The McGill Tribune Vol. 31 Issue 8

Tribune The McGill

Published by the Tribune Publication Society Volume No. 31 Issue No. 8

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Tuition rally End of Book Fair Editorials Mookie’s back Haunted McGill Coma Unplugged Hockey fighting

2 4 7 9 10-11 15 19

Chad VanGaalen page 14

Victory in the pool for McGill swimmers MUNACA strike

update: tensions arise Tempers flare as negotiations carry on

Elisa Muyl and Anand Bery News Editors The MUNACA strike continues without advances at the bargaining table. Outside the negotiating room, however, relations between the two parties have taken a sour turn.

The last few weeks have seen the confrontation of alumni by picketers over homecoming weekend, the picketing of several administrators private homes, the occupation of members of McGill’s board of governors’ workplaces, and deliberate construction delays at a new hospital. Both parties maintain that negotiations have not been affected by demonstrations of bad faith.

McGill finishes first in men’s and women’s Quebec Cup II. (Sam Reynolds / McGill Tribune)

Homecoming disruptions Over homecoming weekend, tensions flared between MUNACA picketers and returning alumni. In a letter to the student body, Principal Heather Monroe-Blum described the interaction between MUNACA and returning McGillians in hostile terms.

“Picketers tried to disrupt our Homecoming events by defacing Martlet House, hurling insults, swearing and throwing objects at senior administrators, and behaving aggressively and threateningly toward guests, including elderly alumni at the Annual Red and White

Dinner,” Blum’s email read.

MUNACA’s account of the weekend is of a markedly different tone. The union’s VP Finance, Dave Kalant, found MUNACA’s presence at Homecoming “effective.”

“At many events we were able to talk directly to alumni, many of whom were supportive,” Kalant said. “We were also able to raise awareness of the situation at McGill.”

In response to reports of vandalism at Martlet House, Kalant denied knowledge of who was involved.

Big names at MUNACA rally Local politicians and prominent workers’ rights activists, including NDP leadership hopeful Brian Topp, spoke in support of MUNACA at a rally on Friday, Oct. 21.

Topp, a McGill alumnus, called for his alma mater to negotiate fairly at the bargaining table.

“I’ve got one last word to say to my old friends at McGill University,” Topp said. “All the effort you’re putting into lawyers ... telling people that they can’t peacefully protest right over there, spend it at the table and do a reasonable settlement, and do it now.”

Michel Arsenault, President of the Quebec Federation of Labour See “MUNACA” on page 3

Academic Amnesty fails to gain ground at Senate Students must cross MUNACA picket lines or face academic repercussions

By Hannah George Contributor A motion that failed in Senate on Oct. 17 sought to protect the academic standing of students with moral objections to crossing MUNACA picket lines. The motion argued that students should not

be penalized for failure to submit work out of their desire to respect the picket line. It would not have applied to assignments worth 35 per cent or more of the final grade, prescheduled midterms, final examinations or mandatory clinicals, field placements, and rehearsals. It would have also only lasted three days,

after which time students would have been required to go back to class.

“It is certainly not intended as a ‘get out of class free’ card, but rather to support students in expressing their beliefs in a reasonable way,” SSMU President Maggie Knight said. “While I can’t guarantee this,

I would anticipate that reasonable accommodation would look similar to the circumstances when a student obtains a doctor’s note for an illness and gets a few days’ extension.”

The motion would have come into effect immediately and lasted a full year. It was based on the defence that McGill “prides itself as

‘a university that is known worldwide for its academic freedom and freedom of speech’ and that there is a right for freedom from institutional censorship; the right to contribute to social change through free expression of opinion on matter of public interest,” the motion read.

See “MOTION” on page 2

News PROVINCIAL

SSMU joins tuition hike protests Student union organizes bus trip to rally in Quebec City

By Vanessa Page Contributor Incensed by recent tuition increases, a number of SSMU execs organized a bus trip on Oct. 22 to Quebec City to protest tuition hikes outside of the Quebec Liberal Party Convention. This marks the latest in a series of protests that began over a year and a half ago, pitting Quebec residents against the provincial government.

Joël Pedneault, SSMU’s VP External Affairs, spoke on the significance of the organized rally.

“The Liberal Party [of Quebec] has proven to be the most anti-student government in history — they’ve cut financial aid, reduced bursaries and are now planning the largest tuition increase ever which increases students’ debt load and makes education after the secondary level less accessible,” Pedneault said.

In February of 2010, the Quebec Liberal government, led by Jean Charest, began to seriously consider tuition increases for students at

Quebec universities. The increases, which are scheduled to take effect beginning in September 2012, will take the form of $325 increments annually over the next five years.

The in-province tuition rate will increase, by a set rate each year, from $2,168 annually at present to $3,793 in 2017. Out-of-province and international tuition rates will also increase during this time, but to a lesser extent.

Quebec universities claim they are underfunded and will require either tuition increases or greater provincial funding to remain competitive with other Canadian universities. The Liberal Party of Quebec argues that it does not have the resources necessary to increase universities’ funding due to the budget deficit.

Both McGill and the provincial government maintain that the tuition increases are justified since tuition has not kept up with inflation and, even at $3,793 per year, tuition will still be lower than the fees charged outside of Quebec.

Students, on the other hand, are

largely unhappy that the government is moving to an increasingly feebased system. Many feel that lowincome students will be harmed the most, which could lead to increased inequality of wealth in the province and a system where more and more students will graduate with burdensome student loans.

According to American student Alex Lacroix, U3 History, the protests against tuition hikes have repercussions outside of Quebec.

“People from outside of Quebec shouldn’t see this as a Quebec thing,” Lacroix said, likening the tuition increases to the Occupy Wall Street protests that are happening around the world. “The one per cent have way too much and now they’re taking funds from schools that used to be there. People in power have to be afraid of something happening before they actually do something.”

Another nationwide protest against tuition increases is set for Nov. 10.

Motion fails continued from COVER Some students expressed concern that the motion’s failure to pass would impact their ability to express their opinions on the strike.

“Had the motion passed, students would have been able to make a clear statement of their solidarity in a way that would have proved that it is not ‘business as usual’ at McGill,” said Evelyn Stanley, U3 political science. “I find it difficult to stand by idly when a union composed of almost 80 per cent female workers are denied parity, when a 63-year-old woman can be arrested for handing out flyers in a hotel lobby, or when [VP Finance and Operations] Michael Di Grappa can threaten my right to peaceful assembly on campus.”

Mr. Di Grappa has maintained that students always do have the right to protest peacefully, and that the quote regarding students’ right to protest was taken out of context.

After lengthy debate and various modifications proposed before senate, the motion failed to pass.

Senator Darin Barney, elected member of the faculty of the arts, expressed his disappointment at the

failure of the motion.

“I feel that granting amnesty under the highly-circumscribed conditions set out in the motion is the very least we should be doing to accommodate students who feel they cannot cross a union picket line to attend class. I had high hopes it would pass,” he said. “I think we can do better than this.”

In contrast, SSMU VP of University Affairs Emily Yee Clare, who presented the motion at Senate, described the meeting as constructive and productive.

“I am so proud of [the SSMU senators]. I’ve been getting so many wonderful responses from senators, even senators who voted against the motion,” Clare said. “I think it really shows the strength of the McGill community because we got feedback from administrators, from professors, parties, and constituencies so I think it was an incredibly strong motion.”

LOCAL

Tickets abound as police crack down on traffic violations Bikers, jaywalkers beware: safety concerns prompt more vigorous enforcement of ordinances

By Jonny Newburgh Contributor Cyclists in Montreal are increasingly finding themselves on the wrong end of traffic violation tickets. The Montreal Police Service (SPVM) has been cracking down in recent months on cyclists who run stop signs and red lights, or cycle on the sidewalk.

Sam Boniface, a U3 exchange student, received a ticket last week.

“I was biking down Prince Arthur to St. Laurent … I was on the cobblestone, and they were hiding around the corner on rue Coloniale,” he said. “It was [raining hard, expletive redacted] … I didn’t think anyone would be there.”

While many cyclists consider running red lights and stop signs as the norm, particularly within the Milton-Parc community, Montreal’s police force is becoming increasingly concerned with unsafe cycling behavior. Josh Freed, a reporter for the Montreal Gazette, relayed a message that police will be placing bicyclists who violate traffic laws under increased scrutiny.

“This week officers have handed out about 25 per cent more tickets to cyclists this year compared with the same period [in 2010],” Freed

said in an email to the Tribune.

“It shows the police are finally starting to treat the bike like a vehicle, not just a recreational toy—now that the city has given them legitimacy on the road and their own bike paths,” he said.

According to Gazette archives, provided by Freed, the most frequent violation for cyclists cited by the SPVM was running red lights, with bicycling on the sidewalk coming in second. Last year, both offences tallied roughly 1,000 tickets each, with red light violations increasing by 30 per cent between 2009 and 2010.

“We do have a bike patrol, with officers using bikes,” Ian Lafrenière, a spokesman for the SPVM, commented. “We want to make sure that everybody is using the street together and arriving home safe and sound together.”

Liam Walker, a volunteer at the Flat (a McGill student-run bike collective), who admits to frequently biking through red lights, recounted his experience getting a ticket.

He was approaching a corner when he saw that no cars were coming. The opposing walk signal was counting down from five. “I said to myself: ‘okay, I’ll go’… and this guy just stepped out [from the sidewalk to give me a ticket].”

Hélène Brisson, the MiltonParc Citizens’ Committee’s liaison to McGill University, feels cyclists need to better understand the rules of the road.

“It seems to me, as someone who is on foot all the time, that people need a reminder of the bylaws and to respect each other… it’s sometimes very difficult to cross any street,” Brisson said. She did, however, note that she has not heard complaints regarding bicyclists in the area.

Joël Pedneault, SSMU’s Vice President External Affairs, was also of the opinion that the increased ticketing of bicyclists is not a result of local complaints, reiterating that he had not received any complaints.

The SPVM confirmed the same was true of pedestrians.

"We will continue [to enforce the traffic laws] … because our goal is [to] bring down the number of incidents with bicycles and pedestrians,” Lafrenière said.

The SPVM had a piece of advice to those who bike and those who walk to school every day.

“If people stop, they won’t get a ticket,” Lafrenière said.

An undeterred biker on campus. (Ryan Reisert / McGill Tribune)

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Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Relations between union and administration sour continued from COVER (QFL), also spoke out against the university’s use of injunctions and went on to condemn their attitude at the bargaining table.

“What a greedy attitude towards their employees. We know they are in the top five richest universities in this country, the richest university in Montreal, and they’re refusing you the same salary and same benefits in this province working in universities,” Arsenault said.

Alexandre Boulerice, NDP MP for the Montreal riding of Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie, also spoke in support of the striking workers.

“McGill is not a poor university. [I urge them to] put a little money on the table ... Workers should be [their] first priority,” Boulerice said in a follow-up interview.

Hospital construction impeded Meanwhile, construction halted for one day at McGill University Glen Yards Hospital, as MUNACA members demonstrated in front of the site, and construction workers refused to cross picket lines.

“Shutting down this project will be costly, deprive hundreds of workers of their construction jobs, and delay work that must be completed before winter sets in,” McGill VP Finance Michael Di Grappa said in an email to students.

Kalant disagreed, claiming that the project, like other large and longterm construction projects, would not be severely affected by a delay of one day.

“Patient care in this province, as in others, is much more affected by such things as nursing shortages than by the presence of new physical facilities,” he said.

Private property picketed Last week, relations beyond the negotiation table escalated to the invasion of private property. On Oct. 18, a large number of MUNACA members visited the law offices of

MUNACA supporters at a rally last Friday. (Sam Reynolds / McGill Tribune) Stikeman Elliot, the workplace of the chair of McGill’s board of governors, Stuart “Kip” Cobbett. A representative from the MUNACA executive committee spoke with him in his office.

“We are conveying our message to key members of McGill’s Board of Governors asking them to use their position to work towards a fair resolution to the strike,” MUNACA President Kevin Whittaker said in an Oct. 19 press release on the union’s website. “It is now up to them to use their position of influence to bring this dispute to a rapid conclusion.”

A court recently granted McGill an extension of the injunction originally granted on Sept. 23. The

extended injunciton now includes the private offices and homes of senior administrators. This comes amidst complaints of picketing and harassment, including throwing of objects.

“We have picketed at the houses of Mr. Masi, Mr. di Grappa [sic] and Ms. Munroe-Blum,” Kalant said via email. “We distributed flyers to the neighbours explaining who we are and why we were there. At no time did we impede entry or exit to the houses, or act in an aggressive manner towards anyone.”

“The situation is going to be resolved with the parties at the negotiation table,” Di Grappa countered.

“It’s not going to be resolved with demonstrations, picketing people’s

homes, or public relations tactics.”

Progress at the negotiation table Both parties maintain contradictory stances on mutual relations.

McGill claims disruptive union activities, like those seen in recent days, does little to help reaching a settlement.

“Nothing the union does away from the table can speed the pace of negotiations, nor change the order with which the outstanding issues will be dealt,” Di Grappa said in a weekly update.

“Of course he’s going to say [that],” Kalant said in response via email. “But after 10 months of saying they will not talk about our important issues, we are finally seeing

Needed

some signs of movement. We believe we are having an impact.”

Meanwhile, negotiations have made some headway; at the strike’s outset, there were over 100 issues that needed to be addressed. Now, the parties have cut this down to “dozens,” according to Di Grappa, having come to an agreement on job rematch and union representation.

Disagreements continue over staffing rights and job security.

In light of recent disintegration of good will on both sides, it remains to be seen how well striking workers will be reintregrated into the McGill community.

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conference

MIGS hosts talk on role of media in genocide prevention Dallaire, Martin and other experts attend conference held by Concordia Institute for Genocide

By Carolina Millán Ronchetti News Editor With the advent of digital media and its role in events such as the “Arab Spring,” experts around the world recognize the need to harness and manage new tools, and use them to prevent, rather than react, to mass atrocities. Concordia University’s Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (MIGS) hosted a conference to address this issue on Oct. 20 and 21 titled, “The Promise of the Media in Halting Mass Atrocities: A Conference to Mark the 10th Anniversary of the Responsibility to Protect,” featuring 16 panelists of varied backgrounds.

The keynote speaker of the conference was Canada’s 21st Prime Minister, Paul Martin, who is credited with bringing together all 192 UN members during his tenure to sign the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) norm, a document which empowers the UN Security Council to intervene in any situation where a country does not take action to prevent mass atrocities within its borders.

Martin addressed ways to mitigate current challenges in implementing R2P, such as decreasing foreign aid budgets and reducing military resources.

“In my experience, overseas development assistance budgets and emergency funding for R2P is not part of protective programs, and is therefore very vulnerable [in times of economic crisis],” Martin said.

“In my opinion, this represents if not the greatest obstacle to the responsibility to protect, the greatest threat to responsibility to prevent.”

When asked by an audience

member how the news media could more effectively bring attention to mass atrocities and influence policy decisions, the former prime minister noted the importance of in-depth analysis of decisions.

“To be honest, I don’t think that media coverage makes a political leader, in terms of foreign policy, do something,” Martin said. “What I really do believe is that political leaders take their decision based on their analyses of the facts as they seem.

Where media becomes incredibly important is the quality of the media in analyzing the decisions that happen. The media needs to have the experts in foreign affairs, not to simply react in a populous way but to analyze the issue.”

Senator and Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire noted several scenarios in which the media has significantly influenced policy decisions in the past, but added that the volatility of such interactions poses challenges for both the media and politicians.

“We need to look at how mass atrocities are being covered … Unless journalists acquire some of the softer sciences of anthropology, sociology and philosophy, unless they are provided with more depth to what they can understand, let alone report on and analyze, they are out of their league in this era,” Dallaire said. “We are in an era of enormous complexity and ambiguity, in which we will find ethical, moral and legal dilemmas abound, but also we will find ourselves in scenarios that don’t fit any sort of pattern, that don’t fit the old military solutions or the old diplomatic solutions. If you want to influence … you need a whole new

Paul Martin addresses audience on media and genocide. (Ryan Reisert / McGill Tribune) set of capabilities.”

Other panelists focused on discussing how new technologies can prevent mass atrocities.

Jonathan Hutson is director of communications for the Enough Project, which aims to end genocide and crimes against humanity.

Hutson acquainted the audience with the Satellite Sentinel Project, which uses near-daily satellite imagery analysis and field reports to deter war between North and South Sudan by capturing possible threats to civilians [and] detecting bombed villages and other evidence of violence.

“If you want to change the world, never ask ‘What can we do?’ because then you start weighing on

a reasonable level and you can do nearly nothing—it costs too much, no one will cooperate, no one has ever done this, maybe we’ll fail…

Always ask ‘what needs to be done?’ and then do that, even if it’s impossible,” Hutson encouraged the audience.

Shireen Soofi, a U3 arts student and a current intern at MIGS, found that the diversity of panelists and speakers greatly enhanced the discussion of R2P. “I agreed with some and disagreed with others but if you want democracy, you have to understand all the sides,” Soofi said.

Many audience members found that they could apply what they learned to their jobs. This was the

case for Dechen Wangmo, a broadcast journalist currently in Montreal as a Sauvé Scholar working on projects to develop the emerging journalism industry and media literacy in her native Bhutan. “[Paul Martin] really highlighted how important it is for the media to do in-depth analysis of the events,” Wangmo said. “Media in Bhutan is very young … it’s very difficult for Bhutanese [journalists] to provide in-depth analysis and that’s what I want to learn and implement as part of my Sauvé project during my co-op here in Canada. This is a gathering of very well-known people with so much expertise; it’s a great learning experience for me.”

CAMPUS

McGill waves goodbye to 40-year Book Fair tradition Annual event held for the last time as volunteer-based support declines

By Anna Ross Contributor After over 40 years, McGill's annual book fair has closed its doors for the last time. The volunteer-run fair, which took place this year from Oct. 18-20, will be the last of its kind at McGill, not due to budget cuts, but rather because those who run it are retiring and have no one eager to replace them.

“Look at the average age of the volunteers —we’re getting old,” Victoria Lees, Coordinator, and exSecretary General of McGill University, said. “It’s my fourth year of being the coordinator of this book fair. I didn’t want to do it anymore, and nobody wanted to replace me.”

The McGill book fair, founded in 1971, sells used books donated by the citizens of Montreal. The money earned is then donated to McGill scholarships and bursaries. Since its launch, the book fair has raised over $1.5 million for student aid.

The books offered to the public span a wide range of disciplines, from architecture to zoology. Both French and English books are available, as well as CDs, DVDs, LPs, and sheet music. The number of donations received is so large that one room is devoted entirely to art and architecture, while another exclusively houses old and rare volumes.

“People donate and bring us books. We collect them from midFebruary until October. Volunteers

would come in twice a week, and we would sort the books, pack them, and price them until we are ready to sell,” Lees said. “Most of the money we raise goes to McGill fellowships and scholarships, and the rest goes to the expenses of doing this book fair, such as renting tables. Last year we gave $85,000 to the scholarships.”

According to Lees, enormous time and effort goes into the organization of each book fair. Countless volunteers donated much of their time to each annual installment, and some have worked at the fairs for years.

“I have worked at this book fair since 1979 —it’s been my life,” Hiroko Inou, a volunteer, said. “Jane Wood, who started the book fair,

unfortunately died in 2008. She was my mentor.”

Inou expressed sadness at the end of an event which has had such a cultural legacy.

“We rescue used books to be used again and provide good prices to McGill students and to the citizens of Montreal. We have many faithful customers who come back here every year,” Inou said. “I don’t want this to end. We are all volunteers here. It’s very sad.”

The fair has attracted large crowds every year since its inception, and volunteers are certainly not the only ones who will miss the event.

“I’ve been coming to this book fair for years. I’ve always found

plenty of books that are in great condition, and they’ve always been decent prices — ­ it’s such a shame this is the final fair. I will miss it, and the volunteers who run it,” a Montrealer, who wished to remain anonymous, said.

“This is the first time I’ve been to this book fair. It’s a good idea. I like that books can be re-used and given a second life. The prices seem reasonable as well, which is great because as a student I’m always looking for bargains,” a McGill arts student, also anonymous, added.

“I hope something like this can be started up again in the future, as it seems really sad that this is the last year.”

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Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Speaker on campus

Desautels welcomes back alumni for CEO Speaker Series Business students learn from McGill grads firsthand about the ins and outs of running a company

By Nathaniel Finestone Contributor The CEO Speaker Series, held on Friday Oct. 21 by the McGill faculty of management, introduced young business students to three successful entrepreneurs, all graduates of Desautels.

The three CEOs discussed their business successes and failures. David Segal, who graduated in 2004 with a BCom, is now the CEO of David’s Tea, and Alexandra Schwartz, who graduated with an MBA in the same year, is the CEO of Studio Breathe, a yoga studio.

Samer Saab (MBA ’96) is the CEO of eXplorance Inc., a software development company.

Many students attending the talk were considering their future

career prospects in business, including Maritza Godinez, a U3 general management student. “[I came] because I have no idea what I’m going to do after graduation and so I thought it’d be beneficial to come and hear about other experiences people have,” she said.

Second year MBA student Alex Brzostowski spent the past year organizing the talk and acted as the master of ceremonies at the event.

“It’s been really great having CEOs coming in and sharing their experiences,” he said.

The three CEOs conveyed the challenges and the joys of being entrepreneurs. Saab spoke about his first experiences in the working world.

“I always wanted to sell things, [and] had to work and get jobs at

other big corporations like Nortel and Bombardier,” he said. “But eventually I went out at the right time, there was no success right away, I had lots of pain first.”

Though all three eventually found success in the business world, they all described their early entrepreneurial attempts as a rollercoaster of optimistic startups that were met with disappointment.

“I was a serial entrepreneur, [was] my first business when I was 18 selling first aid kits door to door, [then] I started a software company in my basement for two and a half years,” Segal said. “That didn’t work, then I found tea and got lucky; [I] found a phenomenal partner with deep pockets and it worked.”

Schwartz spoke about the difficulties of launching her business

speaker on campus

Mansur on clash of civilizations

Ontario professor calls multiculturalism “a delectable lie”

By Eric Mauser News Editor Salim Mansur, himself an immigrant to Canada from India, may seem like an unlikely candidate to talk about the dangers posed by other cultures, yet he discussed just that in his McGill lecture on Oct. 17.

Mansur, a professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario, is known to many as a critic of multiculturalism, governments in the Muslim world, and being staunchly pro-Israel. As a result of his stances, two fatwas have been issued against him.

“We are in a war, in a great global conflict in the beginning of the 21st century and we are again dealing with the question of freedom,” Mansur proclaimed at the beginning of his lecture.

Mansur argued that this war for freedom is a war of ideas and cultures, between those who favoured freedom of expression and liberal ideology, and those opposed to it.

According to Mansur, the idea of the former co-existing with the latter is untenable because it implies treating all cultures and values as equal, even when they are not.

“You cannot have equality where the values of the Taliban [are] equal to the [values of] graduates of McGill University and [under law] you had better treat them as equal,” Mansur said. “Multiculturalism, as I came to experience it in Canada over the last four decades ... is a delectable lie,” he added.

Marc Fortin, a U2 economics

Mansur spoke last Monday. (Sam Reynolds / McGill Tribune) student and chief communications officer of the French section of the Prince Arthur Herald, co-sponsor of the event, found the lecture interesting.

“Multiculturalism is something that is really entrenched in our society right now. It's something that everyone thinks is normal, but we find that there is a big problem with it,” he said.

“I think as a student, his message was to stand up for what you believe [in] and to stand up for liberty,” Fortin added.

Alexandre Meterissian, a board member of Conservative McGill and student host for the event explained that he brought Mansur to McGill because of his expertise on issues of immigration and multiculturalism.

“It's good that we have these kind of discussions. It's a major issue for the next generation, for our

generation,” he said. “The main reason we brought the event on campus was to get more students involved.”

The sponsors for Mansur's talk included Conservative McGill, the International Free Press Society, whuch promotes free speech in Canada, and Act for Canada, a group which, according to its website, seeks to protect Canada from “radical Islam.”

“I am delighted because we actually want young people involved,” Valerie Price, member of Act for Canada, said. “I think it's really important. I'm really nervous about what's going on around the world and in my country.”

While Mansur’s message could be considered controversial by some, it was well received by over 100 community members, faculty, and students who came to hear him speak.

after 12 years of working in retail in an entrepreneurial environment with very little corporate experience.

“When I choose to pursue my MBA in my thirties, after working, I didn’t do it to learn to be an entrepreneur, which I figured I knew how to do already which was work, work, work, and just focus on how much can we sell [and] how much can we do,” she said. “Overall you need determination, patience, and resilience and to believe in what you are selling.”

“I go by the seat of my pants, you have to quickly learn to guide the ship,” Saab said. “I have a CFO, a marketing director, I have an office of 45-50 people, and 700 people in the retail guide. But I am still very involved and I read every email that comes in and every one that goes

out.”

Schwartz emphasized the commitment needed to run a company.

“I have two kids so my day starts at four, I want to be able to check 300 emails and to prepare nice documents and check every bank statement, but every day is just work, work, and work,” said Schwartz.

“The hours are very flexible: you can work any 23 hours you want,” Segal joked.

Despite the long hours that they work, all three CEOs still spoke about their jobs with eagerness and enthusiasm, delivering inspiration to aspiring entrepreneurs at McGill.

News in brief RIM launches next generation of blackberry smartphones Research In Motion (RIM) unveiled a next generation platform for its Blackberry smartphones on Oct. 18 at a developer conference in San Francisco. The operating system, known simply as BBX, aims to merge Blackberry’s current smartphone platform with that of its PlayBook tablet, QNX. In an attempt to encourage developers, it will support new technologies, like HTML5, which will allow programmers to easily develop for both Blackberry smartphones and tablets.

While Blackberry sales continue to be strong in many parts of the world, the Waterloo-based RIM has recently faced stiff competition at home in the Android and iOS platforms of rivals Google and Apple.

Drawing consumers with their intuitive applications, access to media, and full-screen touch interfaces, Android and iPhone devices have eaten into much of Blackberry’s North American market share.

Following the announcement, RIM's shares rose 3.6 per cent in one day, a good sign for the troubled Canadian firm. Its stock has been down around 60 per cent since the beginning of this year.

Industry opinion of BBX, however, has been less than positive; experts have called the venture everything from "just a pipe dream" (PCWorld) to "a tall order” (AnandTech).

Joesph Vybihal, a faculty lecturer in McGill’s school of computer science, felt RIM took far too long to realize they needed to change their game plan.

“It's not a little bit late, it's late,” he said. “While they were developing their Bold and Torch, they were saying, internally, we don't need a tablet, we don't need a phone like iPhone. Now they're starting from nothing. There was a clear lack of view to the future.”

RIM is trying hard to maintain the strength of its email and messaging functionality as well as its integration with corporate servers.

These have always been its core assets.

"BBX embraces the best of the BlackBerry platform and the best of the QNX platform to create a brand new platform that extends the BlackBerry DNA of collaboration, communication and immediacy," RIM said in an email to the Tribune.

The firm's attempt to encourage the creation of more applications is a hard sell, especially given that a release date for BBX has not been set and there are rumours the platform may not be available until 2013.

“They're saying: develop web applications now for two years from now, but two years from now Apple is going to do something else,” Vybihal said. “I don't know if at the last [developer conference] they convinced everybody."

Application availability is everything in today’s mobile industry, and for now, the Blackberry platform lags behind with far fewer applications than the iPhone and Android.

– Anand Bery

Opinion On the Record

James Gilman

jgilman@mcgilltribune.com

Keep opt-outs the way they are In just over a week’s time, students will have the chance to vote on the continued funding of Radio CKUT and the Quebec Public Interest Research Group at McGill. Yet in a way this is also a referendum on the current opt-out system, and whether it was a mistake to take the opt-out system online in 2007.

The referendum questions ask students to re-approve fees that support QPIRG ($3.75 per student per semester) and CKUT ($4.00) while shifting the responsibility for managing opt outs and refunds to QPIRG and CKUT. Things would more or less return to how they were before 2007, when students could get their money back by physically going to the QPIRG and CKUT offices, which very few students did, mainly because most didn’t know they could.

By the end of 2007, the Students’ Society was working on moving the opt-out system online. But the system that was launched in the Fall 2007 semester wasn’t exactly what SSMU had in mind, as McGill decided to put all opt-outable fees together on Minerva. That same semester the SSMU General Assembly passed a motion opposing the new system and supporting putting campus groups back in charge of their own opt-out processes. Needless to say, McGill ignored the GA motion, and I don’t blame them. The GA cannot possibly be construed as a democratic representation of the student body, and given some of the inane motions passed at GAs it

Around the World Kaiti O’Shaughnessy

kaitio@mcgilltribune.com

The five steps of slactivism Lately, campus and much of Montreal have been the stage for quite a number of political and social causes demanding attention. Many—if not most—of these causes are pretty important.

A lot of them, such as paying workers fair pensions, are just generally good ideas. If every student was a really great person, the chances are we would all participate in many a social movement. But alas, most of us aren’t

should not be taken seriously. Plus the differences between it and the system envisioned by SSMU (and supported in principle by QPIRG) were not as significant as some would have you believe.

Yes, McGill was a bit crafty when it decided to put all the optouts on its own website. But if optouts are online, does it really matter where they’re located? Even if they had been on each group’s own website there would have been links to these pages on Minerva. The argument behind putting opt-outs online was that it would make the process more transparent and efficient. There was even support from QPIRG: Ed Hudson, a member of the QPIRG board of directors in 2007 told the Tribune that QPIRG wouldn’t be opposed to the website, and that “We wouldn’t put barriers in [students’] right to opt out.”

QPIRG has always referred to the ability to opt out as a “right”.

If students have a right to opt out, then why shouldn’t the process be as straightforward and transparent as possible? QPIRG and CKUT point out that they’ve been hit by the QPIRG Opt-Out campaign, but no one can say that this wasn’t predictable. When the new system went online, SSMU told groups to budget for at least a third less funding than previous years, but even with the opt-out campaign QPIRG and CKUT’s opt-out rates haven’t been that high.

Everyone who opts-out is exercising their right to do so, and the solution isn’t to make it harder, but to budget accordingly and/or raise opt-outable fees through referenda, as QPIRG has done.

Going back to the old way, and making the opt-out process as difficult and furtive as possible, ignores the original problem, dismisses the benefits of an online opt-out system, and is not the right answer to the current situation.

After leaving its humble beginnings in Vancouver to make a splash in the Big Apple, the Occupy movement returned to its birth country last week, hitting large Canadian cities with full force. Crowds defying any demographic classification filled streets and parks across the country to join what has become a worldwide phenomenon.

As pundits surveyed the Canuck addition to the protests, two questions were raised over and over again. First: aren’t people only upset at Wall Street, not Bay Street?

Surely the problem lies in the global effect of America’s corporate beast, and the world is reacting. Second: is the movement’s message a cohesive one? Everybody is angry, but can anybody agree on what exactly they’re angry about? Yet these questions have already been answered.

Let’s take ‘em one at a time.

Wall Street may be the ugliest worm in your dinner, but it’s not the only one: the whole dish is spoiled. The system that contributes to the wealth of the few—and the struggle of most—spills far over American borders, and is globally kept in place by international elites.

Canada, often proud in the past of being the only legitimate social democracy outside of Scandinavia, looks more and more like its southern cousin. While its income inequality is, mercifully, still much lower than that of the United States, it’s catching up, and fast. CBC announced last week that Canada’s income gap is getting wider at a faster

rate than America’s. Furthermore, in 1976 the average Canadian income was $51,100. Despite inflation, that average has made a slow increase to $59,700. Frank Groves, the President of Ekos Research Associates, has told CBC’s The National that “nobody but a narrow caste of very rich people are moving forward.”

In the same interview he mentioned that “what’s shocking about Occupy Wall Street isn’t that it occurred, but that it took so long to occur.”

Sitting next to Groves at the time was Charlotte Yates, Chair of Social Science at McMaster University. And in my opinion, she effectively tackled the issue of what the protestors want: “Although the demands of that group are very diffuse, there is a very clear message: we’re angry about the way capitalist society is organized. Too few people have too much. This is a backlash against corporations.”

Her statement needs some nuance. Brands, companies, and their leaders are not universally despised.

The tragic passing of Steve Jobs, and the outpouring of affection for all things Apple, is a case in point.

Rather, it’s the position of manipulative power which many corporations are allowed to be in that spark outrage. Especially when that power is purely mediated by the bottom line figures at the end of the month.

Add a host of entrenched economists who only see when their neoliberal glasses are on, and you’ve got legitimately fed up people. Their demands are many because the injustices are many.

As the Occupy movement evolves, it should continue to be subject to much talk and more scrutiny. But the media should not patronise it by asking questions that have already been answered. The movement’s ultimate efficacy has yet to be seen, but you do not have to strain your eyes to see its causes.

really great people; we’re only mediocre people. Thus, successfully effecting social change often gets relegated to the bottom of the to-do list.

However, this need not be cause for dismay, fellow colleagues in mediocrity. For I have compiled a list of activist-y things that will make you feel great while creating absolutely zero positive impact. The name of this brilliant idea is slacktivism. The following are among my personal favourite slacktivist actions.

Useless action number one: particpate in all Facebook status ‘awareness movements.’ Change your display pic to a cartoon to demonstrate your distaste for child abuse. Child abuse sucks; Winnie the Pooh agrees. Tell us where you like to “leave your purse” to lend your support to

breast cancer awareness. Post a link to an online petition that doesn’t exist. Type away heroes, type away.

Useless action number two: get a MUNACA pin. Pin it on a backpack. Put the backpack in your closet. Forget you have it.

Alternatively, wear your MUNACA pin everyday and sit inside drinking tea while McGill employees shiver for their rights just outside the Roddick gates.

Talk about how much you support the strike to your close friends and other folks without leverage to make change. Feel like an incredibly sensitive and empathetic person.

Useless action number three: walk by Occupy Montreal on your way home from school.

Whenever anything about money or banks comes up in conversa-

tion, vaguely mumble, “We are the 99%” and talk about how the protest changed your life. Follow your vague mumblings with something even more vague about equality. Everyone knows that walking by a protest is basically the same as actually protesting.

Realistically, if you had actually stayed long enough to protest, you would just be taking the spot of someone who actually cared, so if you think about it, you’re taking one for the team.

Useless action number four: drastically reduce your level of personal grooming. Talk about subverting societal norms to anyone who will listen. Mutter words like “patriarchy” and “system” whenever people question your greasy hair. Make sure your argument is incoherent enough not to confuse people into thinking your

jbotha@mcgilltribune.com

Oh, Canada?

Johanu Botha

Occupy where, and for what?

Interested in photojournalism?

Join our photographers in covering news, arts, student living and sports.

Email photo@mcgilltribune.com for details. action is logical.

Useless action number five: read the headline of an online article. Mention it often and in all of your classes. Say things like “I read this article on human trafficking/animal cruelty/war/ famine and I would just like to say that it is really important that we think about that.” Not do anything, just think about it. And think. And think. At all social events, talk incessantly about how human trafficking/animal cruelty/ war/famine is really important to you and you are so, so passionate about it.

With just these five actions, I guarantee that you will feel like the student equivalent of Gandhi.

There is no need to get in the way of those folks that are actually asserting their rights the best way they know how, so just fake it.

Tribune

7

The McGill

Editorial

www.mcgilltribune.com

Editor-in-Chief Shannon Kimball editor@mcgilltribune.com Managing Editors Sam Hunter shunter@mcgilltribune.com Holly Stewart hstewart@mcgilltribune.com Production Manager Iain Macdonald imacdonald@mcgilltribune.com News Editors Anand Bery, Eric Mauser, Elisa Muyl, and Carolina Millán Ronchetti news@mcgilltribune.com Opinion Editor Richard Martyn-Hemphill opinion@mcgilltribune.com Features Editors Kyla Mandel and Kat Sieniuc features@mcgilltribune.com Arts & Entertainment Editor Ryan Taylor arts@mcgilltribune.com Sports Editor Steven Lampert and Adam Sadinsky sports@mcgilltribune.com Photo Editors Ryan Reisert and Sam Reynolds photo@mcgilltribune.com Senior Design Editor Kathleen Jolly kjolly@mcgilltribune.com Design Editor Susanne Wang design@mcgilltribune.com

MUNACA should think beyond the strike The formerly admirable civility of the MUNACA strike appears to have been replaced by behaviour that goes beyond the bounds of decency. Last week, according to the MUNACA website, over 600 strikers disrupted the construction of the MUHC hospital at the Glen Yards site. In addition, it has been reported that protestors harassed alumni at a homecoming event, picketed at the non-university workplaces of governors, and used intimidation tactics at the homes of senior administrators.

What were these disruptions ever supposed to accomplish? Apart from stalling the building of a new hospital, spoiling a homecoming party for alumni, and alienating students from the movement, such acts will achieve very little. Despite VP Administration and Finance Michael Di Grappa’s claims that these actions “will not affect what goes on at the negotiating table,” they undoubtedly will, and it will affect MUNACA aversely. Actions such

as throwing items at Mr. Di Grappa, be they garbage or flowers, will only serve to strengthen the resolve of the administration, making compromise even more difficult to achieve, and creating an office filled with tension when the MUNACA workers finally return to the fold.

The Tribune consequently finds such reckless and short term tactics entirely self-defeating. It seems like some strikers have forgotten that they are, sooner or later, going to have to work shoulder to shoulder with the very people they are attempting to intimidate. MUNACA’s acts of frustration can perhaps be understood given the slow pace of negotiations and the administration’s injunction. Under these conditions it is hard to build up consistent support for the MUNACA cause and to keep up momentum. But that does not warrant the use of intimidation tactics as a response. The purpose of MUNACA’s strike should be to demonstrate to the administration

the enormous value of their work, making a case for how difficult it is for the university to cope without them; it should not be to show how much they can intimidate or disrupt.

As with any strike, the moral high ground is essential, and that is only gained by turning the other cheek to unjust blows, not hitting back.

Moreover, these actions are not only self-defeating, but such childish tactics also set a dismal example for students. The Tribune applauds students for standing up for MUNACA workers. But actions so selfish in their nature, and intimidating in their intent, are giving students a terrible education in how to confront grievances in the working world.

The Tribune therefore calls for such disruptive tactics to cease—for the good of McGill’s students, alumni, construction projects, administrators, and workers. The approach of bringing public figures such as Maude Barlow, Brian Topp, and Michel Arsenault behind the MU-

NACA cause is a far more effective one: support of elected politicians is much more likely to bear fruit than disruptive protests, and much more in accordance with acceptable norms of behaviour.

Furthermore, the focus ought to be centred on the negotiating table, not on inappropriate picketing. That is where any concessions will become concrete, not outside Michael Di Grappa’s house. Both administrators and strikers need to remember it is in both of their interests for MUNACA workers to get back to work. McGill’s research capacity is hamstrung without a great deal of its workforce, and MUNACA workers must surely be hoping to return to full pay sooner rather than later.

We remain hopeful that a resolution is on the horizon, but the recent poor conduct by many surrounding the strike has led us to seriously question that hope.

everything I considered slightly interesting, even if only for 30 seconds. Our House Music society?

Sure, there was that one time I went to a warehouse party and there was loud electronic music, I could be interested in techno and trance. McGill Rotary Club? I’ve volunteered before and had fun, so why not. SOS Tutoring? I peer tutored a few times in high school, and I’m not sure how much I helped the student in question by correcting her French pronunciation as she stumbled through Asterix comic books, but saving the world through tutoring sounds like a good deal. Origami Club? Origami is one of those mysterious skills that my cool friends know how to do and I’ve always wanted to learn but never bothered to (maybe because when I really think about it, I have better things to do with my time).

Swing Dancing Club? Never tried it but it sounds fun.

Inevitably, three years later,

I’ve realised not only that I am no longer interested in most of the groups and activities I thought were cool in first year, but also I was probably not all that interested in the first place. I was spurred on to sign up by the excitement of university life and the endless possibilities available in front of me.

Writing down your email for anything that sounds remotely interesting is a good idea, in theory, allowing you to filter through the plethora of activities at McGill and find something you’re actually interested in. Unfortunately, I’ve found that it’s sometimes easier to not sign up in the first place than it is to unsubscribe. As old listservs pile up and gather rust in my inbox, my desperate replies which usually say “unsubscribe” in the subject line and then “Please take me off your list serv (it’s nothing personal, I’m just not interested in your club anymore)” in the email are ignored.

The self-serve unsubscribe method is often just as useless. Clicking one of those “unsubscribe” links at the bottom of a listserv leads to a labyrinthan google group where supposedly, somewhere, there is the option to remove yourself from the listserv. Only if you have the patience and determination to find it—­­and the secret code given to you by the elves of Rivendell or something like that—will you be able to remove yourself from the listserv.

Now, when someone asks for my email, I give them a suspicious look and ask why in my most menacing tone. I treat my email address like it’s my phone number and everyone who asks for it is a potential telemarketer. I’ve learned that, when it comes to new activities, I need to think of my email frustration before I let my eagerness overtake me.

Copy Editor Marri Lynn Knadle Advertising Manager Corina Sferdenschi cpm@ssmu.mcgill.ca

Off the Board

Publisher Chad Ronalds

TPS Board of Directors James Gilman (Chair): chair@mcgilltribune.com

Holly Stewart

Johanu Botha, Kathleen Jolly, Shannon Kimball, Iain Macdonald, Alex Middleton, Zach Newburgh

Contributors Alexandra Allaire, Rebecca Babcock, Johanu Botha, Noah Caldwell-Rafferty, Graeme Davidson, Jeffrey Downey, Trevor Drummond, Nathaniel Finestone, Alissa Fingold, Jacqui Galbraith, Hannah George, James Gilman, Mookie Kideckel, Chris Liu, Christopher Nardi, Jonny Newburgh, Kaiti O’Shaughnessy, Michael Paolucci, Vanessa Page, Nicholas Petrillo, Lauren Pires, Cole Powers, Anna Ross

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One of my biggest regrets in university might be how liberal I was with my email address in first year. There’s a mindset that comes from being told over and over again to broaden your horizons and get involved with university life, both valid pieces of advice, which results in a little too much eagerness and optimism when taken to the extreme.

Activities Night in particular requires self-control and discretion.

Do not act like someone at a buffet after a week-long hunger strike. In first year, I wandered around and signed myself up for anything and

F: 514.398.7490

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Soliciting opinions on everything and anything from Sarah Palin to bed bugs.

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 submit-

Send guest commentary submissions of 550 - 625 words to opinion@mcgilltribune.com

ted only to the Tribune. Submissions judged by the Tribune Publication Society to be libellous, sexist, racist, homophobic or solely promotional in nature will not be published. The Tribune reserves the right to edit all contributions. Editorials are decided upon and written by the editorial board. All other opinions are strictly those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the McGill Tribune, its editors or its staff. Please recycle this newspaper.

and letters to the editor of under 300 words to editor@mcgilltribune.com

8

Curiosity Delivers. www.mcgilltribune.com

Off the Board Iain Macdonald

Keep it off Facebook Facebook and privacy are two words with a long, tenuous relationship. At 750 million members, the site houses a lot of information about a lot of people. It is no surprise that the company has been the frequent subject of scrutiny over its privacy policies. What is often overlooked is the fact that Facebook, Twitter, and other similar websites are only media for personal information — any offensive or libelous material is posted by individuals.

These individuals, not the companies, are the ones responsible for the

Commentary Madam Principal, Your most recent communication regarding the strike, "We are all

material they post.

We've all heard stories about people who, after a tough day at work or school, went home and tweeted “God I hate Mr. Turner,” or posted that their students were all germbags. While these stories are generally funny, they affect real people and can cost some their jobs.

In some instances, the messages sent can be considered threatening, a point that hits rather close to home here at McGill.

Many of the characters in these stories, after they realise the consequences of their actions, cite one of two excuses. Either: “I was joking.”

Or: the website didn't permit them enough control over who would be able to view their message, and they didn't intend a certain audience to see such sensitive material.

Anyone communicating using just text must realise that most jokes are cued non-verbally. On the inter-

net, however, these cues are absent for messages shared in text format.

Sarcasm is more difficult to detect in written words than spoken ones, something any micro-blogger should know.

While it is true that many social networking sites have complex and confusing privacy settings, this is a widely known fact. It should not be a surprise when users make mistakes in these settings. It is not a good example of user-interface design, but we all know that. Additionally, many people don't actually know what settings they would like, they only know that Facebook did it wrong, and any improvements they make are just less wrong. It's difficult to blame Facebook for this, as they were trailblazing when they created the site. If you don't like the privacy settings, don't use the site.

Or, at least accept that you don't understand how they work and proceed

with caution.

Even if every website on the Internet permitted perfect control over one's personal information, there is still a degree of insecurity in the picture: other people. When your friends see you've posted something funny, tearjerking, or rude on Facebook, there is nothing preventing them from taking a screenshot and posting it on Failblog, Reddit, Digg, or any other similar website. These excerpts can contain all of your identifying information accompanying the scandalous material. When this happens, it’s difficult to blame Facebook.

While the National Labour Relation Board ruled earlier this year that employees may not be fired based on things posted on Facebook, it is still not a good idea to publically call your boss a “nitwit.” You can't be fired for it, but there is still no reason to potentially let your co-

workers know your true opinion of them. While the court might protect your job in these situations, they can't make any guarantees about working conditions, letters of recommendation, and other courtesies offered by employers.

Internet users have to realise that if there ever was a true cliché, it's that the internet is written in ink.

When you post something on any of your favorite social networks, blogs, or other publicly exposed websites, it should be considered out there for everyone to see. There are never going to be ideal privacy settings for any website, and anything you tweet that can be misconstrued, will be.

Users need to prepare for the worst case scenario when posting potentially offensive material. It is up to the web user to think before they post. Only that way can you prevent yourself from becoming a “victim” in one of these unfortunate events.

McGill," seems to say two contradictory things at once: both that "we are all McGill," and "by dint of their recent actions, MUNACA members are not McGill." It has the clear intention of rallying its readers around you and against MUNACA members while saying nothing either substantive or documented about

why exactly this should be.

A university president used to be a practicing academic. You are a practicing bureaucrat and fabulist. A university president used to have an interest—and pride—in the knowledge and calibre of its graduates.

You have an interest in their money and influence. You know very well

that "sharp but civil" discourse is a losing tactic for anyone but yourself and your cabal of administrator cronies, since it is in fact not discourse that wins the day here at old McGill, but money and power. Your tenure as president of this university is an embarrassment, certainly to me and my parents, but also to many with

whom you presume to stand in solidarity. I can hope only that you will in time come to see for yourself exactly how shameful it is.

Sincerely, Cole Powers U2 Philosophy

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2011 8 PM PERFORMING SONGS FROM HIS LATEST ALBUM I'M TAKING OFF & BACKSTREET BOYS FAVORITES www.nickcarter.com A

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Student Living MCGILLIANs AFTER MCGILL

A McGill graduate starts his Ph.D south of the border Musings on life after Mcgill at Brown University

By Mookie Kideckel Contributor When I finished university, I knew I was ready to plunge into the next great adventure: more school.

So, I took those bold steps one floor up the ivory tower and here I am: almost two months into a History Ph.D at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

Grad school is cool, but just like any experience, the place you’re living matters almost as much as anything else. I’ve never lived in the States before, and I’ve learned there are tons of great things about this country, like J. Crew, Pandora, and Chipotle. And, it’s only $5 for any footlong sub this October. Plus, Providence is an exceptionally pretty town with old Georgian homes,

tons of independently owned shops and restaurants, and not one, but two “occupy” something movements.

The US isn’t really that different of a place to live. My Zumba instructor is still a McGill alum from Montreal. My French class still has that kid from Montreal who for some reason can’t speak French, a kid from Vancouver, and me from Toronto. It’s like I never left.

As for graduate school, that, like anything, has its pros and cons.

On the one hand, it’s a pretty spectacular way to spend your time.

There aren’t any exams (unless you decide to take an undergraduate language class like me), but there is, of course, a good deal of writing and a lot of reading. This sounds agonizing until you realize that now you’re no longer just paying somebody for

the opportunity to do these things.

While other people seem to be either unemployed or working 100 hours a week, getting a small stipend to spend a lot of time in a beautiful place discussing interesting things with stimulating minds, and hopefully actually doing something good for the world, seems just about alright. Plus, you learn how to speed read, which a lot of people find impressive.

On the other hand, everybody seems to be ‘down’ a lot. Not down as in not smiling or not friendly or any kind of mopey—I don’t think I’ve actually met anyone here I wouldn’t put in the extremely friendly category. But, and maybe it’s because they’re all (aspiring) professional critics, everybody is obsessed with talking about the impending death of

humanities education. That, and the fact that none of us will find jobs in academia when we finish our billion year slog of writing a dissertation that nobody will want to read. Meh. There’s bound to be some give and take when you find something that you enjoy and feel like you’re making a difference by doing it. Also, nobody in this country is getting jobs without some connections and a whole lot of luck.

I’d like to leave some pieces of advice for those of you still at McGill. I’m still fresh enough out of la belle province to get invited to things by SSMU on Facebook and to glance at the Tribune when I’m sure nobody’s looking. But I’ve also been gone long enough to know how awesome McGill is. It’s a beautiful campus with amazing professors in

one of the most fun and lively cities in the world. So don’t rush it: follow the lead of some Tribune editors and refuse to age or graduate. If you’re finding that difficult, then put down your work for a minute. You will never in your life have trouble finding opportunities to do things that are difficult or productive. Enjoy the fact that you get to drink cheap beer on campus; that almost every single person in your social circle is within a year or two of your age; that you can finish your nap at 10 and your pre-drink past midnight and still have an awesome night. Enjoy not being too old for the student ghetto.

Those are the things that won’t be there much longer. Also, go to grad school. If you’re into that sort of thing.

HALLOWEEN

Costume how-to

Choosing your Halloween persona

By Jacqui Galbraith Contributor Halloween is fast approaching—the time of year when introverts come out of their shells, extroverts can become downright obnoxious, and costume geeks go insane. It’s our annual chance to be whoever we want, and to step into a completely different outfit, with a completely different character. Here are a few things to consider when making this tough decision.

For starters, are you dressing for practicality or for style? Don’t forget, you still have to get from your place to the venue without freezing. While dressing for warmth was a bigger concern during the bygone days of marathon trick-ortreating, frostbite can be a concern by the end of October in Montreal.

Even if your costume isn’t going to protect you from the cold, at least make sure you can fit a jacket over it. That means going as a bunch of grapes (by stapling balloons all over yourself), or a laundry basket (by cutting a hole in the bottom of a laundry basket and wearing it around your waist), is probably not the best idea.

While the slutty nurse costume may sound like a good idea at the time, real nurses wear scrubs, with pockets, because they have to carry around cell phones and wallets just like the rest of us. Guys usually have less of a problem with this than girls do, but you will have issues if you want to go as superman or one of the Vancouver green men. Just

make sure you know where you’re going to keep your essentials, such as phone, keys, ID, and money. Your accessories can have some awesome perks. For example, if you’re going as a trophy wife, you’re going to need an obnoxiously large shoulder bag, which serves the triple purpose of adding to the believability of your costume, providing a place to keep your essentials, and, in case of emergency, being used to ward off unwanted advances.

You can impersonate a celebrity, but make sure it’s not in poor taste. Steve Irwin with a stingray on his chest is simply not funny. And remember that if the celebrity you impersonate has a catch phrase or any defining mannerisms, you will most likely be called upon time after time to repeat it. For hipsters, the more obscure the reference, the better. If you have to explain it over and over, that means it’s just too brilliant for everyone else to get.

If you don’t have any costume ideas, Montreal boasts some fantastic costume hunting grounds, like Value Village on Jean Talon and Eva B’s on St. Laurent. Or there’s Joseph Ponton Costumes in Old Montreal, which is one of Montreal’s oldest, most comprehensive costume shops, if you’re willing shell out a lot of cash. Places like Giggles (no rentals) and Chapeaux de la Chaudière (rentals from $20-$65, lessening each consecutive day you rent), are more affordable.

m c g i l l t r i b u n e . c o m Features meetings Mondays @ 5:30 in Shatner 110

H

aunted McGill

By Kyla Mandel

Photos by Alexandra Allaire, Alissa Fingold, Michael Paolucci, Ryan Reisert

Once upon a midnight dreary, McGill’s campus was quite eerie. The orange leaves rustled and the autumn air was crisp; shadows danced in the blustery wind. It was Halloween and the ghosts that lurk McGill were out to play.

Where are these phantoms of the night, you ask? They can be found in many places; all it takes is a little faith and courage. The place to start hunting for McGill’s ghosts is in front of the Arts Building, where the remains of James McGill were reinterred in 1875.

Born on Oct. 6, 1744, in Glasgow, Scotland, James McGill immigrated to North America in 1766. Taking on the wilderness, McGill navigated rivers and lakes, and lived off the land in the unmapped snowy backwoods as part of the fur trade industry.

Once he became a successful merchant, he moved to Montreal.

After his death in 1813, McGill was originally buried next to his fur-trading chum, John Porteous, in the Dufferin Square Cemetery, near present-day Place du Canada.

The eradication of this cemetery in 1875 brought McGill back to the University he founded. If you’re lucky, you just might catch a glimpse of the famous founding father guarding the University wearing a tricorne hat made of beaver fur.

There have been other stories

of ghosts haunting the Arts Building itself. After passing the ghost of James McGill, take the steps up into the Arts Building to wander its echoing corridors and the recesses of its basement alcoves.

According to Peter McNally, Director of the History of Montreal project, in the 1840s the Arts Building housed the Faculty of Medicine and its cadavers. So beware, the ghosts that prowl these quarters may not be as welcoming as the shape of James McGill.

Perhaps the only detection of a ghost you’ll find is that chill that has just passed through you, or the light that appears only on some nights in the cupola atop the Arts Building.

Rumours floating around cyberspace indicate that McGill’s old Faculty of Science building may have a ghost as well. Many teachers and students have said that they often feel as if they’re being watched, and some have even claimed they saw a man in a top hat hurriedly passing through the halls; perhaps an old professor late for office hours?

If you make the trip up the

hill to the Osler Library, you can pay your respects to William Osler and his wife Lady Grace Osler, whose ashes rest in a niche of the library. Osler is one of the most renowned members of the Faculty of Medicine. He graduated from McGill in 1872 with a medical degree. In 1919, at the age of 70, he died during the Spanish influenza epidemic. Osler bestowed a large portion of his priceless collection of books and manuscripts to the University, and it is amongst his collection in the Osler Library that he wished to rest. So if you’re studying late at night in the library, you just might catch a glimpse of William Osler leafing through his old manuscripts, or examining your new science notes over your shoulder. But fear not, with his dying wish fulfilled, to rest with his wife amongst his treasures, he should be no bother to you, and is probably the friendliest ghost you’ll find on campus. Look out for his wife’s ghost too for some interesting tales; her paternal great-grandfather was the famous midnight-rider, Paul Revere.

The upper buildings of the

McGill campus, above Dr. Penfield, appear to be the most ghost-ridden of them all. After leaving the Osler Library, continue upwards to brave the Allan Memorial Institute. In the 1950s and ‘60s, the MKULTRA experiments, partially funded by the CIA, subjected patients to electroshock therapy, sensory deprivation, and lobotomies. Experiments also forced patients to listen to broadcasted messages (either from loud speakers or from under their pillows), as well as giving them experimental hallucinogenic drugs.

Any ghosts trapped in this building will be forever reminded of their tortured pasts.

Near the Allan Memorial Institute are several other potentially haunted buildings.

Their ivy covered brick and turreted facades alone reveal what can be found within. This journey is not for the faint of heart, and it is for this reason that these buildings shall remain nameless: to protect those who wish to remain unacquainted with these terrible ghosts. Janitors here refuse to clean the morgues and the other surrounding buildings, especially at night, due to the ghosts they have encountered there. What’s more, the tunnels connecting the buildings in this area are extremely old, and a wrong turn down there may bring you face to face with a spectre haunting the way.

Making your way back down the hill, proceed to the Rare Books collection on the fourth floor of McLennan library, where the University’s Lincoliana collection is kept. The eclectic collection was donated to McGill by alumnus Dr. Joseph N. Nathanson in 1986. It

consists of dozens of Lincoln busts, multiple copies of his biography in Icelandic, a lantern held by Lincoln in his 1860 campaign, and most famously, a piece of towel, stained with Lincoln’s blood, that was placed under his head after he was assassinated on April 15, 1865.

This remaining piece of cloth, no bigger than a business card, is the “Holy relic,” as Dr. Richard Virr, Head and Curator of Manuscripts of McGill’s Rare Books and Special Collections, puts it. While this may not be the resting place of Abraham Lincoln, being in the presence of an object so intimately tied to his death certainly induces goosebumps. Who knows, perhaps Lincoln visits from time to time, to sit in his chair upon which the framed cloth stands.

Finally, leaving the campus, take a stroll over to Prince Arthur Street, between Parc and Ste. Famille in the McGill ghetto for your final ghostly rendezvous.

There is a home on this street (address unknown), rumoured to be the home of a poltergeist.

According to the legend, in 1929 a series of knots started to mysteriously appear, first in the curtains, and then spreading throughout the house, anything that could be knotted, was. Years later, a separate, new tenant of the house reported the same occurrence happening one night.

Thus ends your midnight journey through McGill’s most haunted spaces. Visit one, or visit all, it is up to your discretion.

Bring a friend for company and safety, and don’t wander where you’re not welcome. Tread lightly, for you can’t ever say you weren’t warned.

12

Curiosity Delivers. www.mcgilltribune.com

Around the town

Exploring Montreal’s agricultural past this autumn A McGill student’s nostalgic quest for melons and gourds

By Noah Caldwell-Rafferty Contributor To me, autumn is not an urban season. Its characteristic elements do not translate well through a city’s lens. Yellowed leaves, pumpkins, and apple cider are organic parts of nature, and their imagery doesn’t stand up well amidst the chaos and concrete of the city; they dwindle and wilt in the smog. Having little escape from Montreal’s clutches, I set out one recent October morning to find what remnants of the city’s agriculture have survived, and to see if they could provide relief for my seasonal longings.

Trapping and fur trading dominated much of the colonial economy of eastern Canada, yet the area around Mount Royal proved to be an agricultural haven. The fertility of the St. Lawrence valley made the region one of the only arable areas in southern Quebec. In the 19th century, the area’s expanding population jeopardized the productivity of the soil. By the end of the century many speculators were convincing settlers to head north and avoid the city.

The southwestern slopes of Mount Royal were, for years, home to a diverse array of agriculture, the lifeblood of the city’s agro-economy. I headed to this region first, the area now paved over by the streets of NDG, and covered by the Westmount boutiques. I emerged from the Villa-Maria metro station at the east end of Monkland Avenue and headed west. My destination was a small community garden on Hamp-

Pumpkins at Atwater Market. (Noah Caldwell-Rafferty / McGill Tribune) ton Avenue, tucked neatly behind the local YMCA. According to my sources, it was one of several plots in the city growing the once-popular Montreal melon. Although now lost to obscurity, the Montreal melon was a prestigious part of the city’s agricultural output. Distinctive in taste, it was known to be spicy and tangy, somewhat reminiscent of nutmeg.

A hybrid of European and

American melon seeds, its uniqueness gave credence to the hype that emerged in the 19th century surrounding the small green fruit. Small farms began to send the delicacy to restaurants in New York and Boston, selling it at a higher price than steak.

But the increasingly industrial nature of Quebec agriculture made the Montreal melon mania short-lived.

Its thin rind meant it didn’t keep well when sent long distances. Small

farmers stopped growing the melon and it was almost lost to history.

In the mid ‘90s, a curious Montrealer decided to investigate the melon’s demise. He found an obscure seed bank in the American midwest which somehow had retained the strain. Within a few years the melon had made a triumphant return to the city, starting out in small farms and community gardens. The garden behind the YMCA is now

the only plot to grow the plant on the “plains” where it was originally cultivated. I couldn’t have felt more removed from that ghost of Montreal’s agricultural past as I meandered through puddles of rain on the overpass above Autoroute 720. The rain turned into a veritable tempest as I entered NDG, and I began to doubt whether any of the garden’s caretakers would be braving the weather.

Sadly, as I turned down Hampton and found the small green plot, it was deserted. Disheartened, I snuck a peak through the latticed fence at the horticulture inside.

Hoping to prolong my agrohistorical nostalgia, I headed down to Sherbrooke en route to the city’s current outlet for local produce, Atwater Market. Along the way I encountered the transformed landscape. Boutiques, 100-year-old bank buildings, and tacky Rent-A-Centres were all unavoidable symbols of the commercialism which eventually doomed the area’s farming.

Atwater’s gleaming rows of pumpkins seemed to clear the skies.

Everywhere I looked the vitality of autumn was apparent, fresh, and in the middle of the city. A kind lady at the Angel Jardine farm stand showed off the year’s crop of pumpkins with an eager look, as if to say, “After the 31st these are all useless.” But they didn’t look useless to me—rather, they stood for a regional agricultural tradition that still survives, though it has moved to the city’s fringes.

Unwittingly, amidst the throngs and freshness, I had found autumn abounding in the city, too.

odDs and ends

Failure to predict the apocalypse is nothing new A closer look at the plethora of doomsday prophecies

By Kyla Mandel Features Editor Friday, Oct. 21 came and went without so much as a hint of jubilant trumpets or rumbling heavens. Despite warnings from Harold Camping, a Californian radio-evangelist, the rapture did not come. Considering his past failed predictions, the uneventful Friday came as no surprise to many. A couple of months ago, Camping prophesized that the apocalypse would occur on May 21, 2011. This prediction garnered much media attention, and combined with the looming December 2012 doomsday, there was considerable public frenzy.

These frequent apocalyptic predictions, regardless of who they originate from and what religion

you identify with, if any, seem to provide nothing more than a source of economic revenue, be it an influx of church donations, a sudden spike in build-your-own-apocalypse-bunkers, or movies like 2012.

Rather than reacting irrationally by Googling conspiracy theories or selling all of your earthly possessions, perhaps take a step back and think about what you are actually hearing.

For centuries, humankind has considered the end of the world. In medieval times, many believed that the first crusade, coinciding with the 1000th anniversary of Christ’s death, would mark the return of Christ and with it, the end of time.

Jumping forward a thousand years, the millennium and the Y2K hype generated the same essential fears,

just in a more modern setting. With each time the world fails to end, people wipe the sweat from their brows and then carry on with their lives as normal.

Currently the most popular prediction is that given by the Mayans.

But what did their singling out of the date of Dec. 12, 2012 really mean?

National Geographic has considered a couple alternatives to the doomsday conclusion so many have prematurely latched on to. Firstly, if the Mayan calendar is cyclical, Dec. 12, 2012 is simply a renewing of time and marks the beginning of a new era. Secondly, as depicted in 2012, the idea of a slew of earthquakes, volcanoes and rogue waves as part of the continental shifts bringing about the end of the earth, is not accurate.

According to scientists, National

Geographic says that the earth has, in its past, seen considerable continental rearrangements. However, the rate at which it occurred was very slow, taking millions of years, and thus can easily go unnoticed.

Thirdly, while the Mayans were skilled astronomers, and their calendar was most probably tied to seasonal agriculture cycles, any great galactic alignment that may occur on Dec. 12, 2012 is of little worry to humanity. Alignments regularly occur during the winter solstice.

Finally, there is no foreseeable renegade planet heading earth’s way, and no potential in the near future of a solar flare large enough to light the earth up in flames.

It is probably wisest to follow the lessons history has taught us.

Mainly, that the chances of the world

coming to an end this time around are unlikely. No matter when or how the earth will end, one thing is definite: we all have people we love and aspirations we wish to see fulfilled.

So instead of turning predictions of the rapture or apocalypse into fear, turn it into motivation. Don’t just laze about wasting your day, but do something to help fulfil whatever aspirations you have. Show those you care about what they mean to you.

No one can predict the end of the world, so as the saying goes, seize the day. But, in case the apocalypse is not just around the corner, maybe you should finish your education, and make room for some fun, just to be on the safe side.

13

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Gizmos and Gadgets

The contributions of a great technological innovator Mourning the passing of Dennis Ritchie

By Iain Macdonald Production Manager Two weeks ago, one of the greatest pioneers of the 21st century technology industry passed away.

He was responsible for some of the most important technological innovations, and his work moulded the computer world into its current state.

Dennis Ritchie was one of the greatest innovators of his time.

Ritchie’s death came only one week after the passing of Steve Jobs, making it difficult not to draw comparisons between the two. Jobs was an excellent businessman, with the knowledge and power to market any device to anyone at any time. He pushed for the absolute best in every product with an Apple logo. However, none of this would have been possible without the work of Dennis Ritchie.

In the early 1970s, at AT&T Bell Labs, Ritchie and colleagues developed an operating system to improve upon Multics, a popular operating system at the time. While Multics worked well, it had many problems.

At the heart of any computer is

the central processing unit, or processor. The processor is responsible for executing instructions which make up computer programs. There are many different types of processors, each capable of very simple operations. Each different processor has a different set of instructions that it can perform. The human-readable notation that describes these instructions is called assembly language.

When a program is coded in assembly language, it will only run on the processor for which it was written, which can pose problems for those who want to run their code on multiple computers. Additionally, writing complex programs in assembly language is tedious.

The authors of Multics used assembly language for two specific computers to write their operating system. This meant that, to run Multics on a different brand of computer, the whole program had to be translated into a new assembly language—a technique known as porting. A program which does not need to be entirely rewritten to run on a different computer is said to be portable. Because Multics was written in assembly language, it was not

portable.

Ritchie and colleagues wanted to address some of the problems with Multics. One of the main issues was that it was not portable. They tackled the problem head on. In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, the team wrote the first version of Unix for the computers they had available. For this small project, they used assembly language. In the mid ‘70s, however, they realized they might want to port Unix to other architectures.

While Unix development was going, Dennis Ritchie was working on developing his own programming language, which would be almost as powerful as assembly language, but much simpler to use. Ritchie called his language “C.” Ritchie’s language could be automatically translated to assembly language for any computer, meaning that programs written in C could now be run on any computer. When Ritchie and colleagues realized that they would need to port the Unix system to other CPU architectures, they rewrote the entire system in Ritchie’s C programming language.

C soon became the most popular programming language around.

Unix also became wildly popular, and influenced many systems which dominate the market today. As Ritchie described the projects: “C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success.” And, “Unix is simple, it just takes a genius to understand its simplicity.”

There is C code running on just about every personal computer, server, or embedded computer in the world. C powers your laptop, your washing machine, and the traffic lights on your street computer. C has also influenced many popular programming languages and made software design easier and more accessible.

Unix was popular for many years before dying out. During its time, it led to one of the first operating system design standards. Just about every operating system not written by Microsoft is compliant with this standard to some degree.

Additionally, Unix influenced the Mac operating system and Linux, which powers much of the internet.

Other operating systems not directly influenced by Unix were written in C. It’s difficult to juxtapose the

Dennis Ritchie (note005.blogspot. com) roles of Dennis Ritchie and Steve Jobs in the technology industry. One effectively founded it, and the other took it and made it sexy; both are important in their own right. While Steve Jobs’ death stirred a global day of mourning, Ritchie’s was somewhat more subdued. However, when people refer to Jobs, Woz, Zuckerberg, and Gates standing on the shoulders of giants, one of the giants they’re referring to is Dennis Ritchie. In the words of this demigod, “Goodbye, world!”

ODSS AND ENDS

One of America’s first hipsters

How Jack Kerouac created what it means to be a hipster

By Kat Sieniuc Features Editor Rock n’ roll tested the ‘50s.

Hippies protested the ‘60s and ‘70s.

Similarly, the hipster subculture of recent years has been challenging the established conventions of youth, and doing so with increasing press, influence, and sartorial expression. In theory, hipsterism— through independent thinking, progressive politics and, perhaps most clichéd, an artsy appreciation of indie-rock and nouveau literature—seeks to defy the norms that constrain a homogeneous society.

Fair enough. In practice, however, being a so-called hipster typically connotes thick-rimmed spectacles, extra-large lattes, and pastel-coloured skull candy headphones relaying Cudi-esque ballads about the troubled journey to finding happiness. And thus, the counter-culture message is often muddled into just another form of teen angst.

So is it fair to credit hipsters as being really all that radical? Too many poseurs wearing overpriced vintage and non-prescription glasses have taken up the trend, undermining the intention behind the real anti-conformists, wherever they may

be. But the thing is, hipsterism actually isn’t new—and the originals definitely didn’t drink lattes.

Jack Kerouac was born in 1922, and he was America’s first hipster.

Kerouac lived and wrote in a time when the American dream still centred on commitment to strong family roles, religious faith, and trust in the country’s international ambitions.

Yet acknowledgment of the domestic struggles of the 1930s, the overseas atrocities of the 1940s, and the new hysteria of the McCarthy era had many young Americans questioning the securities of the suburban ideal—they were beat.

The dreamers of Kerouac’s era were bogged down in this sense of rootlessness: a pervasive aura of defeat that plagued much of American society, causing disillusioned youth to “pursue the star further,” as Kerouac said. His time was one when people were constantly searching for something. For freedom, for affirmation, for the freedom to affirm an alternative to the traditional American dream, which clearly wasn’t working. It is in this context that Kerouac and his Beat Generation questioned and resisted traditional white middle-class conventions through literature. They defied the pressures

of conformity, and resisted and rebelled against a mainstream society which they felt was outdated, limiting, and, quite frankly, boring.

Kerouac’s most famous novel, On the Road, was one of the first cultural mediums expressing these challenges. “They were … the sordid hipsters of America,” he wrote about Neal Cassady and Alan Ginsberg. “A new Beat Generation that I was slowly joining.” In so doing, Kerouac pioneered a controversial but influential hipsterism: in taking the first cultural shot at tradition, On the Road and other Beat literature subsequently set the trend for an unprecedented celebration of youth rebellion—of sex, drugs, and a freewheeling lifestyle—that was previously unspoken of in the ‘50s. Kerouac once declared in an interview on the Steve Allen Show that “all the stories [he] wrote were true because [he] believed in what [he] saw.” By shocking the nation with the realities of the day, Kerouac petitioned the same nation to accept his Beats as cultural trendsetters, as hipsters of a free America—not unlike the hipsters of today.

features@ mcgilltribune.com

A&E music

Chad VanGaalen takes listeners on a trip to Diaper Island Visual artist and avante-garde composer, this isn’t your average singer-songwriter

By Ryan Taylor A&E Editor We’re often told that success and happiness come from, amongst other things, being yourself. Calgary’s Chad VanGaalen has made a career of doing the exact opposite. The two-time Polaris Prizenominated multi-instrumentalist is best known for his genre-bending song-based material. That he ended up labelled a singer-songwriter is a bigger surprise to no one more than himself.

“You kind of have to trick yourself into thinking that you are what people think you are,” he says. “I was doing just as much avant-garde, weirdo noise shit—probably more— at the time when [2004’s] Infiniheart came out, and nobody really gave a shit about that stuff.”

“The bulk of my material is still 20-minute long drone pieces, and that seems way more natural as far as, like, the sound evolving and what I hear around me.”

Whether he thinks so or not, VanGaalen is a talented songwriter.

His previous three albums (Infiniheart, 2006’s Skelliconnection, 2008’s Soft Airplane) appealed to both the head and the heart, drawing as much from folk and rock as they did from glitchy electronica and avant-garde composers like John Cage.

His most recent offering, Diaper Island is still song-based, but it differs from his past releases in two ways: one, it’s the first of his albums to be recorded in his new home studio, Yoko Eno, where he also produced the latest Women record Public Strain. Two, the music is significantly more guitar-based, trading instrumental experimentation for a more focused sound. The two aren’t unrelated: VanGaalen credits Women’s technical proficiency as his inspiration to focus more on his own guitar playing, and he re-used many of the same guitar tones from the Public Strain sessions.

Diaper Island also features some of his strongest songs to date.

“Replace Me” contemplates meaning of life questions amid driving drums and guitars, and “Freedom for a Policeman” chugs along as a punk rock tune until a psychadelic-in-

VanGaalen’s latest is a decidely heavier affair than previous albums, mixing equal parts sweetness and despair. (Jeff Thorburn / killbeatmusic.com) spired breakdown halfway through.

As heavy an album as it is, both literally and figuratively, it’s the quieter, more introspective tracks that showcase VanGaalen’s depth as a songwriter. “Sara,” a touching love song for his girlfriend, succeeds solely on acoustic guitar and vocals. VanGaalen initially intended the song to remain just between the two of them, but was later convinced to put it on the record. He hasn’t yet figured out whether or not he feels strange performing such an intimate song on a nightly basis.

“It kind of goes back and forth,” he says. “I feel weird when Sara’s there. My friend Monty is singing back-up vocals with me too.

I always feel weird making people sing love songs for my girlfriend.”

Album closer “Shave My Pussy” is another example of the strength of the album’s softer songs.

As initially off-putting as its title may be, it’s as thoughtful and poignant a rumination on women and body image as you’re likely to find.

Accompanied by fragile ukulele finger-picking, the lyrics take the

perspective of a desperate woman hoping a superficial trimming will bring satisfaction to her man.

“It was sort of me being extra sensitive and feeling grumpy and depressed at the supermarket, just staring at all the weirdo advertisments and trying to put myself there as a woman,” explains VanGaalen, speaking of the glamour and gossip magazines at the cash register that inspired the song. “I’ve got two daughters now so I just feel extra sensitive towards that kind of posturing at this point. I wanted to represent it accurately and as weird as it is. It’s kind of jokey, but at the same time that’s the saddest thing about it.”

VanGaalen gets noticeably excited when the conversation shifts towards the records he is putting out on cassettes as a means of releasing just some of his enormous back catalogue, much of which wouldn’t fit on “conventional” albums. Along with two b-side albums for Diaper Island (titled Garbage Island 1 and 2 respectively), there are two drone records, two “modular beat-orient-

ed” records, and an instrumental stoner-rock record that is “the best thing [he’s] ever done.” He’s been waiting to release tapes for some time now, but had to wait until he acquired good enough equipment to put out high fidelity recordings.

“I just didn’t want to be dubbing it on, like, your dad’s cassette deck,” he says. “I get a lot of tapes that I’m really stoked about and then I listen to them and then I’m like, ‘Fuck man, it sounds like garbage.’

And that’s the thing. Tapes have this bad rap of being lo-fi … [but] you listen to Black Sabbath Paranoid on tape and it sounds as good as it does on vinyl. It should be that, right?

It’s actually [a] fairly hi-fi format if you want it to be. Now I’ve gotten the tapes to the level sonically that I wanted them to be at. I’m pretty proud of it.”

Taking into account that he’s already released an accompanying EP with each of his albums to date, not to mention an LP as his electronic alter ego Black Mold, you get the sense that VanGaalen likes to keep busy, even disregarding his output

as a visual artist. A noted illustrator and animator, he designs all of his own album artwork and has created music videos for himself and other artists like J. Mascis and Holy Fuck.

If he’s tricking himself musically by being a singer-songwriter, maybe he’s tricking himself professionally by being a musician at all.

“With visual art it’s just way more satisfying by a million times over,” he says. “I’ve been drawing since I was a kid. It’s the thing that I feel most confident at doing. I feel like I could pick up a pen and just draw something and it would satisfy my mind.”

It’s the simplicity and reliability of the medium that keeps him returning.

“My pen never refuses to turn on,” he says. “It just feels like a breath of fresh air. It’s a piece of paper and a fucking pen. There’s not much that can go wrong.”

Chad VanGaalen plays La Sala Rossa tonight, October 25. Jennifer Castle opens. Tickets are $15 at the door.

From Leonard Cohen to Arcade Fire, we’re reporting on your interests. Join us for an A&E meeting, Tuesday @ 5:30 in Shatner 110

15

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

music

A fortress to take shelter in

Jennifer Castle’s newest solo album is a soothing and rewarding listen

By Jacqui Galbraith Contributor It only takes two minutes talking to Jennifer Castle to feel completely mellow. The light, pure tone of her singing voice matches the soft, relaxed tone of her conversation, and clues you into her laid back, organic approach to music.

Evident in her newest album, Castlemusic, Castle’s take on songwriting and performing is both honest and slightly mystical at the same time, and that’s exactly the sense one gets when interviewing her. Her answers are vague at times, but not due to any desire for secrecy. She sounds very much like she knows the feeling she wants to convey, but that it’s very important to her that she conveys exactly what she feels, because it needs to be the truth.

“Sometimes [writing a song] can be a bit of a puzzle, [but] I don’t try to push a song out,” says Castle.

“The ones that were hard to write, I didn’t put on the record. I don’t really like the sound of labour.”

Castle recently signed with Calgary label Flemish Eye, which she says has been a good fit for her.

She likes Alberta and the new music and artists in the area, but she main-

tains that she’s remained true to the core of who and what she and her music are, even amidst the new environment.

She also talks about the change from performing with other bands to performing solo, reluctant to pick a favourite. This sentiment seems prevalent within her music and outlook on life; it’s fine to observe, and reflect, but there’s no need to judge anything. Things are simply the way they are, and while certainly worth writing about, quantifying or ranking them somehow devalues the whole experience. “[Performing solo, or in a group] is totally different. In one you have to ask everybody ‘How did it go for you?’ I always know how it went for me at the end of my show, but that collective experience is different. I enjoy them both at different times. They’re both challenging in their own ways.”

So, when asked which song off the new album was her favourite, of course she doesn’t have a quick, definite answer. After taking some time to collect her thoughts, she answers that “Neverride” isn’t her favourite, but that everyone involved with the record could tell it was something special, something to set the stan-

dard for the rest of the album.

“When we recorded ‘Neverride,’ which I think we did early on in our sessions, [it] felt like a little bit of a pearl to us all. ‘Neverride’ was like a little jewel that we had, to us it sounded special, so we aimed for that specialness throughout [the album].”

Other songs like “Way of the Crow” and “Powers” deliver the same easy listening experience, coupled with pervading messages of freedom and truth. However, the one notable outlier on Castlemusic is “Poor As Him,” which has a more upbeat, percussive feel.

“It definitely has a more rockabilly flavour to it. I mean, I didn’t name it that, but enough people have said that to me that I’m like, ‘Yeah, I guess it sounds kind of rockabilly.’

When it came time to record it, we were like, ‘Let’s just do it like that.’

I’ve played it fast and I’ve played it slow and I still play fast or slow, it just depends on where I’m at when I play it.”

Another unique aspect to Castle’s approach is her desire to keep her performances very under-rehearsed and spontaneous.

“It always just depends. That’s one of the indulgences of being a

Queen of the Castlemusic. (killbeatmusic.com) solo performer, is you can just play what you want. When I play my solo stuff with other people, I do like to change things right before we play just so that we’re all put into a position of having to listen to each other.

I like that spontaneity.”

Overall, Castlemusic is perfect to kick back and relax to, but you won’t be disappointed if you take the time to actively listen to the lyrics and try to find a deeper meaning.

Though Castle denies attempting to convey a distinct message with the album, that might just be its brilliance.

“To each their own,” Castle says. “Whatever happens happens when somebody listens to it.”

Jennifer Castle plays La Sala Rossa tonight, October 25th, with Chad VanGaalen. Tickets are $15 at the door.

play review

Coma Unplugged is very much alive Fraser’s play thrives on frenzied pace set by energetic cast

By Chris Liu Contributor It’s a terrible thing to watch a mind go to waste. Yet Pierre-Michel Tremblay’s Coma Unplugged makes it so infectiously fun. Talisman Theatre’s latest production is proof that when you mix a sharply written script with a cast whose energy knows no bounds, magic occurs.

The play, translated into English by Micheline Chevrier and directed by Zach Fraser, is set somewhere in a no-man’s-land between the protagonist’s apartment and his psychosis-fuelled imagination. Daniel (Eloi ArchamBaudoin) is a recent divorcee, and is therefore “coping.”

Thanks to his particular mixture of child-like hyperactivity and a pensioner’s cynicism, watching him cope is particularly uproarious.

Characters materialize and vanish from the creatively porous set just as flights of imagination do in a mind, and the audience is never really sure what, if anything, is grounded in reality. Is Marjorie (Glenda Braganza) really the antagonizing ex-wife coming over to berate Daniel, or is

she that even bigger nag, his own guilty conscience?

This is a question that Tremblay’s zany yet contemplative script only hints at answering. Much of the show is a whirlwind of one-liners and off-kilter humour, with room even for a guest-starring role by Stephen Hawking, who imparts some timely wisdom: “It’s more important to be comical than astronomical.”

It’s advice not to be taken lightly, since the script is strongest and most effective when it sticks to humour and humanity, and not during its occasional strays into socio-historical commentary. Kudos, however, to Chevrier, for the unenviable task of translating the plethora of cultural references to a non-Quebecois audience, and doing so effectively.

The script also served ArchamBaudoin particularly well. From his twitching, writhing entrance, ArchamBaudoin took to his role with electrifying animation and eclectic physicality, crafting an endearing sentiment out of a character that would have inspired mild annoyance in the hands of a less skilled actor.

As Daniel’s inner warrior Ishouad,

Chimwemwe Miller also had particularly effective moments of welltimed and well-executed physical comedy. Donovan Reiter, as machoman Roger, had the best delivery, with full-bodied articulation that didn’t step on the subtleties.

Regrettably, the play’s frenzied pace was not sustained for the entire duration, which was particularly noticeable during the scene with Daniel’s mother, Madeleine (Susan Glover). Glover’s performance was formidable, but did not rise to an energy level on par with that of the rest of the cast. On the other hand, the rapidity with which the play moved meant that not everything worked perfectly; at the performance I attended a woman was intimately introduced to a projectile prop. The first third of the script also relied heavily upon repetition for humour, to diminished effect.

The technical aspects, led by Kaileigh Krysztofiak, showcased impressive talent and creativity, especially in consideration of the intimate space available. Matthew Waddell’s sound design displayed an appropriate variety and was crucial

Sometimes it’s funny getting lost in your own mind. (Talisman Theatre) in conveying the narrative. Lyne Paquette’s set design was eclectic yet functional, and provided ample opportunities for humourous entrances and exits. David Perreault Ninacs’ lighting, although the small space didn’t lend itself well to subtlety, was both dynamic and effective.

Coma Unplugged makes the most out of its discombobulation.

The voyage through Daniel’s fracturing mind is one fraught with side-splitting laughter and deep introspection: in other words, a perfect night out.

Coma Unplugged runs until Oct. 29 at Talisman Theatre, 4750 Henri-Julien. Visit www.talismantheatre.com for more information.

16

Curiosity Delivers. www.mcgilltribune.com

Album Reviews

Could Be Good

OCTOBER 25-31

M83: Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming M83’s Anthony Gonzalez has openly admitted his obsession with 1980’s synth-pop. If he were a new wave fanboy, Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming would be his loving tribute. And although it’s labeled as a two-disc set, the album clocks in at a relatively short 73 minutes and plays nicely in one sitting. It begins with an introduction reminiscent of the opener from Van Halen’s “1984,” in which electronic keyboard is established as the fundamental musical element to be used extensively throughout the album.

Gonzalez has a flawless understanding of ‘80s vocal quirks. The intro track’s gradual buildup, combined with guest ginger Zola Jesus’ angst, show hints of U2 and there are brief glimpses of David Gilmour’s echoed vocals on the acoustic “Wait.” On “Claudia Lewis,” he evokes Peter Gabriel’s strained high notes to absolute perfection.

The album’s celestial atmosphere holds strong throughout the bulk of the material, but it probably could have been just as satisfying if it spared its brief instrumental tracks. Having these occasional interruptions reinforces the cosmic vibe of the record, but it would have functioned just as seamlessly and sounded even more focused if it were trimmed to a single disc.

Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming is a dazzling interpretation of old styles.

If M83’s influence normally rests among 18-24 year olds, imagine how clearly this type of album will resonate to those outside the university demographic.

—Nicholas Petrillo

Justice: Audio, Video, Disco Webster’s English Dictionary should go ahead and put the album art for Audio, Video, Disco beside the definition of sophomore slump.

The first album from the French electrohouse duo, †, was just about perfect in every regard. However, Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay took many of its positive aspects and threw them out the window. De Rosnay couldn’t have put it better when he explained that Audio, Video, Disco is daytime music and not as aggressive as the first album.

Unfortunately for Justice, most of their fans sleep during the day.

The album starts off strong; the first two tracks, “Horsepower” and the single “Civilization” are bangers which wouldn’t be out of place on †. However, what follows is a hodgepodge of gospel-infused, disco-house music, which is about as polished as a third grade finger painting. The sound resembles a cross between the Justice we used to know and Steve Vai. Additionally, the transitions are full stops, entirely interrupting any flow on the album.

There are a couple of tracks which succeed with the new style.

“On’n’On” features a strong bass line complemented by a subtle treble harmony, and the title track is a soothing walk through Justice’s new direction.

One redeeming factor is the inclusion of “Planisphere,” a single the band released on MySpace in 2008. It’s a welcome window into what Justice used to be: dirty bass lines perfectly contrasted with vocals and treble twangs. But Audio, Video, Disco just doesn’t do the band justice.

—Iain Macdonald

Want to catch up on the latest music?

Iced Earth: Dystopia That Iced Earth’s newest album Dystopia is nearly identical to its predecessors does not necessarily condemn it to mediocrity. The band’s leader (and sole fixture), rhythm guitarist Jon Schaffer, has been cutting songs from the same cloth for a long time, but has managed to produce a number of very enjoyable albums despite this.

Although it’s equal parts remarkable and disappointing that Dystopia, Iced Earth’s third consecutive album with a new lead singer, is interchangeable with the other two albums, there are things to be enjoyed here. To those who’ve heard them, Iced Earth presents the same familiar elements as other thrash/power metal groups: thundering double bass drums, palmmuted riffs, and an overwrought vocal delivery.

New vocalist Stu Block (formerly of Canadian group Into Eternity) gamely gives it his all, although his voice, often sounding like a mix between his two precursors’, doesn’t exactly bring anything new to the overall sound. Block at least sounds like he’s having fun; while his approach isn’t exactly nuanced, it nevertheless livens up the otherwise tepid material he’s provided with. The lyrics are rather middling; Dystopia is a concept album, and one whose subject is as self-evident as it is unoriginal.

The most dispiriting aspect of this album is that it all feels so rote; it reeks of something assembled, with each incorporated element checked off a list of metal clichés.

Even though they are executed competently, it doesn’t offset how uninspired the effort is.

—Graeme Davidson

4floors

HALLOWEEN EDITION

Thursday, October 27th, 10 p.m.

SSMU building, $8 4floors presents “The Silence of the Martlets” Halloween party, with DJs on each of the four floors, and cheap drinks to kick off your Halloween 2011 weekend. This event boasts $2 beers and $3 mixed drinks, but coat check is mandatory (though only $2). Costumes are a must, so start working on a special get-up. As usual, tickets are sold out, but you can usually find people selling their extras—at a premium—on the Facebook event page closer to the date.

Kill Halloween

Friday, October 28th, 9 p.m.

Telus Theatre, $30 A sensory overload of lights and sound, Kill Halloween has cemented its reputation as one of the craziest Halloween parties Montreal has to offer. Featuring world class DJs like Datsik, the M Machine, Funtcase, and local acts Vilify, Love Thy Brother, Dooze Jackers, and Adventure Club, Kill Halloween promises the full experience, if you can get your hands on a ticket: music, lights shows, an interactive circus, and audience interaction. This event isn’t just a concert or a club event; it’s a spectacle.

Dance in the Dark: Halloween Edition

Friday, October 28th, 11 p.m.

Society for Arts and Technology (SAT), $15

This event is presented by Neon productions, and promises DJs that will blow your mind. Featuring sets from Clement Meyer, Remain, Jordan Dare, and Mike Mind, and visuals provided by Grindspace, the night should be a non-stop dance party, with plenty of different sounds to suit any taste. For those who are seeking an alternative to Kill Halloween, Dance in the Dark is definitely not to be overlooked.

WaterCan

Saturday, October 29th, 10 p.m.

Telus Theatre, $45 WaterCan McGill presents Halloween ‘11, featuring unlimited drinks with entry. Annually proven to be one of McGill’s favourite Halloween parties, WaterCan has added more bars and hired more bartenders this year to make sure you can really drink all-you-can-drink. All proceeds from ticket sales go towards the WaterCan 2011/2012 Chapter Challenge, which helps bring clean water, improved sanitation, and hygiene education to 13 schools in Kenya. The event features sets by DJ EJ, Robot Taki, No Big Deal, and Strava.

Rocky Horror Picture Show Halloween ball

Friday, October 28th, Saturday, October 29th, Monday, October 31st Showings at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m.

The Impérial Cinéma, $17.95 advance, $12.95 for students

Write for A&E! arts@ mcgilltribune.com

Hosted by Plastik Patrik, Montreal’s annual Rocky Horror Halloween ball is back, but in a new venue. The original cult film will be played on screen, with a live cast in attendance, and plenty of audience participation. Dressing up is essential, as there will be a wild costume contest and the audience is encouraged to bring their own props as well. A word of advice to those who haven’t ever seen Rocky Horror live before: watch out for the flying toast.

—Compiled by Jacqui Galbraith

17

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

music

In concert: The Barr Brothers “Where did you all come from?” vocalist and guitar player Brad Barr rhetorically asked the audience midway through the Barr Brother’s official self-titled album release show last Tuesday at La Tulipe. He was speaking to the fact that the band had already self-released the album last year to significantly less fanfare at the cozy Divan Orange.

To understand the jump in venue size one only needs to try and pick the best part of the performance. Was it that they proved they’re a band as

adept at folk music as dirty blues?

Was it Barr’s solo on a homemade tacklebox guitar during “Lord, I Just Can’t Keep From Crying?” Was it that there was a full-on harp solo during a rock song? Maybe it was inviting openers the Low Anthem on stage for a rocking cover of Neil Young’s “Don’t Let It Bring You Down” to close the show. In reality, it was that all of this and more occurred in the span of two hours. Onwards and upwards.

—Ryan Taylor

(Sam Reynolds / McGill Tribune)

movie review

Two-dimensional plot, 3D action The Three Musketeers is a fun take on an old classic

By Lauren Pires Contributor Hollywood seems to be lacking in original ideas. If they can’t revamp an older movie and call it a prequel they turn to books for inspiration, to varying degrees of success.

The remake of Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers is one of the better efforts. It walks the fine line between cheesy and awesome, and though the schmaltz sometimes wins out, it doesn’t detract from the heroic, feel-good dynamic of the story.

It also manages to revitalize a classic tale of heroism and fighting for what is right.

The writers can be credited with sticking to the original plot. Young D’Artagnan (Logan Lerman) travels to Paris to join the now retired Musketeers: Athos (Matthew MacFadyen), Porthos (Ray Stevenson), and Aramis (Luke Evans). Together they must foil an attempt to start a war between Britain and France, ignited by the crooked Cardinal Richelieu (Christoph Waltz) by retrieving

the young Queen’s necklace from the Duke of Buckingham’s (Orlando Bloom) personal vault in the Tower of London.

The plot is rather straightforward, but its simplicity allows for a rabble-rousing hour-and-a-half of explosions, fencing duels, and flying ships to take over your imagination with little resistance. The steampunk universe is one of a corrupt cardinal ruling through a young, naïve, and love-struck king, where the villains wear black and war is fought on Da Vinci’s secret war machines. It’s reminiscent of the Sherlock Holmes remake, and that’s not a bad thing.

The film reaches a happy medium in employing 3D technology for both depth and texture, and its more classic use of simulating objects flying directly towards your face. The most striking part of this film is the mise-en-scene, and having these elaborate, gilded sets, which look like Renaissance tableaus, brought to life is fantastic. Coupled with flying cannon fodder and fire pouring out of flying ships, the 3D really works.

University of Ottawa

uOttawa

GRADUATE STUDIES OPEN HOUSE Thursday, November 3, 2011, in the University Centre LEARN MORE ABOUT: » Master’s and PhD programs » Admission criteria » Scholarships and funding Speak with representatives from our faculties and services at the information fair.

Travel subsidies of up to $85 are available for students coming to uOttawa for this event from out of town.

Please register at discoveruOttawa.ca/openhouse.

»

What’s more, Paul Haslinger’s original score is fantastic, taking the intensity of a full orchestra and fitting it to the silver screen. The battle scenes are tense and the music swells and falls at all the right places. It’s enough to carry you through the movie if you let yourself get wrapped up in it.

The movie is simply a thinly veiled coming-of-age story where love eventually conquers and virtue is rewarded, but what’s wrong with that? It’s an archetype that works, and the characters are classic heroes that are complemented by the kneeslap humour and epic battles on rooftops.

Overall, for such a light-hearted flick, it manages to successfully address one of the biggest challenges faced by movies: the translation of book to film, especially one with as much history and influence as The Three Musketeers. This movie manages to be a brand new film about a story that’s already been told, and that’s impressive considering all the disasters we’ve seen before.

Sports hockey — redmen 3, UQTR 4 (OT)

Rivals ruin Redmen’s run

McGill comeback falls short as they lose their first game of the season in OT

By Trevor Drummond Contributor

The McGill Redmen suffered their first loss of the 2011-2012 season on Friday night, falling to the UQTR Patriotes in overtime by a score of 4-3. Despite getting a point in the loss, the second-ranked Redmen were outplayed for the majority of the game and scored two goals in the final four minutes to force the extra frame.

McGill got on the board early, as rookie Guillaume Langelier-Parent knocked home a rebound just 2:53 into the game. The Redmen held the lead until the eighth minute of the second period when UQTR’s Michel Ouellet tied the game at one.

Ouellet netted his second goal of the night at 8:51 of the third and Félix Petit added another just two and a half minutes later as UQTR moved ahead 3-1. The Redmen clawed back with just over four minutes remaining, getting goals from captain Evan Vossen and sophomore defenceman Vincent Bourgeois in a span of 1:49 to force overtime. The comeback would fall short, however, as UQTR’s Félix Lefrancois beat Redmen goalie Hubert Morin with 50 seconds remaining in the extra period.

With the victory, the Patriotes improved to 5-2 on the season and moved into first place atop the OUA East Division. Despite being outshot

The Redmen dropped two consecutive overtime contests over the weekend. (Ryan Reisert / The McGill Tribune) 30-29 on the evening, UQTR played an excellent defensive game, keeping McGill to the outside of their zone, and allowing very few qual-

ity scoring chances. Though the game was back and forth in the first period, the Patriotes controlled the majority of the play and looked es-

pecially sharp after drawing even in the second.

Although they rallied late to steal a point in the losing effort,

the Redmen were far from satisfied with their performance. “We stopped moving our feet,” McGill Head Coach Kelly Nobes said after the game. “We have to put together 60 minutes against a good team like that. We made a comeback there in the third, but I didn’t think we deserved to win.”

McGill’s top line of Francis Verrault-Paul, Alex Picard-Hooper, and Andrew Wright consistently controlled the puck in the offensive zone, but failed to generate anything substantial. “We’re successful when we get the puck down low and start using each other,” Wright said, who echoed his coach’s words, adding, “We weren’t moving our feet like we normally do, and for that reason we weren’t getting open and we weren’t getting clear shots. I don’t think any team could keep up with us if we play a full 60 minutes.”

The strength of this Redmen team is their speed and forechecking, but they have yet to establish either over the course of a full contest so far this season. Their depth has been a large factor in the team’s 4-0-1 start, despite the lack of consistency. McGill dropped their second OT decision of the weekend by a score of 3-2 at Concordia’s Ed Meagher Arena but they will get a quick chance to avenge the defeat Friday, Oct. 28 when the Stingers pay a visit to McConnell Arena.

swimming ­— quebec cup II

McGill swimmers grab gold at Memorial Pool Redmen and Martlets finish first in Quebec Cup II at McGill

By Steven Lampert Sports Editor It was a great weekend for McGill’s swim teams, as both the men and women swam to first place finishes in their respective divisions at the second Quebec Cup competition of the season. This marked the first time the McGill teams have swept a conference competition in eight years.

Head Coach Peter Carpenter got even more than he had hoped for from both his men’s and women’s teams.

“I was pleasantly surprised. I know we have a very special group this year, but it wasn’t until this past Saturday that I saw how great they could really be,” Carpenter said.

“The team spirit that the team has is really overwhelming, and the atmosphere was great.”

The Redmen cleaned up the men’s division, earning 59 more

points than second place finisher Laval. Veteran Steven Biebly and rookie Marc-Andre Benoit, who each earned four gold medals in individual and relay competitions, led the team. Biebly repeated his efforts from the first Quebec Cup and was once again named male athlete of the meet.

On the other side, the women faced stiffer competition, as McGill squeaked by Laval to earn first place honours. The Martlets’ gold medals came courtesy of Sophie OverneyRagan and her impressive 50 metre fly time, as well as from their 4x50 freestyle relay team, and their 4x50 IM squad. Carpenter lauded the team effort that led the girls to victory. “On the women’s side, they won by committee. Our girls just swam amazingly as a team, and managed to win two out of three relays. That was just huge,” he said. “It was a very rewarding day.”

With the strong effort this

Sophie Overnay-Ragan won gold in the 50 metre fly. (Sam Reynolds / The McGill Tribune) weekend, five more McGill swimmers qualified to compete at the CIS championships in March. After only two conference meets, McGill has eight swimmers heading to nationals. Carpenter sees the win as a sign of good things to come.

“I knew that winning the men’s side of the meet was a good possi-

bility, but I certainly never thought that we might be able to win by 59 points,” Carpenter noted. “For the women the mountain was even higher. They needed to beat two very strong teams in UL and UdeM, and they managed to do it. I feel that the athletes have put themselves in a great situation to try and challenge

for the provincial crowns this year, but there is still a lot of work to do, and they know it.”

The men’s and women’s swim teams will both head south for exhibition meets against Yale and Brown, before heading to Sherbrooke to compete in the third Quebec Cup on Nov. 12.

19

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Soccer — martlets 1, uqtr 0

Martlets eke out win, clinch RSEQ playoff berth Morin-Boucher scores in Sunday snoozer

By Jeffrey Downey Contributor UQTR was in town this past Sunday night to battle the Martlets in a crucial game for the women’s soccer team. McGill was looking for revenge, as the Patriotes won decisively 3-0 the last time these two teams met on Sep. 30.

McGill succeeded, overcoming an uninspired effort to better the visitors by a score of 1-0. The victory can be credited to the golden boot of fourth year captain Alexandra Morin-Boucher, who potted the lone goal, her team-leading seventh of the season, in the 68th minute of play off a blistering unassisted rightfooted strike.

With only two games remain-

ing in the season and only four playoff spots up for grabs, the win was huge for the third place Martlets, who clinched an RSEQ post-season berth with the victory.

But despite the result and the guarantee of a chance for provincial hardware, there is little McGill can take from this match going forward, as the quality of play was often low and inconsistent on both sides of the ball. This was particularly prevalent from the outset, as the first 25 minutes yielded only two shots for the Martlets. This remarkably low offensive production seemed to lull the crowd of 55 that assembled at Molson Stadium. The first half concluded similarly, with extended midfield challenges and turnovers dissipating all hopes of a goal.

With the threat of a nil-nil draw looming, the Martlets started to show some urgency in their play during the second half. The pace and precision improved substantially until the prized goal was scored. It came about in a harmless fashion, as a rare UQTR offensive was stymied by a booming clearance from the Martlet back line. However, this clearance proved to be all that striker MorinBoucher would require, as she shouldered her way past her mark to claim the bouncing ball, gaining the position she needed to blast the ball past the helpless Trois-Rivières’ keeper Stephanie Rousseau. Following the goal, the Patriotes did everything they could to find an equalizer in the waning minutes of the match, but to no avail.

McGill won their second straight. (Sam Reynolds / The McGill Tribune) Despite the lack of quality scoring opportunities for the Martlets, they found a win and thus improved to 7-3-2 on the year. McGill ends its campaign with a pair of road games

on Oct. 28 and 30 against Montreal and Concordia respectively, before squaring off in the provincial semifinal scheduled for Nov. 4.

Point - CounterPoint

Should fighting be allowed in the NHL? For If someone told you that police forces should cease to exist because in a few occasions, they have arrested the wrong person, would you join a picket line in front of a police station? No, you wouldn’t, simply because you know that the police are designed to punish offences despite the small drawbacks that can occur in the process.

The same logic can be applied to fighting in hockey. The first and foremost reason that fighting came to exist in the game of professional hockey, according to Ross Bernstein in his book The Code: the Unwritten Rules of Fighting and Retaliation in the NHL, was to protect teams’ key players. Over the years, teams have employed enforcers to protect their star players from the Matt Cookes to the Tie Domis of the game. The threat of having to fight Dave Semenko kept Wayne Gretzky safe, opening up the game and allowing him to play unfettered by fear of cheap shots. Fighting in hockey is not meant to be brutal and unwarranted, but is instead synonymous with protection and solidarity.

So, if fighting is removed from the game, how are players meant to dissuade cheap shot artists from filling their star players’ heads with flying elbows? Rob Ray, a former NHL enforcer, said it would be “a big mistake” to outlaw fighting.

As the NHL continues to crack down on illegal hits, the debate over whether fighting should be banned is beginning to heat up. Two Tribune contributors weigh in on the issue...

“You need to have that fear: If I hit someone wrong, someone’s going to come after me,” he said. “Without it, you’d have far more head shots and hits from behind.” Ray isn’t the only player who believes it either, as many players, including Gretzky, have lauded the role of the enforcer on their teams.

Yet in an era when head injuries are of primary concern for both fans and players, how does fighting stack up? The main argument against fighting is that it’s a leading cause of concussions in the NHL. Well fear not, my fisticuff-enjoying friends, because last March, the league released the results of a two-year statistical study of NHL concussions.

According to the study, 44 per cent of the concussions incurred during the 2010-2011 season resulted from legal hits, 26 per cent from accidental hits, 17 per cent from illegal hits and eight per cent from fighting, with the cause of the remaining five per cent undetermined (which is probably legal speak for “Matt Cooke”). So, if you want to ban fighting because of head injuries, you’re going to have to ban legal hits and accidental hits from the game first, which is pointless.

Fighting should remain a part of the NHL. – Christopher Nardi

VS

Winner : For Fighting creates excitement for many fans and generates needed revenue for the league. It may seem barbaric and lead to injuries, but the stats show that fighting poses a lesser risk to players’ health than even regular hitting. Stars like Sidney Crosby are less likely to be targeted if the goons that injure them fear retaliation from enforcers. Until illegal hits are completely eliminated, fighting must remain a part of NHL hockey.

Against

Fighting is a controversial subject in hockey. Some see it as part of the game and believe a fight can inspire a team, but what fighting takes away from hockey seems to have a larger impact than the occasional joys it might bring.

Hockey is about using skill, technique, strategy, and determination to rise above the other team.

Without fighting, would outcomes be significantly affected? Unlikely.

Undoubtedly there is a difference between men’s and women’s hockey. Women’s games lack a physical aspect, but they are still aggressive and are more focused on the technical aspects of the game—strategy and skill. This is not to say that men’s hockey games have less skill, but for some men, fighting can become a distraction that can deter from the enjoyment of the game.

Roster spots that could go to skill players are reserved for goons who can barely skate.

In recent years the NHL has made major strides in cracking down on illegal hits. In particular, this season, Brendan Shanahan has made it clear that the league no longer tolerates illegal hits by doling out countless “Shanabans.” Supporters of fighting argue that enforcers protect star players, but in reality, the rules exist to punish offenders and these players take up roster spots that could go to skill players.

In addition, there are major in-

jury consequences of fighting; players who fight run the risk of getting hurt. Those coaches who send their enforcers out to fight are complicit in these injuries.

This issue cannot be discussed without mentioning the events of this past year. Wade Belak, Rick Rypien, and Derek Boogaard all passed away, leading many to link fighting and the enforcer role with depression and substance abuse.

As sad as these cases are, they are prime examples of what can happen to someone who assumes the enforcer role on a team. Not only does this lead to tragic outcomes for the individual and their families, but the morale of hockey also suffers.

Without fighting, it’s possible these tragedies may have never occurred.

Fighting appeals to the commercial aspect of hockey. Some fans may argue that the game is more exciting if they can expect certain players to start fighting. This has a greater impact off the ice, as it will make more people watch the game but for reasons not directly related to the actual game—the wrong reasons. If you’re looking for a fight, watch the UFC. Fans should understand there is more to hockey than just fighting.

For the benefit of the game, the NHL should ban fighting.

–Rebecca Babcock

20

Curiosity Delivers. www.mcgilltribune.com

basketball — redbird classic

Injuries plague Martlets, Redmen in exhibition tourney St. Francis-Xavier and Regina walk away with men’s and women’s crowns

By Adam Sadinsky Sports Editor Love Competition Hall may be McGill’s home court, but it didn’t feel that way this past weekend.

Hoops fans from six other schools invaded the gym to cheer on their teams in the 17th annual McGill Redbird Basketball Classic. While McGill fans were few and far between, numerous supporters of the St. Francis-Xavier X-Men showed up and left happy as the X-Men took the men’s title, defeating all three teams they played. In the women’s tournament, the Regina Rams took home the honours with a 2-1 record.

Although this was only a preseason tournament, both the Redmen and Martlets learned that they have a lot of work to do if they want to compete with Canada’s best in the regular season. The Redmen dropped all three of their games, while the Martlets salvaged only one victory over the Brock Badgers.

The Redmen were without two familiar faces throughout the tournament, which may have contributed to their poor display. Head Coach Dave D’Aveiro was on leave after being selected to work as an assistant coach for Team Canada at

The Redmen went 0-3 in the classic. (Ryan Reisert / The McGill Tribune) the Pan-Am Games in Mexico. Assistant coach John Dangelas filled in for D’Aveiro. McGill also felt the loss of Simon Bibeau, who sustained a season-ending knee injury in practice.

“We’re trying to work things out now, ever since we lost Simon for the season,” Coach Dangelas said. “We just have to continue to work to get better, watch lots of film,

and figure things out to make strides in the right direction.”

The Redmen were unhappy with their performances on Friday and Saturday night as they lost to McMaster and St F.X. by scores of 68-52 and 90-71. On Sunday afternoon, McGill played the University of Toronto Varsity Blues and put in their best performance of the weekend in a hard fought 64-59 defeat.

Second-year McGill forward Tristan Renaud-Tremblay was named to the tournament all-star team after averaging 15 points and six rebounds over the course of the weekend.

The Martlets were more successful, winning their tournament opener 64-60 over Brock. Thirdyear shooting guard Marie-Eve Martin led the way with 14 points in just 20 minutes on the court. Mar-

tin noted that the Martlets did many things right in their three games.

“Overall, I think we got better as a team, we’re all thinking positive[ly],” Martin said. “[But] we lost a big player against Regina.”

That big player was fourth-year power forward Anneth Him-Lazarenko, who, despite her injury, was named a tournament all-star. The Martlets weren’t as successful in their final two games and fell 82-74 to Regina and 55-52 to the Carleton Ravens despite a furious second half comeback. Head Coach Ryan Thorne was impressed by his team’s performance against some of the nation’s best. “We set up our preseason to play Top-10 teams, and that’s who we played,” Thorne said. “We can play with any team in the country.”

Both the Redmen and Martlets will now head south of the border to continue their exhibition schedules.

The men will face tough competition against Cincinnati, a six-seed that made it to the round of 32 in last year’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. The women travel to Ithaca, NY to face the Cornell Big Red who finished 6-22 overall in 2010-2011. Both teams open their regular season on Nov. 10 against Concordia.

SCOREBOARD TeaM (M)

W

L

Pts

St. f-x

3

0

6

toronto 2

1

4

McMaster 1

2

2

Redmen

3

0

0

(Scores since Oct. 18) REDMEN FOOTBALL Lost 18-21 @ Bishop’s REDMEN HOCKEY Lost 3-4 vs. UQTR (OT) Lost 2-3 @ Concordia (OT) REDMEN LACROSSE Won 13-2 @ Queen’s

Redbird

classic

Standings Team (W)

W L

PTS

RegiNA

2

1

4

Carleton 2

1

4

martlets 1

2

2

brock

2

2

1

REDMEN RUGBY Won 23-6 @ Concordia MARTLET RUGBY Lost 8-18 @ Concordia REDMEN SOCCER Lost 0-1 vs. Laval Won 3-1 vs. UQTR MARTLET SOCCER Won 1-0 vs. Laval Won 1-0 vs. UQTR REDMEN SWIMMING Finished 1st of 5 @ Quebec Cup II MARTLET SWIMMING Finished 1st of 5 @ Quebec Cup II