retrieve relevant information on these interactions, it is necessary to visualize the microscopic structure of materials on the scale of femtoseconds and nanometers. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter, and a femtosecond is a millionth of a billionth of a second.

Peter Grutter, chair of the Department of Physics at McGill, directs the Grutter research group, which focusses on developing cutting-edge microscopes that harness the interaction of light and matter to visualize the

nanoscopic surface of materials.

Although observing physical defects is essential to ensuring the quality of a wide range of technologies, such as cameras and fibre optics, Grutter is particularly interested in its potential to improve solar cells.

“It’s not only by using less energy that we’re going to have a more sustainable society, [...] there is a need in society to generate energy.” Grutter said in an interview with The McGill Tribune.

One visualization method involves the combination of two different advanced technologies: Atomic force microscopy (AFM) and ultrafast light. Developed in collaboration with the Cooke THz lab at McGill, this technique allows more powerful visualization than other leading techniques. AFM is a form of extremely high resolution scanning that uses a physical probe to examine the microscopic surface of a material. The AFM tip, the “finger” of the microscope, scans a sample similarly to how one could use their actual finger to feel a rock for cracks.

To achieve both the time and size accuracy required to detect these cracks, the group incorporated the use of ultrafast lasers. In this method, a laser

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) has a resolution over 1,000 times better than the best optical microscopes.

(Lena Ason / Alamy Stock Photo) pulse is directed toward the sample, which causes the electrons in the material to oscillate in what is known as optical stimulation. This generates an electric polarization, where the positive and negative charges of the material separate. These charge separations are then detected by the AFM tip without the need to make physical contact with the substance, ultimately allowing researchers to image its substructure.

Grutter’s current work focusses on nonlinear materials,

those which polarize unevenly in response to high light intensities. The group’s most recent paper concerns the imaging of a specific material called lithium niobate, which is frequently used in cell phone components.

In the future, the research group aims to expand the technology’s use to a wide range of common materials.

A major potential application of the new method is solar cell technology. Solar cells use organic compounds, molecules that contain bonds between car-

bon and hydrogen atoms, that can receive or donate an electron to generate electricity.

Modern chemistry techniques can create synthetic organic molecules, which have a wide range of structures and properties. Unfortunately, theoretical modeling of such synthetic substances is still imperfect, and fully understanding their properties requires them to actually exist. Grutter aims to move past that need all together.

“If you understand, it essentially means you can actually predict stuff quantitatively [and] correctly,” Grutter said.

Grutter hopes that the ability to fully visualize the structure of existing organic molecules in all their imperfections will allow for models with enhanced predictive power. This would allow chemists to better understand a theoretical material’s properties without even having to create it, greatly accelerating the discovery of new substances.

“I think there’s an ethical responsibility to somehow, in the long-term at least, have some sort of return on investment [on resources put into research],” Grutter said. “In the long-term, I think it’s actually important that we contribute to society.”

Department of Family Medicine introduces new Inuit health module Associate Professor Richard Budgell speaks on healthcare in the Inuit experience Mackenzie Pereira Contributor McGill’s Department of Family Medicine is developing a course that aims to help doctors and researchers understand Inuit perspectives on healthcare that they expect to be open for enrollment by the Fall of 2021. Spearheading the development of this new Inuit health module is recently appointed associate professor of Family Medicine Richard Budgell, who is of mixed Inuit ancestry himself.

Bringing with him over 30 years of experience working with Inuit and other Indigenous groups in Quebec and Labrador, Budgell assures that the new module will foster important discussions regarding a range of topics related to community health in the Canadian north.

The module will focus on educating medical students about the Inuit view of healthcare, the historical effects of colonialism on Inuit health practices, and the history of disease as a result of first contact with European settlers.

“The Canadian health[care] system has been imposed on Inuit [people],” Budgell said in an interview with The McGill Tribune. “[We should] approach people with a sense of humility as opposed to a sense of superiority.”

Despite stereotypes that Inuit reside only in remote areas, Budgell explained that there are hundreds of Inuit who travel from Inuit land claims regions, such as Nun-

Inuk patients travelling from small villages in Nunavik, northern Quebec, arrive at massive healthcare facilities sometimes larger than their home villages, according to Richard Budgell, creator of the Inuit health module.

(Eilis Quinn / Eye on the Arctic) avik in northern Quebec, to receive care in Montreal. For example, it is not uncommon for expectant Inuit mothers to travel hundreds of kilometres to give birth in Montreal.

Budgell noted that Inuit patients have very different definitions of health than many Canadian doctors, a factor which greatly impacts the quality of care that clinicians can provide. Generally, Inuit regard health as a holistic experience, one that includes an important spiritual component—a facet of health that Western medicine has been criticized for overlooking. As such, when addressing the concerns of Inuit patients, Budgell advises doctors to respect the importance of spirituality. “[We’ll be] looking at systemic issues in terms of colonialism and how that has affected [In-

uit’s] contemporary experience,” Budgell said.

Inuit people often receive care at institutions that are scarcely staffed by Inuit healers, a systemic issue echoed by the underrepresentation of Indigenous doctors in the Canadian healthcare system and an outstanding problem that the module seeks to address. Budgell explained how this disparity stems from Indigenous youths’ relatively low high school completion rates in comparison to the rest of the population. When Inuit students are not presented with opportunities to contribute to their communities, students can become discouraged by academic work.

“The education that [Indigenous] people are receiving in elementary and high school has very little cultural relevance to them,”

Budgell said. “I’d like to see a world where health facilities in Indigenous communities are dominated by Indigenous people.”

Before beginning his position as associate professor, Budgell served as the Regional Executive Director of the First Nations and Inuit Health Branch for Indigenous Services Canada, a title with demanding responsibilities. His biggest challenge was confronting cultural stereotypes about Indigenous peoples harboured by many Canadians, biases that he hopes to dismantle in his course.

Nationwide, high school and elementary school curricula have been slow to incorporate pre-colonial Indigenous history, let alone lessons on Indigenous health practices. A first introduction to the basics of Indigenous culture at the post-secondary level is a reality for many Canadians, but Budgell emphasized that blame should not be put on the students themselves.

“You can’t blame people for having been the product of poor education,” Budgell said. “The curriculum about Indigenous people has been inadequate probably everywhere across the country.”

Budgell’s ultimate goal is to engage in a dialogue with students. He encourages them to contact him with questions about Indigenous health in order to begin what are, in his view, long overdue conversations.

“We all have knowledge and we all have questions,” Budgell said.

The unexpected challenges of dating during a pandemic How university students are navigating relationships and dating during COVID-19 Gabrielle Wasco Contributor For university students, dating does not always mean heartfelt conversations over candlelit dinners. In fact, dating rarely means going on dates at all.

Instead, dating can mean late night hookups after long hours spent in the library. It can mean watching Netflix to fill the silence, and avoiding labels in a desperate attempt to keep things casual and to stifle any real emotions that might swell up inside.

But now the COVID-19 pandemic has forced couples to enter relatively unexplored territory: The digital realm, full of awkward Zoom calls and lengthy text conversations. This may not seem like a romantic atmosphere, but, believe it or not, online dating has actually brought many couples closer together despite their physical distance—or maybe because of it.

To explore this transition into primarily online dating, The McGill Tribune chatted with Julian*, a U2 engineering student. He started hooking up with Nikki* only weeks before the pandemic struck in March. Suddenly, the simplicity of their relationship was gone.

Faced with the choice of either breaking up or committing to a long-distance relationship after being together for less than a month, they decided to give longdistance a shot.

Unsurprisingly, long-distance changed the nature of Julian and Nikki’s relationship. With casual encounters no longer an option, the couple had to establish a different kind of intimacy.

“Since we couldn’t be physical anymore, we started to talk over FaceTime or Zoom almost every day,” Julian said. “It forced us to have real conversations and get to know each

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other even more. It was nice having her to rely on [during the pandemic.] We grew closer [and] established a [deeper] emotional connection.”

When Nikki returned to Montreal in July, Julian decided to quarantine with her for two weeks—a commitment he could have never made without hundreds of Zoom calls beforehand. As a result of the pandemic, Julian and Nikki were ready to make a real commitment.

Pierre*, U4 Psychology, was in a similar situation. He and Adele* dated for a couple months before the pandemic, but never made it “official.”

“I wasn’t comfortable labelling [our relationship] before,” Pierre said. “It was always a grey area.”

The night before they each left Montreal, Pierre and Adele were finally forced to define what they really were.

They agreed that it would be easier to just be friends and stop talking to give each other space to heal.

Only weeks after breaking up, Pierre already regretted his decision. He missed Adele.

“I didn’t know just how much I cared about her until I stopped talking to her altogether,” Pierre said. “I definitely took our relationship for granted before.”

After a long month of silence, Pierre finally gained the courage to contact Adele—only to discover that she was planning on reaching out that same day. The two started talking again and agreed that long-distance dating actually brought them closer together than ever before.

Today, both Pierre and Adele are back in Montreal, but had to wait until the end of Adele’s quarantine to see one another. However, Pierre surprised Adele by making a homemade ice cream cake for her birthday and dropping it off on her back doorstep.

More stories like Pierre or Julian’s are available on The Social Distance Project. This site gives couples a virtual space to anonymously discuss how the pandemic has altered their dating experience—either for better or for worse.

COVID-19 has left many of us catching feelings like never before, but hopefully feelings will be the only thing you’re catching this fall. *Last names ommitted for privacy

(Taja de Silva / The McGill Tribune)

Feminist Health Research Conference highlights gender inequities in medicine

Virtual event brought together scholars from the University of Cambridge

(fticonsulting.com)

Sophia White Contributor On Sept. 6, Medical Herstory hosted a virtual Feminist Health Research Conference to discuss the gendered impacts of health and medicine. The event brought together current students and graduates from the University of Cambridge’s MPhil in Health, Medicine and Society to address and explore how gender impacts health and illness.

The conference was split up into two separate panels titled “Disruptive Voices” and “Creating Community,” where speakers highlighted intersectional issues within medicine. In the first, panellists explored how listening to unheard women’s voices can expose institutionalized gender inequity.

Panelists discussed how women’s bodies are stereotypically seen as ‘messy’ or ‘mutilated’ and how this skewed perspective impacts the treatment of women in medicine. The second panel addressed how marginalized individuals have historically formed communities to share their experiences, negotiate, and resist treatment offered by mainstream medical practices.

Medical Herstory aims to expose structures of sexism, racism, classism, and ableism within medicine and works to counteract traditional healthcare methods by refusing to allow women’s experiences to be erased. Founder and Editor-inChief of Medical Herstory Tori Ford, BA ‘19, started the platform as a way to elevate women’s stories and break the stigma surrounding discussions of their bodies. In an email interview with the The McGill Tribune, Ford described the inspiration behind hosting the conference.

“Often in academic spaces, experiences of inequity, illness, and suffering can become sanitized or heavily medicalized,” Ford wrote. “With the Feminist Health Research Conference, we wanted to highlight work that foregrounds lived experience, subverts traditional narratives,

or examines how gendered discourses shape health and illness. Applying a feminist lens to clinical encounters, medical treatments, or patient experiences opens up new possibilities for understanding intersecting and interlocking structures of oppression and advocating for change.”

Panellists spoke about how gender inequality permeates clinical encounters, community formation, and understanding of the self. Discussion topics ranged from chronic yeast infections, to off-label drug use, to breastfeeding, to postpartum depression.

A common theme threading through the presentations was the lack of current clinical research on women’s health issues. Panelists also spoke about the added difficulty of conducting feminist research given that men have written the majority of existing literature. The stigma surrounding women’s health issues often results in women avoiding medical care and choosing to engage in potentially dangerous self-treatment practices. As a result, they feel that they must often cope alone, and in silence. Medical Herstory’s goal is to highlight positive discussions of women’s bodies rather than their pain. Ford hopes that attendees walked away feeling more educated and excited about the prospects of feminist health research.

“We hope that our attendees left feeling empowered to better understand and undo gender health inequity by applying a feminist lens to their own research, lived experiences, or understandings of gender, health, and illness,” Ford said.

Since Ford’s graduation from McGill, Medical Herstory has continued to expand into university chapters around the world, and the McGill chapter continues to be a community for sharing stories and hosting events to de-stigmatize conversations about womens’ bodies. Medical Herstory is currently working on introducing workshops and is recruiting volunteers for the first time.

Their website is open to submissions all year and is currently welcoming new stories.

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Student ingenuity on display at virtual Activities Night

Online iteration of Fall classic allows for social connection at physical distance Lilly Lecanu-Fayet Contributor Activities Night has come and gone once again, but this year, there was no standing in line, no Martlet stamps, and no bustling fieldhouse. Activities Night, along with McGill’s many other annual events, was held entirely virtually. On Sept. 9 and 10, students of all years and faculties logged on to learn about the various clubs and organizations that McGill has to offer. As has become the “new normal,” Activities Night was held online through Eventus.io, a virtual career fair service platform that was repurposed to allow each club to show off their services

and opportunities to interested students.

There were 304 clubs in attendance, hosting virtual booths that students could click through to learn more about their missions and future plans. Many clubs, including SSMU Musicians Collective, MealCare McGill, and McGill Students Knitting Club, made promotional videos to outline how they function and how to get involved. Each club also clearly explained how they planned to make the most of their shift to online meetings, events, and fundraisers. Links to Facebook events and signup sheets made it easy to learn about upcoming meetings and activities.

The switch to online Activities Night

(hermanmiller.com)

required more work from club members and executives, but the extra effort made for a remarkably engaging experience.

Club leaders are eager to be back into the swing of things. Many executives spent their summers preparing virtual activities and fundraisers to give new and returning members the best online experience.

Danielle Fuchs, U3 Arts, President of Challah for Hunger, is optimistic about her organization’s plans for this semester.

“Usually, Challah for Hunger bakes challah in person with dozens of volunteers five times per semester,” Fuchs said. “Then, we sell the challah in various buildings on campus to raise money for charities that fight food insecurity throughout North America.”

Now that Challah for Hunger has moved completely online, they have had to rethink how their club will function and how they can do the most good while keeping everyone safe. For Fuchs, this means virtual challah bakes and donation-based events like movie nights and workshops.

Conversely, some clubs have been able to continue with relatively few changes.

Democrats Abroad (DA) Vice-President of Communications Cameron Leonard, U3 Arts, is confident about DA’s ability to stay true to their mission. One of the club’s main activities throughout the school year is phone banking, which was an easy virtual transition. “[We’ve] hosted several remote phone banking events over Zoom, in which we got

together and made calls to American citizens to assist them with requesting their absentee ballots,” Leonard said. “This is not a significant change from the way that we have operated in the past, [as] the only change here is that we are hosting the events virtually.”

DA’s strategies for advertisement were not much different from previous years: They created a video for their virtual booth, where they were able to creatively present their organization’s goals, much as they would have in-person. DA has planned for more online events over the course of the semester, and were excited to have the opportunity to share these plans at Activities Night.

The McGill Women in Computer Science Team (McWiCS) shared a similar sentiment. McWiCS Co-President Heather Bosiljevac, U3 Science, is enthusiastic about the club’s ability to successfully transition online. The club was grateful for the opportunity to reach out to those who might have normally shied away from computer science, in hopes of bringing some fresh faces to the upcoming Zoom events.

“Our main goal for Activities Night is simply to get our name out there and invite people to follow us on social media and attend our events,” Bosiljevac said. “Overall, we are really just trying to continue helping people feel more comfortable in [computer science] at McGill, especially incoming first year [students] who may be nervous starting at a new school in this environment.”

What we’re learning about remote learning How professors and students alike are faring with remote instruction Josephine Wang Contributor In case you have not gotten the memo, McGill classes are all now held virtually. Gone are the days of running to your 8 a.m. classes, commuting to school, and pretending to stay awake during lectures. Yet, this comes at the cost of the regular start-of-the-year events, and a regular campus community.

Initial rejoices and complaints aside, remote learning remains unchartered territory, and its impacts on professors and students both personally and academically are not yet fully known. At the moment, instructors at McGill are taking steps to figure out how to successfully teach online, developing with new methods to make the transition smoother for students.

Dr. Charlotte Usselman, assistant professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Physical Education, shared her insight as a first-time Zoom professor.

“Open and honest communication with students is the key,” Usselman said. “I was very blunt with my class, telling them

that […] although I had done my absolute best to prepare for the coming semester, I knew that there would be hiccups. I asked the class to be forthright and honest in their feedback and suggestions [….]

So far, I’ve found that opening myself up to those suggestions has been extremely rewarding.”

Dr. Usselman also revealed some of the struggles that she and other instructors faced in the weeks and months leading to the start of the semester.

“Instructors preparing their courses for remote delivery this semester were not given extra hours in their workload to prepare, [so] we had to make time in our already-busy schedules to adapt,” Usselman said. “Many of us have worked hard to try to gain these new skills, [...] but it has come at a cost in terms of time spent with our research labs, with our friends and family, and our sleep schedules.”

Dr. Maureen Rose, senior faculty lecturer in the School of Human Nutrition, had prior experience with remote learning as an instructor. “[Remote learning] is not as effective as in person, as the interaction and sharing of ideas is

(edtech.worlded.org) less smooth and students seem more shy on Zoom,” Rose said. “Teaching 100 plus little black boxes is not fun nor interactive. [However], the impetus to try different ways of teaching and letting students take more responsibility for teaching themselves [...] is an aspect of remote learning that I like.”

Remote learning has served some students well. For those with a safe and stable home environment, it can allow students to work at their own pace, away from the stressful environment of school.

Additionally, with many classes now recorded and asynchronous, students are able to decide when their school day begins.

Tracy Liu, U3 Science,

finds that she is able to better balance her work and school life with remote classes.

“With classes being held remotely, I save so much time commuting to classes and no longer have to work my personal schedule around school,” Liu said. “I currently have a research position, and remote learning allows me to work full time and take my classes in the evening. I am getting so much more done.”

On the other hand, Lily Ragsdale, U4 Science, finds it difficult to engage with her professors, classmates, and the material through remote learning.

“I’m just not getting fulfilled with remote learning,” Ragsdale

said. “I’m unable to [...] engage with virtual lessons and taking classes while being confined in my apartment is hard. I know that students and teachers are trying their best to make remote learning work, but things like slow communication and missing extracurriculars are inevitable.”

Only time will tell whether remote learning can actually be an adequate substitute for in-person classes. As the remote semester continues, it is important to keep in mind that this model of class is currently the best alternative, as keeping the university open poses a safety risk for students.

Remote courses are certainly better than no classes at all.

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The Royalmount Drive-In offers a nostalgic escape during uncertain times Return of outdoor cinema in Montreal is an ode to retro summertime custom Signy Harnad Contributor It’s a familiar scene in popular culture: Groups of teenagers and families packed in their cars, radio dials tuned to FM signals, billowing cigarette smoke forming clouds in the projector light. Such was the magic of the drive-in cinema, with its eclectic blend of innocence and rebellion, sociability and privacy. With its rebirth during the COVID-19 pandemic, moviegoers can experience this magic for themselves. The Royalmount Drive-In Event Theatre, Montreal’s first multipurpose drive-in, has succeeded in emulating this beloved past, providing audiences with a safe outlet to enjoy the big screen.

With the fate of cinema and live performance uncertain, the Royalmount Drive-In, which opened on June 21, has come at an opportune time. By its very nature, the drive-in adheres to physical distancing requirements: Viewers can watch films from the comfort of their cars or seated right outside of them, within demarcations that ensure moviegoers remain at safe distances from one another. In addition to movies, the venue hosts comedy shows, charity and fundraising events, and live music.

Drive-in theatres have resonated with audiences since their inception for a variety of reasons. Cultural Studies professor Ned Schantz explained that driveins were symptomatic of mid-20th century car culture. “[People would be] looking for any reason to be in [their] car because it was so important,” Schantz said. “Cars [were] so deeply tied to peoples’ identities. They were essential status symbols, and just loved in all sorts of ways.”

The drive-in emerged in part because of white flight, the postwar movement during which many white Americans left urban centres that were becoming more ethnically diverse.

“With the new suburb, it [was] cheaper to just throw up a screen [at] a dirt lot at the outskirts of town,” Schantz said. “Largely because of the antitrust legislation of the late ’40s [...] there [was] suddenly a lot more money in making cheap B-movies [....] The other thing going [was that] drive-ins thrived wherever there [was] cheap land. The three places with the biggest drive-in cultures are the U.S., Canada, and Australia, countries with more land than people.”

With the resurgence of drive-ins across North America, it’s clear that the enthusiasm for the summertime custom remains undiminished. Those seeking out new avenues for social interaction have increased traffic for drive-ins. Whispers and laughter amongst friends and families, some seated inside their cars with their windows rolled down, others lounging outside on folding chairs, all delighting in a shared movie experience, gives the Royalmount Drive-In a refreshing community atmosphere.

Further, the drive-in offers a genuine, immersive movie experience, with its 50-foot LED screen and premium sound quality. This gives viewers two ways of approaching the event—either as a means of consuming cinema, contemporary and old alike, or as an authentic and nostalgic social experience. Drive-in staples, such as concessions delivered right to your car door, and screenings of throwback films, from Casablanca (1942) to Grease

(Polly Wynn / The McGill Tribune) (1978), bolster the Royalmount Drive-In’s sentimental spirit, transporting spectators back to simpler times.

The Royalmount Drive-In Event Theatre brings the golden age of the drive-in cinema to our present, fostering togetherness and connection. In the age of social distancing, the drive-in cinema provides a breath of fresh air, bringing strangers together through a continued tradition of movie-watching.

The Royalmount Drive-In Event Theatre will continue to run films and live events until the end of October.

Tickets can be purchased online through driveinmtl.com.

MMFA’s post-impressionist exhibit leaves mixed impressions Collection highlights fantasies and excesses of ‘la belle époque’

Pascal Hogue News Editor From July 4 to Nov. 15, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) is showcasing—in person—its most extensive exhibit on the post-impressionists yet, Paris in the Days of Post-Impressionism: Signac and the Indépendants. The exhibit boasts an impressive, sweeping collection of over 500 works from France’s leading post-impressionists, spanning Paris’ late 19th-century heyday to its final, tense years preceding the First World War. The period was an artistic and culturally ripe one for the

(Montreal Gazette)

French capital, and the MMFA displays it unsparingly in all its messy efflorescence: Neoimpressionists, Fauvists, Symbolists, Nabis, Expressionists, Cubists, and just enough Picasso to brag about in the brochures.

Most of the exhibit’s focus, however, is on Paul Signac, both for his pointillist paintings and his immense influence on French visual art during la belle époque. In 1884, he founded the Salon des Indépendants, an annual exhibition that catalyzed a generation of creative misfits until 1914, the start of World War I. Many of the paintings on display at the MMFA exhibit had their first

glimmer of fame at the Salon.

Aside from Signac’s curatorial genius, his collection of paintings is the exhibit’s low point. Rainbow (Venice) is a decadent mess, melding garish, Candy Land-type colours with an ill-fitting, boxy-like pointillist style that looks eerily like a collection of Minecraft blocks.

Here, Venice loses its medieval charm, and its gondolas and spires are transplanted in what looks like the Emerald City of Oz. Throughout his collection of pastel pink-and-blue fantasies, Signac struggles to recreate the natural effervescence of, say, George Seurat’s pointillist masterpiece, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. Instead, most of his paintings come off as laboured and artificial, even gimmicky. Signac’s pointillist style encumbers, rather than enables, his creative visions.

Following the inconsistent selection of neo-impressionists, the early 20th century print collection is refreshing and distinct. A movement that fully utilized the era’s innovative print technologies and benefitted from the growing consumerist thirst, the Art Nouveau style completely freed itself from the

shackles of the impressionist period. The posters’ bold black fonts and vivid primary colours are beautiful, even if they were only trying to sell you the latest dishwasher soap. While many of these prints are instantly recognizable and have been reprinted to near-ubiquity (Théophile Steinlen’s Le Chat Noir probably hangs in your roommate’s bedroom), it is exhilarating to see them in their proper historical context. The revolutionary ways in which these prints redefined the artistic world becomes immediately apparent.

Among the collection’s other non-oil-on-canvas works, Swiss printmaker Félix Vallotton is a true revelation. His black-andwhite woodcuts are caricaturelike in style, yet somehow radiate an emotional and energetic purity. In The Brawl, or Café Scene, one of his more detailed woodcuts, four tuxedo-clad men clash over a white table in a posh café as onlookers gawk; although the black of their suits overlap without demarcation lines, the men’s discombobulated shapes lose none of their intensity. Valloton’s austere textures and his characters’ raw emotions are fitting for the exhibit’s latter half:

As the late 19th century’s debaucheries subsided, the grim thought of an incoming world conflict haunted artists’ psyches.

The MMFA’s lively postimpressionist exhibit is ill-fitting for these dark, pandemicburdened times. But there is a joy—however escapist it may be—in physically visiting the museum, and embedding one’s self in the world of a long lost, more playful and innocent past.

Paris in the Days of PostImpressionism: Signac and the Indépendants is on display at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts until Nov. 15. For more information and ticket prices, visit their website.

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‘You Will Love What You Have Killed’ presents a haunted childhood

An interview with Québecois author, Kevin Lambert Lowell Wolfe Contributor Content warning: Violence, child abuse, and sexual assault Murder, rape, and infanticide are not usually present in conventional coming-of-age novels. In Québecois author Kevin Lambert’s You Will Love What You Have Killed, however, these themes take center stage. Exploring individuality and childhood, Lambert’s novel is about children who are victims of violent deaths and reincarnated to plot their revenge on the adults of their small town. Published in French in 2017 and translated into English this year by Donald Winkler, the novel won the Prix Découverte du Salon du livre du Saguenay, and was a finalist for the Prix littéraire des collégiens.

“It’s a fun and funny book,” Lambert said in an

interview with The McGill Tribune. “The children in the story are very cruel and mean, [...] but they are powerful individuals that can [...] destroy the adult world. The feeling that this book describes about growing up in a society where you feel there is no consideration for the younger generations, that’s a universal feeling today.”

Lambert drew from his own memories and experiences to weave an emotional story about children growing up in his hometown, Chicoutimi, Quebec.

“There was hatred that I felt towards Chicoutimi,” Lambert said. “I didn’t feel that I could be gay there, [and I felt that] I had to move to Montréal to do that. I wanted to give the story a sense of vengeance by using that feeling which I had towards my childhood.”

Yet, Lambert’s sense of estrangement did not dissipate once he moved to Montreal. After he

participated in Quebec’s 2012 student strikes, he understood that intergenerational conflicts can exist in urban areas just as they had in Chicoutimi.

“I was politically educated during the student strike of 2012,” Lambert said. “This time was important for Quebec society because political leaders [basically] told the younger generation, ‘What you ask for is not important. We do not care about what you want and we do not want to hear about your opinion.’”

Lambert emulated his political and personal life experiences through his troubled and isolated protagonist, Faldistoire. “[Faldistoire] at the beginning, has [a] rage that has no purpose or form,” Lambert said. “He does not know what the cause of this anger is, but he feels a great energy. His development in the story is linked to understanding this anger, and to the society in which he grows up.”

Now completing his Ph.D in creative writing at l’Université de Montréal, Lambert wrote the novel in part to explore the misconceptions that urban society often has about rural towns.

“I found the idea of writing about places which are special to me because I grew up in them, but are trite and suburban to others, very interesting,” Lambert said.

You Will Love What You Have Killed tells an unique story that draws its imaginative power through anecdotes. Together, Lambert’s contrasting influences have told an otherworldly story meant to resurrect childhood memories and explore their lasting effects in adulthood.

Echoing past authors with similar interests in history’s hold over the present, Lambert shows that the past is never really dead. Lambert’s debut explores queer coming-of-age and intergenerational conflicts (Biblioasis)

From The Viewpoint: The Festival of Marionettes Local artists and performers showcase puppeteering skills on the Wellington Promenade Noami Mirny Contributor Continued from page 1.

The event features not just marionettes—puppets moved strictly by strings—but also other puppets of varying shapes and sizes. Some were propped up on sticks, attached to mouths, laid out flat in 2D, or even put on as costumes by actors. It is a festival that swells with life, showcasing the multitudinous mediums of puppetry.

The first pop-up event on Sep. 11 was a set-up of endearing cardboard homes where onlookers could pop their heads into a cut-out window and view a miniature image inside the boxes. Kids formed lines leading up to the boxes, excited to peek inside the pocket-sized show.

The second was an interactive street show with two actors miming a performance. One was a short man dressed in a Magritte bowler-hat, while the other was a towering, skeletal Raggedy Ann, balancing on multi-

foot stilts, dressed in a flowing 16-foot Victorian dress. Both had white-painted faces, red lips, and black diamond eyes.

The performers had multiple scenelets set to music playing from the actors’ suitcases. The radio crooned “Sous Le Ciel De Paris,” and the clowns became lovers, grasping one another’s hands as the Raggedy Ann stooped down like a giraffe to kiss her partner. Suddenly, the music switched to the rumbling of a storm, and the actors scuttled out of the rain, running with water-sprinkler-topped umbrellas.

Finally, when the tune changed to a crackly tango, the giantess opened her suitcase, from which a puppet of an elderly man peered out. With a swift grace, the actress, now a puppeteer, manoeuvred the puppet’s body up the suitcase handles as if he was climbing a pole. In response, her scene partner leaned close to watch, and when the puppeteer moved her finger so as to threaten the balance of the old man perched atop the handle, her scene partner gasped, on the brink of tears. As she moved the

ered the Herculean work of these performers. From the twitch of a pinky finger to the twist of a torso, everything was methodical, exact, and hypnotizing. For the first time, I finally understood the appeal; puppeteering, unlike other artforms, hides nothing.

There is no backstage. No crew.

Puppeteering does not attempt to convince you that you are watching real life, that the puppets are moving on their own. Instead, it embraces the visibility of the puppeteer’s hands. You see the human moving the puppet, yet you cannot look away because it moves as if it were alive. And the puppeteers know that this is where the magic lies: In our ability to make life out of stillness.

The two street performers attracted a large mass of audience members, primarily children (Ruobing Chen / The McGill Tribune) old man up the shoulders of the bowler-hatted performer, he reacted to the weight, his shoulders jumping and arms shaking.

Soon, it became clear that

the actors were both the puppets and puppeteers. Their movements were sudden, slap-sticky, charming, and incredibly precise. I had never before consid-

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SPORTS

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15 2020

Style Seminar: Russell Westbrook Rating Russell Westbrook’s iconic outfits Adam Burton, Kaja Suborg, Zoe BabadPalmer Sports Editor, Managing Editor & Contributor While the Houston Rockets’ Russell Westbrook was incredibly inconsistent in the 2020 NBA Playoffs, his pre-game outfits have never failed to impress. When it comes to bold and flavourful ensembles, nobody else in the league can compare. As many mourn the Rockets’ second round playoff exit to the Los Angeles Lakers, The McGill Tribune celebrates Westbrook’s fearless fashion sense.

wore this outfit on Nov. 3, 2016 before his first game against Durant since Durant left Oklahoma City for the Golden State Warriors.

Westbrook played it cool and denied any link between his ex-teammate and the outfit, but that didn’t stop him from becoming the talk of Twitter. If the next step in NBA rivalries is throwing shade through style, Westbrook is certainly ahead of the curve.

(Zach Beeker / GQ.com) (GQ Magazine)

(Zach Beeker / GQ.com)

(Zach Beeker / GQ.com) Mega-distressed sweater: 7/10 We’ve all got that sweater with a little rip at the cuff or a fraying hem, but Westbrook took distressed clothing to a new level with this shabby-chic look on Jan. 25, 2018. The giant slash across his chest does a good job of looking like he nearly escaped death at knifepoint while also highlighting his necklace. This outfit could have rocketed up to a perfect 10 if the sweater’s rips had been a little more extensive. As it is, the neatness of the sleeves combined with the ragged shoulders is more reminiscent of a targeted moth attack than a deliberate choice. Still, the overall effect is admirable.

Bathrobe and sweats: 7.5/10 This outfit screams “don’t talk to me until I’ve had my morning coffee.” While this was taken before an 8 p.m. game against the Philadelphia 76ers, Westbrook looks like he just rolled out of bed. His full-body grey sweats and Air Force 1s topped with a bathrobe may have you thinking Russell has given up on his high-fashion pursuits, but upon closer investigation, this ensemble costed over $1295 to put together. This outfit lost points for the out of place bandanaheadband; it doesn’t add to the outfit and takes away from his bedhead look.

One quarter of a barbershop quartet: 10/10 This look has it all: A well-tailored suit, a funky pattern, and velvet shoes that tie everything together with a fun textured element. The boater hat—a staple of every barbershop quartet member’s look—adds a whimsical accessory and proves that Westbrook is not afraid to commit to a look. Details, like the pocket square, hit their mark perfectly in this outfit, making the statement look that much more memorable. The only thing missing from this is three teammates in matching outfits and a fun little musical number.

Thrift store mix and match: 8.5/10 This outfit makes Westbrook look like he’s walked right off of Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop” music video set. Sure to make any Eva B shopper jealous, the combination of bright colors and floral print create a retro summer look suited for anybody feeling colorful.

The juxtaposition of suede shoes and a pink fur jacket adds a variety of textures to this outfit that make it versatile and adaptable to different weather conditions. The outfit, however, suffers from his fire-engine-red handbag that clashes with the subtle pastel colors that hold the rest of the look together.

(Jayne Kamin-Oncea / GQ.com) (Zach Beeker / GQ.com) (honorthegift.com)

(GQ Magazine) Photographer vest: 10/10 The best fashion is fashion with a purpose, and this look from Westbrook certainly deserves that label. His white t-shirt and pants create a blank canvas on which he writes a subtle jab at star forward, amateur photographer, and exteammate Kevin Durant. Westbrook pointedly

Personal protection equipment: 9/10 This outfit is perfect for those who need to get straight from the job site to the game.

Westbrook wore this outfit on Feb. 9, 2019 before his victory against the Houston Rockets, making sure his arrival was in full compliance with OSHA workplace safety guidelines. The bright orange and yellow in tandem with his purposeful stride make for a vibrant and distinct outfit that’s sure to catch eyes. This look would have been a perfect 10 if he had not forgotten to wear his OSHA mandated steel-toed reflective sneakers.

Canadian tuxedo full-send: 5/10 This look gets most of its points for commitment. The jeans are just a little bit too wide at the bottom to be skinny, and a little too tight everywhere else to be a straight-leg cut. Sure, fashion can be revolutionary and should push boundaries, but inventing a new cut of jeans is downright unnecessary. The jeans and jacket being in the same shade of mid-wash denim also offers no optical rest for viewers of this outfit. Westbrook loses more points for the denim baseball cap as well; it’s just ugly. He does however, get an additional point for the jean Jordans, because those are cool.

Avant-garde cargo mess: 3/10 Every part of this outfit clashes with itself in an unpleasant way: The colour scheme, the proportions, the functionality. Westbrook’s pants appear to be equipped to carry at least five people’s school supplies and snacks, but seem unnecessarily cumbersome and clunky. It doesn’t help that his t-shirt is too long and covers up the top of his pants while also falling under his asymmetrical trafficcone-orange jacket. This composition is not Russell’s finest work and we can only hope he doesn’t repeat his mistakes.

SPORTS

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15 2020

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RSEQ cancels fall seasons, athletes await news on winter sports Cancellation announcement comes after two-week delay Sarah Farnand Contributor Continued from page 1.

With many students returning to Montreal from different provinces and countries, the risk of a spike in COVID-19 cases is high. According to CBC News, Montreal has already seen a rise in cases, and on Sept. 11, Quebec reported 244 cases, the highest number of daily cases in over three months. RSEQ decision-makers delayed an announcement in order to evaluate the full effect of students returning to school before making a definite decision on the fate of the Fall 2020 season.

The Sept. 14 decision explained the reasoning behind the cancellation, as well as the scope.

“After having analyzed all possible scenarios, members of the university sector of the RSEQ announce the cancellation of sanctioned sports programming until December 31, 2020,” the statement said. “This difficult decision made by members of the RSEQ university sector is based primarily on the regional alert system, which may limit the participation of universities, even if said institutions effectively manage health-and-safety best practices.”

The announcement, however, did leave exceptions for lowerrisk sports activities.

“To keep student-athletes engaged, members of the RSEQ university sector will permit activities involving at least two different teams in the following sports: Cross-country, golf, and soccer—thus giving universities the flexibility to evolve at their own pace and with their own realities. However, due to universities’ level of risk management, no inter-team activities will be permitted in football and rugby,” the statement said.

Staff and athletes are now waiting for an announcement by the RSEQ regarding the winter sports’ seasons, which is anticipated to be released on Oct. 15.

RSEQ has followed U SPORTS’s lead in cancelling fall 2020 competitions. (Can Unal / McGill Athletics) Third-year track and field sprinter Stephanie Susinski looks forward to returning to practice, but does not want to get her hopes up with so much uncertainty regarding a return date for competition.

“I’m excited for practices to start up again,” Susinski said in an interview with the The McGill Tribune. “I’m trying to take things one step at a time because, as we’ve all been too familiar with recently, plans are subject to change [on] short notice, so nobody can really say how the season will play out.”

With nearly all fall sports cancelled, spectators and

athletes alike will miss out on events such as homecoming and playoff competition. Athletes and coaches will continue to wait out the hiatus and train on their own times to maintain momentum heading into a tentative winter season. If the winter season goes forward, it will be drastically different than prior years, as all teams must continue to follow government health directives and adjust to the continually changing public health situation. As much as athletes want to return to competing, health and safety remains the top priority.

NFL 2020 Season Preview: Looking for a new dynasty in the AFC Despite an offseason of uncertainty and national unrest, America’s sport returns for the fall Adam Menikefs Contributor The 2019 NFL season ended with the Kansas City Chiefs, led by Super Bowl MVP Patrick Mahomes, capturing the Lombardi Trophy in Super Bowl LIV over the San Francisco 49ers. The subsequent off-season has been unstable and unpredictable and is sure to change the landscape of the NFL for the foreseeable future.

While COVID-19 has instilled discomfort and uncertainty in the months leading up to the restart of the NFL season, the NFL has subsequently addressed several concerns regarding the pandemic.

Players, coaches, and team personnel will be tested daily to ensure minimal spread of the virus and are required to wear masks throughout the facilities. In addition, special devices called SafeZone tags must be worn at all times while on NFL property for the purpose of advanced contact tracing. Concerns have arisen that cases could rise when team travel resumes, as was the case with the MLB earlier this summer, but protocols have been put in place in the event of positive tests, with expanded practice squads

and future time slots for games that may be cancelled.

Racial injustice has also been

chalked “End Racism” into the back of all endzones.

has subsequently paved the way for the newly-crowned Super Bowl Champion Kansas City Chiefs to

With talent well dispersed across the conference, several teams are vying for dominance in the NFC. (Washington Post) a dominant concern regarding the 2020 NFL restart, as players voiced their frustration with institutions throughout the United States.

League Stars such as Michael Thomas, Ezekiel Elliot, and Patrick Mahomes, among many others, were vocal during protests this summer, demanding that the NFL support the fight for racial justice. In response, the league has committed $250 million dollars over the next 10 years to help fight “social injustice.” The league has allowed players to put social justice messages on their helmets and has

AFC

The American Football Conference has experienced a drastic shift for the first time in almost two decades with increased parity among teams and a new leading title contender for the foreseeable future. The New England Patriots lost quarterback Tom Brady in the offseason, a partnership that won six super bowls, nine AFC championships, and saw sixteen seasons atop the AFC East. The end of the Patriots’ dynasty this season marks the end of an era for the entire league and

dominate the field in the coming years. The Baltimore Ravens and 2019 NFL MVP Lamar Jackson, however, will be looking to dethrone the Chiefs after a disappointing divisional playoffs loss. Though these two juggernauts will likely lead the conference this season, the Buffalo Bills, Pittsburgh Steelers, and Tennessee Titans are also all talented, proven teams within the conference.

NFC

In the past five seasons, the National Football Conference has

sent a different team to the Super Bowl each year, demonstrating the dispersed talent that exists within each division. Unlike the AFC, several teams have a legitimate chance of dethroning the defending conference champion 49ers. San Francisco’s largest threat may be within their own division: The Seattle Seahawks, led by Superbowl Champion quarterback Russell Wilson. In the South, Drew Brees and Tom Brady look to bring New Orleans and Tampa Bay back to the Superbowl. Although neither franchise has gone that far in more than a decade, the two future Hall-of-Fame signal callers and Lombardi Trophy winners are looking to change that. In the East, the Dallas Cowboys are looking for a rebound season with a loaded roster and first-year Head Coach Mike McCarthy. The Philadelphia Eagles also hope to return to championship contention by staying healthy this year, after two disappointing seasons riddled with injuries following their Super Bowl victory in the 2017 season.

The lack of a clear favorite for the NFC this season is sure to make for several upsets and an interesting postseason.