The McGill Tribune Vol. 42 Issue 14

In debating existence, expect resistance

PG. 5 PGs. 8-9

“No TERFs on our turf”: Students rally against talk platforming antitrans organization

The virtual realm can’t save us McGill at COP15: A future for biodiversity? PG. 13

Martlets basketball triumphs in tight game against UQÀM

Madison Edward-Wright Managing Editor

In the early afternoon of Jan. 10, McGill students and members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community packed into Chancellor Day Hall to protest “The Sex vs. Gender (Identity) Debate in the United Kingdom and the Divorce of LGB from T,” a talk by Robert Wintemute hosted that day by the Faculty of Law’s Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism (CHRLP). Wintemute is a trustee of the LGB Alliance, an anti-trans lobbying organization and charity in the U.K. that aims to protect the rights of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people while simultaneously treating sex solely as a binary.

Trans activist Celeste Trianon, along with members of Queer McGill and RadLaw McGill— all of whom organized the protest—filed through the entrance of Chancellor Day Hall 20 minutes before the talk was slated to begin, carrying bullhorns and banners, chanting “LGB with a T.”

What we liked this winter break

The weather outside is frightful, but as always, the Tribune has media recommendations that are nothing short of delightful. Here is a breakdown of what the Arts & Entertainment section enjoyed over winter break.

Alice in Borderland (Season 2)

Ella Buckingham, Staff Writer

The much anticipated second season of Alice in Borderland, a Japanese thriller series streaming on Netflix, truly holds its own––no small feat in the

shadow of its epic first season. Set in Borderland, an alternate reality where only a small percentage of the population is left and must play a variety of maniacal games in order to survive, the second season picks up right where the last one left off. The audience sees young gaming prodigy Arisu (Kento Yamazaki) and his friends battle their way through the trigger-happy marksman King of Spades (Ayumi Tanida), probing philosophical questions, and a prophetic nudist before the climatic last episode that will have viewers reeling. What the storyline lacks in complexity, the finale makes up for by deftly wrapping up an almost impossible number of loose strings. While a third season has not yet been confirmed, hopefully the joke’s on us and it will be coming soon.

Eliza Lee Contributor

The Martlets (1–7) faced off against the UQÀM Citadins (5–3) on Jan. 14 at McGill’s Love Competition Hall in a thrilling match-up. Though the score remained close throughout the game, the Martlets pulled ahead in the final seconds to secure a 57–55 victory—their first of the RSEQ season.

The first quarter saw a slightly rough start for the Martlets, with the Citadins scoring seven free throws and establishing an early lead. But McGill successfully incorporated three-point shots into their game strategy, racking up 18 points from six three-pointers throughout the match-up. Both teams put up solid defences, intercepting passes and recovering rebounds to gain possession of the ball. The plays intensified as the game went on, with both Martlets and Citadins fighting hard for each point to bring them closer to stealing the lead.

McGill files for judicial review against law professors’ union

Elena Lee Contributor

On Dec. 6, McGill filed for a judicial review of the Nov. 8 Tribunal administratif du travail (TAT)’s decision to certify the Association of McGill Professors of Law (AMPL) as a union. The appeal came a day before the case-law deadline to file such an objection: Applications for review must be filed within 30 days of receiving a decision.

If McGill wins its suit, the previous decision of the TAT judge will be declared in-

valid. AMPL and the university administration will be sent back to the TAT for a second round of hearings to decide whether or not to keep AMPL certified.

AMPL President Evan Fox-Decent had previously suggested that McGill might file an appeal. Fox-Decent believes that the appeal will serve as a “bargaining chip” for McGill as negotiations move forward according to schedule. According to Fox-Decent, the possibility of McGill overturning the certification is very slim due to the decisive nature of the 20-page TAT ruling.

Ella Buckingham, Kellie Erlick, Simi Ogunsola, Dana Prather, Adrienne Roy Staff Writers and Contributors

Controversial speaker event cancelled after protestors fill Chancellor Day Hall

The team approached the game with confidence, drive, and a will to win

(Maia Salhofer / The McGill Tribune)

Appeal rekindles yearlong litigation process with heavy financial burdens on both sides

“No TERFs on our turf”: Students rally against talk platforming antitrans organization

Controversial speaker event cancelled after protestors fill Chancellor Day Hall

Madison Edward-Wright Managing Editor

Continued from page 1.

Students and 2SLGBTQIA+ community members gathered around the organizers to show solidarity and joined in the chanting, quieting only to let Trianon speak.

“McGill’s Faculty of Law, by actively giving a platform to antitrans lawyer Robert Wintemute, is directly contributing to the same rollback of human rights that have been plaguing our world as of late,” Trianon said in their opening remarks. “The sheer irony in platforming him through the [CHRLP] cannot be overstated. Trans rights cannot, can never be, separated from gay or lesbian rights and they are not at odds with the rights of children or women.”

As Trianon continued, protesters cheered and jeered, interjecting by calling “shame” on the CHRLP, Robert Leckey— the Dean of the Faculty of Law— and McGill. By 1 p.m., protestors were blocking the doors to the room where Wintemute was supposed to give his talk with banners, and 20 minutes later, protest organizers announced that the talk was cancelled. Wintemute and Leckey were still inside.

Some trans activists in attendance, including Bee Bergeron, U1 Arts, were disappointed that they had to spend a Tuesday afternoon fighting for their rights rather than attending class.

“I thought university would be a welcoming space for me. I thought I would be able to just focus on my studies without worrying about [my rights],” Bergeron said in an interview with The McGill Tribune . “Ta yeule, TERF [shut up, TERF].”

Bergeron added that Wintemute should “stop trying to insert [himself] in university affairs, stop trying to legitimize bullshit. It is so unfair to trans people, especially trans women of colour because they kickstarted the whole movement and now [he is] backstabbing them.”

Trans women of colour such as Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and Miss Major GriffinGracy, were prominent figures in the gay rights movement in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s, and were some of the strongest voices at key events like the Stonewall uprising. Despite the crucial role trans women of colour have played in securing LGBTQ+ rights, 57 trans women and nonbinary folks of colour were killed in the United States in 2021 alone.

After Wintemute’s talk was cancelled, protestors took up the chants “no TERFs on our turf” and “TERFs go home.” They directed calls at supporters of Wintemute who stood outside the event space—one woman was seen sporting an “I love JK” t-shirt, referring to Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling who has repeatedly made transphobic comments on Twitter.

Police were also on the scene. Two officers entered Chancellor Day Hall as the protest reached

its peak to ensure no violence broke out. The officers did not stay for more than a few minutes, after which they remained in their patrol car outside. They were not present when protestors threw baking flour at Wintemute.

In an interview with the Tribune after their speech, Trianon denounced McGill and the CHRLP for justifying their decision to host Wintemute with arguments about preserving and pursuing academic freedom.

“Academic freedom, like freedom of speech, is not hate speech. There is a difference between pure attacks on people’s dignity and academic freedom as we know it,” Trianon said. “This is an event designed specifically to attack the trans community, there is no other way to put it [....] When you tolerate intolerance, your ability to tolerate gets stripped away, so why should we tolerate intolerance to trans people?”

The protest received support from organizations like the Concordia Student Union, Social Work Student Association (McGill), Sex and Self, Black Students’ Network McGill, Project 10, Midnight Kitchen, and many more. More than 500 individuals have also signed an open letter penned by Trianon, RadLaw McGill, and Queer McGill criticizing McGill and demanding accountability for hosting the talk.

In the days following the protest, Dean Leckey sent an email to law students claiming their actions on Tuesday “far exceeded the generous ambit of peaceful

protest.” He asked students to reflect on the consequences of their behaviour and the kind of environment created for future “guests.”

The “Sex vs. Gender (Identity) Debate” was not the first time Leckey has worked with Wintemute. In September 2013, the Montreal Gazette published a piece co-authored by the two titled, “Quebec should be as tolerant of religious diversity as it has been of sexual orientation.” Wintemute is also a McGill graduate—he earned a law degree from McGill in 1982.

The Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) addressed the undergraduate student body, and trans students in particular, on Jan. 12 in an email that denounced the CHRLP for welcoming Wintemute. Val Masny, SSMU vice-president External Affairs, reiterated SSMU’s statement in an email to the Tribune , adding that students should contact them to discuss action against transphobia at McGill.

“It’s important for me to emphasize all the work that was done by Queer McGill, the Trans Patient Union, RadLaw, as well as other groups, and students around this issue,” Masny wrote. “In a couple of days, I’ve seen a community come together and demand better from their university. The struggle is not over. The trans community at McGill has been asking the university for better services for years, and now they are also asking for accountability.”

On Jan. 16, Queer McGill

published a letter signed by the organizers of the Jan. 10 protest detailing demands they have for the CHRLP, McGill, and the Faculty of Law. The four demands are offer an official, public apology for welcoming Wintemute, host a community consultation with an audience that reflects the trans community at McGill, investigate why Wintemute was approved to speak at the university, and make donations to the Trans ID Legal Clinic. The letter concludes by warning McGill, the CHRLP, and the Faculty of Law that if a response is not received by Jan. 26, the signatories will mobilize until the demands are met.

The day Wintemute was scheduled to speak at McGill, the LGB Alliance filed an official complaint with the United Nations against Victor Madrigal-Borloz, the current UN independent expert on sexual orientation and gender identity. The complaint alleges that Madrigal-Borloz is in violation of his mandate because he supports legislation that requires the implementation of gender self-ID practices.

Students who wish to change their gender marker on Minerva can visit the Legal Information Clinic at McGill. Those wishing to report instances of discrimination can contact the SSMU University Affairs executive team or the PGSS University Affair Officer. Trans and non-binary students seeking support should contact Project 10, Queer McGill, or the Trans Patient Union.

TERF is an acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist—a term that refers to those who call themselves feminists but reject trans identities.

(Madison Edward-Wright/ The McGill Tribune )

McGill students can change their legal name on Minerva and can register their official gender marker as “X.”

(Madison Edward-Wright/ The McGill Tribune )

PGSS executives report unsustainable workload Executives struggle to find balance between work and mental health

Sabrina Nelson Contributor

Executives and commissioners working at the PostGraduate Students’ Society of McGill University (PGSS) have reported an intense workload and excessive hours. On several occasions, executives have had to work nearly double the hours required of their positions without overtime pay. Inadequate graduate funding, staff shortages, and limited time-frames for recruiting students for governance committee roles have all contributed to executives being overworked.

In a November 2022 executive report presented to the PGSS Council, PGSS Secretary-General Kristi

Kouchakji detailed that between Oct. 12 and Nov. 12, she logged a total of over 80 hours of work. She is paid to work 12 hours per week yet often works 15 to 18 hours, leaving Kouchakji feeling burnt out. She also believes that a culture of overwork has been ingrained at McGill, leading to higher expectations for those filling positions like that of Secretary General.

“Sec-Gens have leaned so hard into doing as much as they can of everything that the structural issues have gone unaddressed, and in the process, it has trained certain university committee chairs and admins to straight up expect Sec-Gens and [University Affairs Officers] to work unlimited hours, to sit on all the committees, and meet every last-minute demand thrown at them, which has made the problem worse,” Kouchakji wrote in an email to The McGill Tribune

According to Kouchakji, McGill’s overall lack of graduate funding has exacerbated labour issues at PGSS. Because many graduate students have to take on additional external employment so that they can afford to live, they have less time to sit on different PGSS committees for no pay. The responsibility for sitting on committees is thus left to PGSS executives.

“[Graduate students are] understandably more selective about how they do use any small bits of time they might have,” Kouchakji wrote. “You’re not going to take on a bunch of volunteer work for the institution that

put you in that position.”

Hossein Poorhemati, PGSS’s University Affairs Officer, also believes the lack of volunteers is putting more strain on executives. He told the Tribune that the issue is compounded because McGill gives PGSS a narrow window of time to recruit.

“We need people to represent us, but we don’t have enough students stepping up as volunteers, and we don’t have enough time to recruit. It takes us four to six weeks to process applications, yet often we receive emails from admins announcing a position that needs to be filled in two weeks,” Poorhemati said. “As a result, we have had to look around to see if any of our executives and commissioners can go and attend these meetings. That is where the problem starts.”

Poorhemati feels that earlier notices from the administration about recruiting committee representatives and additional information on what each position entails would help alleviate some of the burden faced by executives.

Overwork is also a problem at the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU). Kerry Yang, SSMU’s vice-president University Affairs, told the Tribune that executives often work overtime. Yang explained that balancing schoolwork with a full-time job is challenging and often unsustainable in the long run, especially for international students who are required to take a full course load.

“Executives work from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., but because many casual staff and students have classes during that time, we often have to schedule meetings or host events outside working hours, which can really stack up the hours,” Yang wrote in an email to the Tribune

This overwork has taken a significant toll on both the personal and academic lives of SSMU and PGSS executives. According to Kouchakji, PGSS has lost several executives due to the pressures that come with the job and their inability to keep up with coursework and research commitments.

McGill files for judicial review against law professors’ union

Appeal rekindles yearlong litigation process with heavy financial burdens on both sides

Elena Lee Contributor

Continued from page 1.

The union’s view is that the lawsuit is not directed toward AMPL in particular but serves as a warning for other faculties considering unionization.

“As far as we are concerned, [the lawsuit] is a technicality—McGill has next to no chance of success,” Fox-Decent said in an interview with The McGill Tribune. “We may be able to get the suit declared to be abusive litigation, which would compel McGill to then pay for our legal costs. We would seek to have them [cover our legal fees] only to prevent them from doing this in the future if other professors decide to organize.”

The prolonged litigation imposes a financial burden on both sides but, according to Fox-Decent, the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) and La Fédération québécoise des professeures et professeurs d’université (FQPPU) support AMPL, both financially and ideologically.

“I indicated that we would be there to support them in their legal costs and legal battle at this next stage,” CAUT

executive director David Robinson told the Tribune . “We’re hopeful that this will be a pretty quick hearing [....] I think one of the reasons why the labour board was so comprehensive was that it was trying to make its decision appeal-proof. It’s hard to see where [McGill’s] argument is really going to come into play, so it’s just an annoyance more than anything.”

Officially, McGill’s reasons for challenging AMPL’s certification have remained the same as those originally used to oppose the union, with the administration citing “vast consequences” for the university if AMPL is granted union status as a faculty-specific association.

“Given the far-reaching impacts of this decision on McGill’s operations as a whole, the [a]dministration has a duty to see this process through to the end to ensure all impacts have been thoroughly considered and that they are, where relevant, incorporated into the application of the correct legal test,” McGill media relations officer Frederique Mazerolle wrote in an email to the Tribune . “While the [u]niversity continues to seek resolution to its concerns about the TAT decision, McGill is fully committed to negotiating with the new union.”

Fox-Decent speculates that it will take about two years for the challenge to move through the TAT docket and into court. In the meantime, collective agreement negotiations have already begun.

“As abusive and unnecessary and as wasteful of student funds and donations as

the lawsuit [...] is, the truth of the matter is, McGill probably isn’t going to get in front of a court for two years,” FoxDecent said.

The second collective agreement negotiation meeting is scheduled for the third week of February.

The initial certification by the labour tribunal found that AMPL surpassed the five assessment criteria for the appropriateness of a bargaining unit. (Maia Salhofer/ The McGill Tribune )

Poorhemati explained that due to the strain their executive roles have on their mental health, some McGill health services will prioritize the appointments of SSMU and PGSS executives. (Kendall McGowan/ The McGill Tribune )

McGill introduces optional sustainability module on MyCourses

Module covers how to implement environmentally-friendly practices in everyday life

Allie Harrison Contributor

Creating a Brighter Future:

Sustainability at McGill,” an online learning module focused on sustainability, is now available to students on MyCourses, though its content is subject to change until its official launch on Jan. 26.

According to the McGill Office of Sustainability (OoS), the module takes approximately 45 minutes to complete and introduces students to strategies for living more sustainably. Those who complete the module will receive a credit on their CoCurricular Record, which acknowledges out-of-classroom learning experiences. The McGill Tribune looked into what students think about the release and the effectiveness of online learning modules in teaching about sustainability.

Developed by the OoS, Teaching and Learning Services, and the Associate Provost of Teaching & Academic Programs in Spring 2021, the new module promotes McGill’s Climate & Sustainability Strategy 2020-2025. According to the OoS, over 100 members of the McGill community, including students, participated in reviewing the MyCourses addition prior to its release. The module

is separated into three sections: What is sustainability, sustainability at McGill, and living sustainably. They include videos, interactive animations, images, articles, and questions posted on Slido, an online polling and survey platform.

Students are introduced to the fundamental aspects of sustainability and different ways of getting involved in sustainability efforts, such as through student groups, courses, and volunteer opportunities. Francois Miller, executive director of the OoS, is hopeful that the module will inspire students to engage with sustainability in their own ways.

“The purpose of the module is to be a helpful starting point for students interested in incorporating sustainability into their studies, their extracurricular activities, or their dayto-day actions,” Miller said in an interview withthe Tribune. “We hope students who complete the module will feel empowered to get involved in the larger sustainability movement happening at McGill.”

Sarah Taciani, U2 Science, is doubtful that “Creating a Brighter Future” will effectively teach students how to implement more environmentally friendly practices. She pointed to McGill’s sexual violence module, “It Takes All of Us,” as an example, and suggested that a mandatory in-person course

on sustainability would be more beneficial to get the message across.

“I thought ‘It Takes All of Us’ was long, and while I always pay attention, I have heard stories of people putting it on mute and answering questions quickly,” Taciani explained in an interview with the Tribune. “It’s effective if you want it to be effective. I believe that interactive inperson seminars may be more engaging.”

test version of the module was released on MyCourses in November 2022. (mcgill.ca)

Oban Lopez-Bassols, U2 Arts and a member of the student-run environmental club Greenpeace McGill, expressed his concern about the module’s optional status for students, especially since “It Takes All of Us” is mandatory.

“I think this module should be mandatory,” Lopez-Bassols said in an interview with the Tribune. “There are a lot of people who care about sustainability, but few willingly do a 45-minute module unless it is mandatory. It then becomes a question of why one should be mandatory and the other not, as if sustainability is not a priority at McGill.”

Lopez-Bassols is also concerned that the purpose of initiatives like “Creating a

Brighter Future” is to create a greener image for McGill so it can rank higher on university sustainability indexes rather than improving environmental practices.

“There has been some back and forth where people are pressuring McGill to divest from fossil fuels, and in the meantime, McGill is trying to highlight all of its green initiatives,” Lopez-Bassols said. “Indexes are very important, especially when comparing institutions. But they become very difficult when a somewhat arbitrary indicator is used to measure something, and the university focuses just on that, and not the actual sustainability.”

The Office of Sustainability will be hosting a Launch Party on Jan. 26 to celebrate the official release of the module.

First PGSS Council Meeting of winter semester passes motion to mobilize against Bill 96

Importance of reaching quorum at PGSS meetings also debated

Leo Larman Brown Opinion Editor

The Post-Graduate Students’ Society (PGSS) held its first Council Meeting of the winter semester on Jan. 11. At the meeting, PGSS councillors passed motions regarding the impact of Bill 96 on international students and the distribution of reusable menstrual products to graduate students. They also debated the practice of passing legislation without reaching quorum.

The first motion, brought forth by External Affairs Officer Onyeka Dike, aimed to approve a survey of PGSS members from January to March of this year regarding the impacts of Bill 96—a bill that expands the requirements for the use of French in Quebec. The motion would require that PGSS liaise with

English-speaking CEGEPs to take a formal position and push the government to make changes to the Bill, such as countering the requirement for international students to learn French within six months of arriving in the province.

“Bill 96 is one act of legislation that has some real far-reaching effects if you are an international student,” Dike said during the meeting. “International students cannot access some of the essential services, for example, if you have a dispute with your landlord that brings you to the [municipal courts], but the language of the courts is strictly French. If there has to be any translation, you have to pay for that yourself.”

The motion passed with 39 in favour, one opposed, and four abstentions.

Charlotte Aubrac, the PGSS environment commissioner, presented a motion to allocate PGSS funds to provide reusable menstrual products on campus and lower barriers to access.

“With the $10,000, we will be able to purchase around 500 reusable menstrual products that we will give away for free to PGSS members,” Aubrac said. “I

MOMENT OF THE MEETING

Onyeka Dike, External Affairs Officer, shared the personal experiences of international graduate students who were negatively affected by Bill 96 and argued that the Bill affects international students all across Canada.

SOUND BITE

“It’s still important that we have an AGM, I don’t think the fact that we lose quorum, which will affect council business, changes the significance of the AGM. Because, the way I understand—and I also study constitutional law with a PhD—I think that the AGM is almost superior to the Council.”

—Bradley Por on the importance of maintaining quorum requirements

think a lot of people will benefit from it.”

The motion passed with 42 in favour, none opposed, and one abstention.

A heated debate broke out after Bradley Por, a PGSS member from the Graduate Law Students Association (GLSA), expressed concern that allowing motions to be passed without quorum would normalize not having quorum at PGSS meetings and ultimately set an undemocratic precedent. He further explained that at the previous PGSS Annual General Meeting (AGM), the PGSS may have not met quorum because it started almost an hour late and many people left.

Kristi Kouchakji, the PGSS Secretary General, argued that not reaching quorum has been the status quo for many years and that PGSS could not function if they

needed to reach quorum because meetings typically have such low attendance.

“[Not reaching quorum has] been normalized already for the past five or six years at the AGM, and we can’t keep operating in that scenario,” Kouchakji said. “We’ve tried just about everything legal to get quorum and nothing works.”

At the end of the meeting, a variety of amendments were proposed to the Society and Activities Manual of the PGSS, mostly to clearly delineate the roles and responsibilities of PGSS representatives to ensure that they are not overworked. All the proposed amendments were adopted, including one to ensure that the University Affairs Officer has a manageable workload, especially when the committee nomination and appointment process is underway.

A

The hybrid meeting was held on Zoom and in person at Thomson House. (Maeve Reilly/ The McGill Tribune

In debating existence, expect resistance

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TPS BOARD OF DIRECTORS

On Jan. 10, McGill University’s Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism (CHRLP) planned to host a talk entitled “Sex vs. Gender (Identity) Debate In the United Kingdom and the Divorce of LGB from T.” The debate featured Robert Wintemute, a human rights professor and lawyer with ties to the LGB Alliance—a notorious anti-transgender lobbying group in the U.K.—and purported to discuss whether laws should be amended so that changing one’s legal sex is made easier. In response, student groups such as RadLaw and Queer McGill staged a protest and the event was cancelled only minutes after it began. The event and its disruption spotlighted McGill’s shameless determination to platform a hateful organization that promotes discrimination against trans people, while aiming to sow division within the queer community. The university must apologize for once again prioritizing alleged academic freedom above the rights and safety of the students they claim to serve.

The LGB Alliance claims to advocate for bisexual, lesbian, and gay causes, despite having tweeted that opposing same-sex marriage is

not homophobic. The organization is also virulently anti-trans, supporting trans conversion therapy, promoting medical misinformation about trans people, and declaring that gender identity is a “lie.” Organizations like the LGB Alliance relentlessly pit marginalized groups against each other, claiming to be a champion for queer people while simultaneously attacking trans and nonbinary folks. This is a dangerous and divisive tactic often used by those who wish to maintain the status quo of oppression.

McGill claims to be promoting academic debate by hosting Wintemute while also stating that individual events are not endorsements of specific views. In an email to law students following the event’s cancellation, Professor Robert Leckey, Dean of the Faculty of Law, suggested that protesters failed to live up to their commitment to “the exchange of ideas.” However, as highlighted by the open letter put forth by the protest’s organizers, the university’s rhetoric promotes a dangerous culture of intolerance. Such “conversations” that question trans dignity do not exist in an academic bubble of discourse. The hate group in question has exercised their political agenda by contributing to anti-trans bills and

attempting to prevent reforms to the Gender Recognition Act in the U.K. The failure to consider the wider implications of giving a voice to transphobic ideology is indicative of McGill’s failure to foster a safe campus for its trans and non-binary students.

Discourse that focuses on trans peoples’ very right to exist, aside from the egregious encouragement of discrimination and hate, moves the conversation away from the myriad ways that transgender people are disproportionately targeted. Trans people are over four times more likely to experience violent victimization than cisgender people, are significantly medically underserved in Canadian health care institutions, and are victims of hate crimes at skyrocketing levels in the country. In particular, racialized trans and non-binary individuals report more instances of sexual assault, harassment, and fear of police mistreatment.

Hate disguised as academic discourse subjects trans students to additional danger and discrimination. The very basis of the event ignores Canada’s colonial history of implementing Western legal structures seeking to delegitimize Two-Spirit identities in Indigenous communities. Anti-trans rhetoric

has far-reaching consequences that disproportionately affect racialized transgender people and their communities: 68 per cent of transgender people of colour report mistreatment at the hands of a health provider, there is a worrying lack of access to gender-affirming care for Black transgender youth, and Black transgender women are incarcerated at 10 times the rate of their cisgender counterparts. Protesters were not only defending the rights of transgender individuals, but they were also upholding the principles of active and democratic citizenship. Opposing bigotry is precisely the responsibility of community members—especially in lieu of their unabashedly unprincipled university.

It is unacceptable for McGill or any other academic institution to provide a platform for a discriminatory agenda under the guise of freedom of speech. McGill’s leaders have a responsibility to ensure a safe, respectful campus for all students, and that includes not debating the validity of students’ existences on a public stage. We must stand in solidarity with trans and nonbinary folks, especially those already at the margins, and work towards creating a community where nobody’s right to dignity and respect is up for debate.

OFF THE BOARD

Taneeshaa Pradhan Social Media Editor

Escaping into the city

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As much as I would like to pretend that I am a Romantic-era poet, lingering in vast fields and haunting pastoral landscapes, I have always been more comfortable in the city. Whether it’s the steady hum of car engines or the distant chatter of people on their daily commute, I find that being in the city and breathing in polluted air is more comforting than walking through acres of silent and mysterious grasslands.

As someone who is drawn to places where everything feels familiar, I know that this attraction to densely populated spaces filled with strangers is an anomaly. Spurred by a coming-of-age arc that featured several revelations, I could only appreciate my solitude after shedding the need to compare myself to social butterflies and embracing the reassuring presence of busy crosswalks and fluorescent lights.

After spending a lot of time with myself, I have come to realize that Thoreau wasn’t lying about the healing power of solitude— especially for a university student in an urban jungle. While I love what I study, it can be mentally draining to be in class for an entire day and interact with the sheer complexity of comments about the novel that we’re reading that week. Juggling the demands of maintaining social connections with the constant hustle of university life can make even the simplest of interactions harder.

I happened upon the key to gaining some of that lost energy back when I took the longer route home from an evening class and arrived with a sense of renewed

ease. As I struck a balance between spending time with people and recharging through routines such as walking home, it became obvious that participating in a social gathering did not have to ruin my day. Decorated by the fast-paced background of the city and its rushed inhabitants, returning to myself became a subtle exercise in slowing down and appreciating fleeting relationships like that between me and the person rushing past me on the sidewalk.

I learned to welcome the thrill of being part of a crowd without forcing myself to break the wall of anonymity that thrives in the city. The sheer amount of buildings surrounding and separating me from other city dwellers should feel lonely, but instead, I feel like my body would stop its clockwork motions if it were forced into a space where I knew the names of the people who lived above me. Armed with a newfound realization about redefining alone time, I found myself going to markets, cinemas, and malls alone, sinking into namelessness, and becoming another figure in the crowd. More importantly, though,

I learned not to feel guilty about my preference for being a peoplewatching observer and accept that—contrary to the advice of a dozen high school teachers—I do not always have to push myself outside of my comfort zone to gain a valuable experience.

I admit that this preference for quietness does not always work to my benefit. Sometimes, being alone with my thoughts can lead to all-consuming existentialist spirals rather than pleasant silences. In an effort to counter the occasional breakdown, I search for my favourite distraction, like a song played on repeat or a dance just for the sake of movement, as a source of companionship rather than a way to waste time. As much as I support the occasional desire to spend time alone as an antidote for exhaustion, I would argue that indulging in the company of some healthy escapism goes a long way. Becoming a person who doesn’t dread the idea of navigating a vast city by themselves isn’t easy. Eventually, basking in small moments of silence while walking home from the last class of the day adds up to fulfill that goal, and more.

The McGill Tribune Editorial Board

Joseph Abounohra, Kareem Abuali, Yasmine El Dukar, Ella Gomes, Sequoia Kim, Shani Laskin, Kennedy McKee-Braide, Madison McLauchlan, Michelle Siegal, Sophie Smith

Julia Buckle, Gillian Cameron, Zoe Dubin, Kellie Erlick, Julie Ferreyra, Allie Harrison, Alice Kreinin, Elena Lee, Eliza Lee, Oban Lopez-Bassols, Sabrina Nelson, Simi Ogunsola, Atticus O’Rourke, Ella Paulin, Chiara Quintela, Maeve Reilly, Dashiell Rich, Adrienne Roy, Maia Salhofer, Moumita Sarkar, Theodore Yohalem Shouse, Osman Warsi, Alex Zhou

Margo Berthier, Ella Buckingham, Melissa Carter, Adeline Fisher, Suzanna Graham, Jasjot Grewal, Charlotte Hayes, Monique Kasonga, Shani Laskin, Zoé Mineret, Harry North, Ella Paulin, Dana Prather, Maeve Reilly, Sofia Stankovic, Yash Zodgekar

CONTRIBUTORS

Theodore Yohalem Shouse Contributor

Some of you reading this title of this piece are likely having the same reaction I had upon hearing about the Montreal International Laureate Film Festival (MILF Fest): Why haven’t I heard about it before and how do I get a ticket?

It’s an independent film festival, but, alas, not for those kinds of films. The Plumber’s Station, a McGill student filmmaking club, hosted the first annual MILF Fest on Jan. 8

Widespread voter fraud at MILF Fest

at the prestigious Cabaret Lion d’Or. Some might critique The Plumber’s Station for the misleading name of the festival—to put it another way, I had to wipe my search history after buying tickets online—but true film connoisseurs appreciate the genius behind this name. Films from young creators starred in this highly exclusive event. Attendees were presented with four categories: Comedy, Horror, Drama, and Experimental. At the end, guests were invited to vote for the best film in each category and the best film overall—the MILF of the Year. All was going smoothly . . . until mysterious actors rigged the election and

the MILF of the Year award was stolen from its rightful winner.

Cultured cinephiles showed up to the event in their finest attire. Glamorous anthropology majors wearing vintage corduroy jackets sipped pomegranate martinis and discussed the Western capitalist bias of the film industry. Political science kids in turtlenecks and double-breasted overcoats staged photo shoots with their film cameras in the dusky twilight of the ballroom. Hushed conversations speculated about which films would impress and which would fall flat. But none could have possibly foreseen the bald-faced fraud that truly occurred as an illegitimate film stole the election, much like Joe Biden stole the White House in 2020.

Everyone in the crowd held their breath as the announcers began the awards ceremony, which started innocently enough. The films L’Appartement d’à Côté, The Talking Stage, Mr. Peanut, Après Aujourd’hui, and Gobbits won in the Short Film, Comedy, Horror, Drama, and Experimental categories respectively. But this is when the deep-state actors (Big MILF) enacted their vile plan to interfere in the election: MILF of the Year was awarded to Duct Tape, a 15-second experimental film shot on an iPod Touch showing a young fashion diva duct-taped to a wall repeating the phrase “Duct tape is the new cashmere.”

Outrage! The audience was too stunned to speak. The director went up to accept the award and before anyone could put an end to the charade, it was over and the ushers were shooing us out of the ballroom. This blatant

McGill’s

Harry North Staff Writer

McGill has a food problem. The provision of affordable campus food is a myth.

But this time next year, one of the main campus food sources and perhaps the epicentre of the problem, Redpath Café, will be torn down along with the McLennan and Redpath libraries to make way for McGill’s new $140 million Fiat Lux Library Project.

And aside from where we will study or what will happen to food provision in the meantime, my question is: How will McGill improve campus food options with this new library?

I occasionally venture down into the sterile underpass that is the café in Redpath library. And when I do, I buy myself a Kit Kat and a Coke (the liquid kind), which comes to about $6. Actually, as my friends may testify, I do this most days. It’s my brunch.

Why Kit Kats instead of, say, poké bowls? Or sandwiches? Or sushi? Because the price of the Kit Kat at the till doesn’t fill me with an overwhelming sense of dread.

The fact that Redpath Café, a university caféteria with as much pizzazz as a border-control waiting room, charges similar prices as nearby restaurants is ridiculous.

Sésame, a nearby Montreal poké chain, offers a mini-salmon poké bowl for $9.50, which is basically what you get with Redpath’s salmon poké bowl. Except, Sésame’s after tax and tip will

still be on the right side of $16, and Redpath’s won’t. And Sésame’s isn’t bland to the point of being totally regrettable, like Redpath’s.

Or take the sandwiches. I think we can all agree that Super Sandwich’s taste better, yet Redpath’s are still more expensive.

The other campus food options don’t solve the problems, either. Dispatch Café and Gerts, both as a café and a bar, are also overpriced. And lest I remind everyone, Gerts is student-run by the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU).

The problem of price goes hand in hand with quality, and Redpath Café hasn’t found the salt.

Let’s imagine if Redpath Café was a highquality restaurant, “The Grill at Redpath,” if you will. On the menu, beef burgers from Canada’s finest, grass-fed cattle, and vegan burgers that are so good you don’t have to pretend to enjoy them. Maybe—just maybe, I’d think about forking out 16 bucks on lunch. That is, if I didn’t want a Kit Kat.

Unfortunately, this isn’t “The Grill at Redpath,” and we’re not a bunch of bankers looking for an extravagant midday blowout, despite the Desautels kids’ better judgment. We’re students that need a bit of grub in between classes, and McGill’s provision of accessible, affordable food on campus is inadequate. Period.

The new library offers an opportunity to address this. But from the details given so far, I’m skeptical that they will.

Reading through the project proposal online, I couldn’t find a single mention of food, drinks, or cafés. In the most recent feedback from the

97-page 2019 Lib Qual survey, which uses student feedback to analyze the libraries, there’s no mention of food services either. And, to my knowledge, in terms of reaching out to students to find out their needs for a campus café, there’s been zilch.

This is despite recent calls for more affordable campus food, previous surveys conducted by SSMU, and the highest food inflation in Canada since 1981.

Of course, improving the provision of affordable campus food is no easy feat. And even with improvements, students will no doubt still

display of anti-democratic chicanery, this violent coup d’état, this vile plot to strip the MILF of the Year award from the true best film (Gobbits, in my opinion) hearkens back to that time when Beijing Biden and his crew of coastal elite Democrats committed massive voter fraud to take the presidency from Donald Trump.

Gobbits was a fan-favourite to win MILF of the Year. This ingenious film delved into the void that is the human psyche and examined the meaning of life. In five short scenes, it presented the exploits of surrealist creatures faced with the absurdity of existence: Being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space. The animation was seamless, the music moody, and the execution immaculate—a gem. The crowd went wild as Gobbits was presented with Best Experimental Film, and the 10-minute standing ovation had to be cut short by the event coordinators, who were probably already busy stuffing the ballot boxes so their candidate could run away with the election. In the last minutes before the results were announced, massive dumps of fraudulent votes were recorded (mostly coming from the sociology and GSFS majors, if you catch my drift) and Duct Tape snatched the win from Gobbits Duct Tape didn’t even win a category, so how could it have won the whole festival? Riddle me that, liberals.

All in all, the festival was pretty fun. To all the aspiring filmmakers out there, this festival is your chance to shine. I’m considering participating, too. I just have to think up the perfect MILF (movie I’d like to film).

complain—I’m afraid that’s just what we’re like.

But, make no mistake, when this new library opens in 2027, it won’t matter how many new computers, fancy chairs, or great big glass walls there are—if students can’t find a decent bite to eat, the complaints will pile up and pile high.

Providing affordable food on campus is too important to be forgotten about. It must be prioritized.

And it starts with asking students two questions. What do you want on the menu? And how much are you willing to pay?

Food inflation in Canada increased to 10.3 per cent year over year in November 2022. (Osman Warsi / The McGill Tribune).

The Plumber’s Station at McGill operates under the Engineering Undergraduate Society. (The Plumber’s Station)

new library must provide students with better, more affordable food

Logan Paul’s genius strategies to make you rich!

Paul’s NFT project CryptoZoo set to make millions after Youtuber posts tell-all video

Suzanna Graham Staff Writer

Logan Paul is not the scam king that the media has falsely painted him to be. as I, for one, am an avid supporter of Logan and have personally spent thousands of dollars on NFTs, which I don’t regret at all and am completely unbiased about.

Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are the genius business of investing in unique digital images that accumulate astronomical value. Understanding NFTs to be the goldmine that they clearly are, Logan dipped his toe into the industry byworld, purchasing one NFT for a whopping $623,000 USD, according to a screenshot of his Snapchat story. Unfortunately for him, the NFT’s worth plummeted to $10—only because there obviously wasn’t the right leader in advertising the true worth of NFTs. Please welcome to the stage that leader: Logan Paul himself,, the perfect champion for NFTs.

As a non-problematic YouTuber, superstar musician, and intimidating boxer, Logan Paul is the ideal face for this new wave of NFT gaming. Taking inspiration from his love of Pokémon cards—the NFTs of the 90s and early 2000s—Logan devised a game that would maintain the joy of Pokémon’s super cool mythical animals and also be an accessible way to introduce the masses to cryptocurrency. He announced this pet project, CryptoZoo, in 2021 on his hilarious podcast, IMPAULSIVE (isn’t he

CryptoZoo, inspired by Pokémon cards, creates NFTs out of charming hybrid animals that you too can hatch and breed! (cointribune.com)

clever?). The game was simple: Use real American dollars to purchase “eggs” on the blockchain, which will “hatch” into common animals you can find on Earth. But where are the hybrid animals I was promised, you ask? Roleplaying as God, you have the power to breed your animals together to create crossbred animals (handmade unique NFT art) whichwho accumulate Zoo tokens the longer you hold them. Think of it like a business pyramid—the most sturdy and successful shape.

Like all the other listeners, I was immediately sold on CryptoZoo and couldn’t wait to invest. Logan Paul

has never steered me wrong before, so why would he now? He alleged on IMPAULSIVE to have invested $1 million USD and over seven months of his valuable time and energy into this project. CryptoZoo was going to be a massive hit. Before launch day, CryptoZoo had sold $2.5 million in eggs. But then—sabotage.

Logan Paul’sHis own development team scammed him, stole hisLogan Paul’s hard-earned code, and escaped to Switzerland! They held the code hostage for $1 million and claimed to be “underpaid” when CryptoZoo hadwas yet to be launched. As business mogul Kim Kardashian once said, “Get your fucking

ass up and work. It seems like nobody wants to work these days.” Everyone knows that trainees should be paid lower wages during the trial stage of their employment!

Cut to December 2022. President Biden calls for unity, deadly storms attack the east coast, and, unbeknownst to us Logan Paul stans, the best present is about to be dropped:. A scandal. No, not the false rumour that Logan Paul abandoned his pig, Pearl (she was lovingly rehomed). But a trio of tell-all videos posted on YouTuber CoffeeZilla’s popular channel was aboutset to change everything. CoffeeZilla set out to “uncover the truth” about CryptoZoo, making wild and unfounded claims that Logan Paul hired professional scam artists and criminals to develop this game to simply make himself money. While the “scam artist” allegation was true, they also scammed Paul out of $7.7 million dollars. So really, CoffeeZilla, Logan Paul is the real victim.

Amidst the “scandal,” the Zoo token value jumped 1000 per cent in two weeks, proving that Logan Paul’s popularity is the key to a good investment. CryptoZoo investors who know what they’re doing are biding their time, knowing that their returns will be tenfold in the near future. As Logan said, CryptoZoo is coming. Who is CoffeeZilla to decide when the development timeline ends? Only Logan can decides that. So, while scumbags like CoffeeZilla make their money off of “investigative journalism,” CryptoZoo will be passively making its investors rich—at some point!

‘NO THANK YOU’ poignantly hits back at the music industry

Simz’s latest album explores mistreatment at the hands of music executives

Yash Zodgekar Staff Writer

Something felt off amidst the accolades lavished upon Little Simz following her 2021 Mercury Prizewinning record Sometimes I Might Be Introvert Be it by awarding her Best New Artist at the Brit Awards in 2022, despite having just released her fourth album in a decade-plus career, or through the postponement of her North American tour due to the financial strain of being an independent artist, the music industry has repeatedly defined Little Simz’s worth in commercial terms, rather than in terms of her artistry.

//NO THANK YOU/ sees Simz reflect on her complex relationship with an industry that too often treats Black artists as commercial tools. Its surprise release and minimal promotion subverts listeners’ expectations of what a follow-up to an artist’s most successful album can look like. Lyrically, Simz is introspective in her verses, lamenting the emotional toll of dealing with industry figures who prioritize paychecks and “sending their kids to private school” over her mental health, visible in the standout track “Angel.” Simz is direct in her approach, expressing frustration at herself for participating in the industry despite knowing she would lose agency: ‘What did I expect from those living the corporate life?’

Sonically, NO THANK YOU is more pared back than its predecessor, but Simz and collaborators Inflo, of Sault fame, and Cleo Sol maintain a strict precision to their work, with bursts of richness carefully chosen to amplify

Simz’s most confessional moments. On “No Merci,” spurts of telephone rings form a call and response with tense orchestral strings before Simz’s frustration gives way to lush, liquid synths, as Cleo Sol’s backing vocals repeat the mantra ‘you can’t be their saviour.’ Meanwhile, “Gorilla” revisits some of the raucousness of Introvert with an anthemic horn section trading fours with low-strung bass and a dragging drum groove.

Simz sustains a coolness in her demeanour, acknowledging the grim humour of her position as an independent artist by cracking jokes— for example, mocking the powerful and influential as ‘art collectors, silent investors, and film directors.’ Ultimately, her candour and wryness corroborate the merits of Simz’s approach; NO THANK YOU is a testament to the artistic value of Little Simz making music on her own terms.

(loudandquiet.com)

Little

NO THANK YOU sees Little Simz reunite with producer Inflo and vocalist Cleo Sol.

here do you go when you need help? When there are those moments in the semester too overwhelming to handle, to process, to sit still? When assignments pile up and you’re wading through homesickness, isolation, or low self-esteem? What if you’ve been struggling with your mental health? I don’t ask these questions to scare you away. I ask them because when we talk about mental health, we’re often not talking about the solutions, the compromises we make to ourselves, or the parts of ourselves that require gentleness and care.

Nearly fifty-seven per cent of McGill students who identify as disabled report having a mental health disorder. Late-night McLennan sessions are the norm, and the Wellness Hub’s record-long wait times persist. The mental health crisis at McGill is severe and growing.

Founded in 2019, McGill’s Student Wellness Hub aims to provide students with free access to counsellors, nurses, doctors, psychologists, and other health care practitioners. However, the Wellness Hub has been continually plagued by staff shortages and long wait times that have left it unequipped to deal with students’ demands for mental health services. Manystaff move between volunteering for the students and working for the province’s health care system. When Quebec is unprepared to care for mental illness, on top of ingrained medical racism and sexism rampant in the health care system, the people who require treatment the most just have to wait, unserved and unseen.

In the wake of the Wellness Hub’s shortcomings and COVID-19 lockdowns that redirected the labour of medical workers, many students have turned to a more accessible alternative: Online therapy. With a plethora of apps from BetterHelp to Calmerry to Talkspace that offer mental health support at your fingertips, it is easy to understand why students are opting for these digital services.

THE VIRTUAL REALM CAN’T SAVE US

An investigation into the rise of online therapy

Online therapy comes in a variety of forms, mainly asynchronous text therapy and synchronous talk therapy via phone or video call. Since the start of the pandemic, therapists have been increasingly offering telehealth to their patients to reduce health risks. Therapy and self-help apps have become increasingly popular for many stakeholders—those seeking care, therapists in need of work, and corporations or institutions with employees or students demanding greater access to health care. The global mental health apps market size was valued at $5.6 billion CAD in 2021 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 16.5 per cent from 2022 to 2030.

by Abby McCormick, Student Life Editor

Released in 2015, Maple, one of the Student Wellness Hub’s partners, aims to connect its users to a licensed physician within minutes. Users are prompted to enter their symptoms and they are then paired with a physician with whom they can chat via text or video call, and receive a diagnosis or prescription. This platform makes it easier for students to receive a diagnosis, which are often difficult to acquire, especially if an in-person visit to the Hub is not possible.

WApps like BetterHelp match users with a therapist based on their profiles and offer live video call sessions. In these meetings, they often incorporate techniques used in in-person sessions, such as cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), which focuses on recognizing and reframing one’s unhealthy thinking patterns, and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), which prompts one to embrace their thoughts and feelings instead of feeling guilty about them. In implementing these changes, the return to in-person post-pandemic may be seamless or potentially unneeded. Other platforms, like Brightside, offer asynchronous text therapy options, where users can text the licensed counsellor that they are matched with when they are struggling. While users may find challenges in communicating their needs through writing, the time it takes to text may allow them to clarify their thoughts and better express their needs. Clients have space beyond a weekly one-hour limit to share their struggles, which might facilitate more effective treatment.

This trend has travelled to the campus. Colleges and universities across North America have taken advantage of online mental health treatment by providing students with free access to therapy apps. For instance, as part of their pledge to achieve diversity, equity, and inclusion in education, the University of Kentucky began a partnership with Talkspace this year to offer its 30,437 students free counselling services.

These apps also specifically target big clients like corporate workplaces and higher education institutions, marketing themselves as the key to higher employee productivity. But this raises the question of whether companies might rely on virtual mental health services instead of creating proper, non-exploitative working conditions.

At McGill, the Student Wellness Hub provides students with access to Therapy Assisted Online (TAO), a self-directed platform that combines educational materials for mental health and professional development. The service is available to anyone but especially targets higher education, employers, and health care organizations.

One of the Hub’s other partners, keep.meSAFE, provides 24/7 access to professional counsellors whom students can contact via phone or chat. The platform has also partnered with other Canadian universities including the University of Toronto, Toronto Metropolitan University, and the University of Guelph.

Both the Wellness Hub and keep.meSAFE, however, only offer multi-session support with an assigned counsellor in the short term. Self-guided platforms like TAO are best used as mere complementary efforts to talk therapy, which experts recommend as a first-line treatment for intense cases of mental illness. And you can’t forget the potential for these services to contribute to the underfunding and privatizing of health care and take the pressure off the federal and provincial governments to provide comprehensive mental health care for all.

As a result, students who require more personalized long-term treatment, but are deterred by high expenses, insurance concerns, or the difficulty of finding the right therapist, may turn to therapy apps that advertise themselves as the solution to all barriers to access. BetterHelp’s stated mission is: “Making professional therapy accessible, affordable, and convenient—so anyone who struggles with life’s challenges can get help, anytime and anywhere.”

This was the case for Jordan*, who experienced an “all-time low” shortly after beginning their studies at McGill. Jordan’s feelings of isolation and academic stress initially led them to seek help at the Wellness Hub.

“I was told that they had an opening in two months, but I was like ‘What do you mean? I’m in a crisis situation right now. I need someone right now,’” Jordan said in an interview with The McGill Tribune

After being deterred by these lengthy wait times, Jordan turned to BetterHelp as a means of finding a therapist. They purchased their monthly plan for $340 per month, which granted them access to a phone call once per week with a licensed counsellor.

“I gained a lot from it,” Jordan said of their Better Help experience. “It was nice to talk to someone

who would listen to me and agree with everything I said, but push me.”

Martin Drapeau, a clinical psychologist and professor of educational and clinical psychology and psychiatry at McGill, sees online therapy as one of the positives to have come out of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It’s become a ‘mainstream’ practice that continues to be used at rates that are significantly higher than pre-pandemic,” Drapeau wrote in an email to the Tribune. “It is simply more convenient for most people, clinicians included, [and] now that it has become mainstream, clinicians are getting better and better at delivering online therapy.”

Nate Fuks, director of the Virginia I. Douglas Centre for Clinical Psychology and assistant professor of clinical psychology at McGill, cites fewer financial barriers as a key advantage to telehealth and therapy apps.

“Some online mental health platforms make therapy more accessible financially, which is an important consideration for students—students have limited financial resources and therapy can be really expensive these days,” Fuks wrote in an email to the Tribune

Jordan’s experience with BetterHealth did not, however, meet their expectations when it came to financial accessibility.

“At the end of the day, it’s still a business. It’s not cheap and it’s not accessible to everyone, which is kind of what was advertised,” Jordan said.

Since the platform was not financially sustainable over time, Jordan opted to stop using the platform once their mental health crisis subsided.

Though online therapy may be effective for some patients, Drapeau highlights that, for those suffering from certain mental health disorders, in-person treatment is preferred.

“[Online therapy is] not recommended […] for anxiety disorders that require exposure, [like] social anxiety and phobias,” Drapeau wrote. “It is also not recommended for children, individuals who have ADHD, [or those who] have a possibility of suicidal ideation, although adjustments can be made.”

Fuks points out that face-to-face interactions are often key to cultivating a safe space for people to open up about their mental health struggles.

“In person, therapy usually happens in the therapist’s office, which often becomes a space psychologically associated with safety and security—necessary variables to make the therapy work,” Fuks added. “A lot of clients, as well as practitioners, find establishing a good working therapeutic alliance easier in person than online.”

For students living in communal settings, in particular, Fuks explains that difficulty in finding a private space for virtual therapy sessions can be a barrier to making the most of mental health care.

“Sometimes it is challenging for clients to find a private soundproof space where they can speak freely, without the fear of being overheard by their roommates or family members,” Fuks said. “This negatively impacts clients’ ability to feel safe to speak freely about any subject in their lives, which is central to productive work in therapy.”

Despite advertising themselves as a universalizing service, therapy apps exclude those who do not have access to a private space, a stable internet connection, and a laptop or phone.

Many have also critiqued therapy apps’ lack of guaranteed protection for their users’ personal health data. A 2020 investigation from Jezebel found that BetterHelp information was being shared with Facebook, including metadata of messages between patients and therapists.

Limited in the number and diversity of its own counsellors, McGill’s Wellness Hub relies on outsourcing students to their virtual telehealth partners—Maple, keep.meSAFE, and TAO—when they cannot meet the needs of different student communities. The Hub website, for instance, directs students seeking a Black or Indigenous counsellor or a counsellor of colour to keep.meSAFE.

Minority groups, including racialized, disabled, low-income, and 2SLGBTQIA+ students, already disproportionately face structural barriers to receiving mental health care. McGill should not be able to offload the responsibility of providing care specific to the trauma and mental health experiences of such students through telehealth partnerships. McGill should, instead, focus on providing specific and comprehensive care in any commitment to combating anti-Black racism and redressing settler colonialism.

For Jordan, reaching out for help was a struggle in itself against the heavy stigmatization of therapy.

“More so in the Black community, people don’t really do therapy. I really had to push for it with my family,” Jordan explained. “I do recommend it, but there are still these cultural barriers.”

The Hub remains an important stakeholder in improving mental health on campus. Dr. Vera Morono, Director of the Student Wellness Hub, cites greater flexibility as a key reason for the Hub’s continued use of online care.

“Virtual therapy offers a flexibility that increases accessibility for many users by allowing for shorter appointments, reducing physical barriers, more adaptable schedules, etc.,” Morono wrote in an email to the Tribune. “That flexibility is further enhanced with supplementary apps and services like keep.meSAFE, which offer expanded and vetted care options such as 24/7 support, care providers in multiple languages, self-guided care, and more.”

The long-term effects of shifting therapy into the virtual realm are still unclear. As virtual services are integrated into university infrastructures, it is important to remember that third-party apps and services are fundamentally businesses seeking to profit off of students’ demands for mental health resources. They are not accessible or effective models of care for everyone and should not be the be-all and end-all solution to McGill’s mental health crisis.

these are followed, online therapy is perfectly safe,” he explained.

While Jordan benefitted from BetterHelp, they echo Drapeau and Fuks’ preference for in-person therapy—an experience that they had prior to moving to Montreal.

“In person, you can’t really hide behind the screen,” Jordan told the Tribune. “It pushes people to share more quickly, [whereas] online really de pends more on your willingness to share.”

While online therapy apps do increase access to therapy in many ways, more investment must be directed toward the root causes of the rise of mental health problems on campus: McGill’s hustle culture, rising tuition costs, food insecurity, and an ableist post-pandemic climate, among others. We shouldn’t just digitize what we should transform.

* Jordan’s name has been changed to preserve their anonymity.

Design by Shireen Aamir, Design Editor

Alice Kreinin Contributor

Anyone who has ever taken a creative writing class is likely familiar with the lipogram: A piece of writing that entirely omits one or more letters. A poem without es or a vignette with no as, it forces the writer to experiment and to think outside of the box, as. It’s an exercise in creative restraint. Episodic chronology is the screenwriter’s letter e. Take away the function of an episode, or distort a poet’s alphabet, and you can expect the making of something you’ve never seen before. The new Netflix original Kaleidoscope aims to do just that.

Released on Jan. 1, Kaleidoscope is an eight-episode heist story spanning the 25 years leading up to the theft of $70 billion dollars and its aftermath. The appeal of the show is that the episodes can be watched in any order. Netflix randomizes the episodes for each viewer, who are dropped into the story unfettered by chronology. As a concept, Kaleidoscope is exciting and promises a new way of consuming stories. But when it comes to the viewing experience, very little is gained from the scrambled viewing order.

As streaming platforms compete to provide the largest quantity of content possible, quality inevitably takes its leave. Showrunners are now challenged to have their projects stand out amid anthis ocean of mediocrity. In turn, viewers have seen a recent rise in experimental television that bends the structure of a show to the viewer’s whim. Black Mirror’s choose-your-own-adventure style special, Bandersnatch, premiered was released on Netflix in 2018 and allowed viewers to alter an episode’s outcomethe outcome of the episode by directly interacting with the plot. Bandersnatch found relative success and certainly tested the boundaries of what television is capable of being. Similarly, Kaleidoscope pushes the envelope of narrative structure, specifically with the help of Netflix, which has been facilitating these new ways of consuming

stories.

Overall, Kaleidoscope is not a bad show. It’s marginally entertaining, with solid performances from the cast and a snappy script. But I was disillusioned with the show’s experimentalism upon realizing that its only remarkable quality is the mixedup timeline. To accommodate the lack of intentional episode order, the writers limit themselves significantly. Heist stories typically promise intricate, highpressure plots, which are mostly relinquished in Kaleidoscope, since each episode needs to wrap up very neatly to avoid confusing the viewer. Character arcs become disjointed as their progression cannot rely on the show’s timeline. In terms of storytelling, these aspects of the show would have been strengthenedmade stronger with a traditional narrative structure. The fatal flaw, however, is that the intrigue of the format falls away almost immediately. I sincerely doubt that any viewer spends all eight episodes musing on how cool it is that they are watching it in a different order than someone else. All this begs the question of why the show even needed to be formatted this way.

The show’s preview, a 52-second opening clip explaining the concept and previewing the season, answers this almost instantly. The clip boasts the ‘‘epicness”’ of the show in a melodramatic tone that is inconsistent with what Kaleidoscope actually delivers. If the creators intended the preview to build anticipationexcitement, its effect is something more akin to a light-up applause sign. Right

from the start,

to be, so it’s no wonder that the story itself falls into the shadows of Netflix’s marketing. Such a transparently desperate prelude, urging the viewer to appreciate the ultimately inconsequential format of the show, reveals an overreliance on gimmicks as a marketing tactic.

The creators of Kaleidoscope sacrifice good storytelling to create a shiny, money-grabbing, trinket. They place too much emphasis on a concept that doesn’t hold up over the course of the show, becoming entirely inconsequential as the plot plays out. It’s cool, like a poem without e is cool. But what is cool forin the face of a show that is otherwise indiscernible from the mediocrity that already fills Netflix’s catalogue?

from page 1.

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

Dana Prather, Staff Writer

In the follow-up to 2019’s smash-hit Knives Out, the “world’s greatest detective” Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) returns to take part in another star-studded whodunit. Set a few months into the COVID-19 pandemic, Blanc finds himself frustrated and listless without a mystery to solve when he’s unexpectedly invited to a weekendlong murder mystery party on a private island by eccentric tech billionaire Miles Bron (a hilariously douchey Edward Norton).When a shocking reallife murder occurs, Blanc’s powers of deduction are put to the test. A stellar ensemble cast—Kate Hudson is a standout as vapid former model Birdie Jay—form Bron’s inner circle, serving as perfect targets for the film’s satirical jabs at America’s wealthy elite. Complete with stunning Greek island vistas and heart-warming, posthumous cameos from the likes of Stephen Sondheim and Angela Lansbury, Glass Onion is a fun-filled mystery that’s not to be missed.

Ginny & Georgia (Season 2)

Simi Ogunsola, Contributor Peaaaaach, they’re backkkkk! For all the fans who stuck it out through the painful attempts at portraying Gen-Z, endless Ginny vs. Marcus blank staring contests, and complete destruction of the word “peach,” you’ll be pleased to know that season 2 of our beloved Ginny & Georgia is out

now on Netflix! All of your favourite players— Cynthia (Sabrina Grdevich), Nick (Daniel Beirne), and I’ve-loved-you-since-I-was-15-Joe (Raymond Ablack)—are back to take you on an emotional rollercoaster unlike anything seen in season one. Viewers journey with Ginny as she grapples with the truth of her mother being a murderer. Ginny and audiences alike go back and forth between shock, anger, a desperation to understand, and maybe a reluctant relatability as they are forced to decide: Can good people do bad things? But don’t worry— whenever things are getting too serious, Max (Sara Waisglass) is back with a cringey line that makes you say, that’s enough internet for today. Head back to sweet, old Wellsbury for the second installment of “we’re-definitely-not-the-Gilmore-girls!”, with a side of intense reckoning with the fact that your superhero is human too.

“Anna

Akhmatova: Selected Poems”

(Translated by D.M. Thomas)

Kellie Elrick, Contributor

My family sold my grandma’s house this past summer, and while moving everything out, we found no fewer than three copies of Anna Akhmatova: Selected Poems. Akhmatova’s poetry travels through the 20th century, from Imperial to Soviet Russia. My grandma read it during and after the Cold War. Today, it resonates more than ever: Cities move like people; colours laugh; the dead are the ones who smile. Akhmatova notably chose to stay in Russia during and after the Revolution, writing against the backdrop of friends and family being imprisoned, exiled, and executed by the Stalinist Regime. At times, time itself seems to freeze and the landscape of the poem is frozen over for a few stanzas, before melting

again when Akhmatova transports the reader to the past. The reader bears witness to suffering in more solemn, common situations rather than big historical moments in newspapers: Through stories of women standing in prison queues in Leningrad during the Great Terror, tears melting ice, or a blue sky smeared with blood. But maybe these are big moments—maybe they would be lost without someone to write them down. I can see now why one copy wasn’t enough.

SZA: SOS

Adrienne Roy, Contributor

Following her breakthrough debut album CTRL in 2017, SZA’s fans have been—not so patiently— awaiting her next record. Finally, on Dec. 9, 2022, the R&B singer released SOS, the second chapter

of a story that tackles the intricacies of modern love—a diverse but wonderfully cohesive ode to her exes. A 23-track break-up album risks sounding redundant, but SZA’s sublime vocals and jarring yet vulnerable lyrics are her signature and help this record stand out. For these reasons, “Kill Bill,” inspired by Quentin Tarantino’s 2003 movie of the same name and “Low,” a subdued but hightempo hit about keeping past relationships “on the lowski,” are clear highlights. Softer hits like “Nobody Gets Me” and “Ghost in the Machine (featuring Phoebe Bridgers)” testify to her willingness to venture outside her genre—possibly redefining it altogether. SZA proved that good things come to those who wait, as SOS is far from a cry for help: It’s a masterpiece.

Netflix eagerly overcompensates for a lack of substance. The non-chronological concept of Kaleidoscope was pitched by creator Eric Garcia before the heist plot even came

Ella Buckingham, Kellie Erlick, Simi Ogunsola, Dana Prather, & Adrienne Roy Continued

SZA, and Netflix, and poetry, oh my!

‘Kaleidoscope’ is Netflix’s shiny, new toy Is a gimmick enough to make a show stand out?

What we liked this winter break

Stephen King has praised Kaleidoscope, suggesting that viewers watch it chronologically. (tvinsider.com)

Netflix made 69 new film and television titles available on Jan. 1, 2023. (Julia Buckle/ The McGill Tribune )

Resolving forward, for the year, and for more Notes on accountability, love, and transformation

Matthew Molinaro Managing Editor

The leap into the new year brings with it not only the start of the winter semester but the invocation behind your resolution: Ask not what 2023 can do for you, but what you can do for 2023.

How do we make material promises, and start fresh from the ruins, the grounds of a year prior?

Resolutions notoriously disappear, becoming ephemeral, fleeting promises we make to ourselves over champagne or a kiss from a loved one at the stroke of midnight. They might fade away quietly, like autumn colours, or slink away like inglorious scrawlings on a post-it note in a dumpster across the city. How do we imagine otherwise? How do you illuminate the hope that you had in your life? //The McGill Tribune// offers ways to improve your resolutions so you can hold yourself not only accountable but also with love.

Where are you going, where have you been?

A resolution begins and ends with a desire for something outside

yourself—a change that might make you into what you could be and should have been. Starting from that core message troubles the stakes of some promises to ourselves. Though jokes about abandoning that healthy diet or that membership at Econofitness pervasively attack any chance to look inward as doomed to fail, do they ring true for you? For example, are you resolving to eat more carefully, work out more often, or change your appearance because you think these are acceptable resolutions or will make you (or someone else) love you more?

Instead of critiquing promises that might fail, we should look at what our responses reveal about

ourselves. There is no better time than the present for getting real with yourself in a quiet expanse, holding gentle the parts of your experience that require care and softness. Remember that self-love doesn’t come into form with one practice or with more or less on your schedule.

Ambition and selftransformation

In March, you look back at yourself in January and regret what you thought would be a welcoming space for change in your life. You were going to finally re-learn how to play guitar (you loved learning as a kid!), you were going to be more spontaneous with your friends (you

miss the freedom of first year!), you were going to stop when you felt overwhelmed and breathe deeply, with intention.

You thought you failed. It doesn’t have to be this way. Sure, setting your standards not only high but in a different way may make them harder to achieve, but the only judge lives in your brain. Progress doesn’t work like time, the seemingly silky, causal moves from day to night, month to month. We bend and wade flexibly in times when our past mistakes fold into present mistakes. We get way in over our heads and we deflate, but we still stand. To look at those weeks where you felt isolated, buried by your classes, overwhelmed by your

extracurriculars or by the moments that flesh out into what feels like infinity, and say “I don’t want this anymore” can create a path and shift the surface of your life. Beginning with the principle that progress works differently can be ambitious. The traces of a shallow pool, the guardrails, might vanish. Set benchmarks and dates to check in, regroup and rethink. Your year starts when you can.

We should all be resolutionists We set resolutions at the places we sit. These places cut across lines of difference and touch others. You might want to give back more, you might be longing to practice refusal in your work or in your education. You might be needing to set boundaries with exploitative friends, teachers, bosses, co-workers, or people in your life. Remember to keep asking questions of yourself, and tie your changes to whom and what make you want to transform. Find what distorts your progress and prevents you from making a community, a home for those striving like you. Lift up your voice and others’ too, on this new, difficult, and contested route.

Ask Ainsley: Managing the winter blues

How to brighten up your winter and alleviate seasonal affective disorder

Ainsley

Dear Ainsley,

I am back at school, mid-January, and here I find myself in the bleak midwinter. I feel more and more sluggish and unmotivated as the days grow shorter. With the sun setting before 5 p.m. and school routines returning, many McGill students, including myself, are experiencing negative moods, and I am worried things will only get worse. My guess is most of us are affected by seasonal affective disorder. How do I combat these winter blues and regain motivation?

Sincerely, Managing Seasonal Affective Disorder (MSAD)

Dear MSAD,

From what I understand, the seasonal affective disorder (SAD) you, and the students around you, may be experiencing is a form of depression triggered by a lack of sunlight during the fall and winter months. Symptoms of SAD can include changes in mood, disruptions in sleep, alterations in appetite, and a loss of interest in activities that once brought you joy.

However, I want you to know that these symptoms are not just a result of the gloomy weather, but rather the interruption of your body’s internal clock—also known as the

circadian rhythm. The circadian rhythm is regulated by the hypothalamus, a part of the brain stimulated by sunlight. When the daylight hours are limited during the fall and winter, the hypothalamus no longer receives enough stimulation. This leads to an imbalance in your body’s production of certain hormones such as melatonin, which can make you sleepy and lethargic, and serotonin, which regulates mood, leading to feelings of depression and low energy levels.

Nevertheless, there’s hope. There are ways to combat SAD. So, if you are feeling the effects of the winter blues, listen closely. Here’s how to get through Montreal’s dismal winter.

Light therapy

You will want to practice light therapy, which can be as easy as spending more time in the sun or beside a sunlamp. Try going outside as much as possible to take advantage of the natural sunlight. Around noon, when the sun is brightest, bundle up in your warmest winter coat, hat, and scarf, and stroll around the block or to a nearby park to soak up the sun. When you’re indoors, keep your blinds open to let in as much natural light as possible. Using a sunlamp on darker days, when sunlight is scarce, is a great way to combat SAD. Whether it stems from a lamp or natural sunshine, the light will help balance your melatonin and serotonin levels, elevating your mood and combating the winter blues.

Exercise

Exercise is beneficial for anyone who suffers from depression, as it releases endorphins—hormones that reduce pain and increase feelings of well-being. Exercise also increases your metabolism, which helps improve your energy levels. Low-impact aerobic activities, such as walking or dancing, are exercises well suited to treating seasonal affective disorder. Try gentle stretching, yoga, swimming (the McGill pool is free to students, so no need to spend money!), or running. The McGill recreation centre offers a wide variety of group fitness classes and access to the gym for a relatively low price to help you maintain regular physical activity. So grab a friend, book a class, and get moving!

Get enough Vitamin D

Vitamin D is known as the “sunshine vitamin” because our body produces it when our skin is exposed to UV light, and it is crucial to maintaining overall well-being and happiness. Incorporating vitamin D-rich foods into your diet may also help combat seasonal affective disorder. These foods include salmon, turkey, eggs, mushrooms, leafy greens, walnuts, oatmeal, bananas, and berries. Try

to incorporate a few new recipes into your toolkit that promote bringing the sunshine back to your palate.

Spend time with friends and family

Although one of the symptoms of seasonal affective disorder is social withdrawal, it’s important to avoid isolating yourself and maintain a healthy level of social interaction outside of classes. This can help lift your mood and keep the depressive thoughts at bay. So, take part in activities like sledding, dinner parties, and winter walks that get you out of your comfort zone and allow you to spend more time with your loved ones.

New years don’t just have to be for the new you. Do you pause to forgive? (notebookmentor.com)

While SAD can feel isolating, it is one of the most common mental health disorders in Canada, with 15 per cent of people experiencing at least a mild form of this condition (Alex Zhou / The McGill Tribune)

Uncovering the new face of McGill’s oldest museum

Redpath Museum reopens its doors after three years of COVID-19 closures

Melissa Carter & Adeline Fisher Staff Writers

The reopening

Scores of excited visitors crowded the entrance to McGill’s Redpath Museum on Jan. 10 for its longawaited reopening. Since March 2020, Redpath Museum, overlooking lower field, has been closed in accordance with Quebec’s and McGill’s COVID-19 health and safety guidelines.

Ginette Dessureault, the museum’s administrative assistant, explained that the museum’s decision to reopen was made in close consultation with McGill.

“McGill wanted to take a very cautious approach to reintegrating […] the students and staff safely into the building, and see how a couple [of] semesters went [...] post-pandemic,” Dessureault said in an interview with The McGill Tribune . “The timing is now right to reopen the museum because we know we’ll be open for a fair amount of time. There was some hesitancy about mixing the general public with the student population, [so] we wanted to make sure it was a safe time to do it.”

During its closure, the museum’s usual tours shifted to an online platform, allowing them to showcase their exhibits virtually, such as in the Biodiversity exhibit virtual tour. However, as Dessureault notes, a large part of the museum’s draw is seeing its collections in person.

“We had a few really successful virtual events, but really the core of our essence is to have the public here to see [the exhibits], to interact with [them],” Dessureault said. “The experience, being in person, is a tactile experience. All your senses are engaged, so I think it is a lot more pleasant for the visitor.”

The pieces remained at the museum all throughout the pandemic, and curators conducted safety checks to keep the museum’s collection well preserved.

“There was always somebody here to monitor [and] [...] to ensure the integrity of the collections,” Dessureault said.

The experience

The museum’s pieces mainly

focus on the natural sciences, with exhibits spanning from ethnology and biology to paleontology and geology. The Museum’s artifacts span multiple millennia, with fossils of some of the oldest known vertebrates, rare artifacts from prehistoric cultures, and taxidermied animals.

The Redpath Museum was built in 1882 as a gift to the university from businessman and sugar baron Peter Redpath to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Sir John William Dawson’s appointment as Principal of the university. Dawson was an acclaimed natural scientist with a valuable collection of geological pieces and other specimens to be displayed for students and the public.

For many students, seeing these pieces for the first time in person was a worthwhile experience.

“[The museum] definitely surpassed my expectations,” Zareen Subah, U1 Management, said while visiting the museum. “The Tyrannosaurus Rex was my favourite, just the jaw itself was half the size of my upper body, so that was pretty cool.”

Ryan O’Connell, U1 Arts, was observing a display on the museum’s first floor, before speaking to the Tribune

“I am so happy that something like this exists on campus,” O’Connell told the Tribune . “This is a great way to spend an hour or something in between classes [....] It was unfortunate I could not do that last year, but now I can.”

Though the museum sits right at the heart of campus and its steps have always been a popular place for students to gather, Dessureault explained that the closure affected students’ knowledge of the broader offerings held in-house at the

university.

“We have found that many McGill students don’t even know about this building. [These students] have come in [the last couple of days] and didn’t even know that we had this resource on campus.”

Mahin Usman, U2 Arts, has been awaiting Redpath’s opening, wondering if she would get the chance to visit it before she graduated. “I remember passing by [the museum] a couple of times. And thinking, ‘this seems super interesting.’ I wanted to check it out, but I saw online that it was closed. So, in the back of my head, I have been hoping it would open before I graduated.”

Museum Educator Sara Estrada Arevalo began working at Redpath just a few months before the closure in 2020. Arevalo’s role at the museum was altered quickly by the rapid shift to virtual tours.

Arevalo expressed her excitement at returning to inperson tours after the extended shutdown.

“I think it’s one of the jewels of McGill because of its historical value and because of all the collections we have,” Arevalo said in an interview with the Tribune . “This museum was built to share collections with the public, so having visitors coming and having the opportunity to be in contact with the collections and learning from them is pretty exciting.”

The museum offers a lowcommitment opportunity for students to participate in an educational visit that they may not have sought out further afield.

“We are happy to be open and welcome all the visitors we’ve had in the past [few] days. It’s been just phenomenal. And the response has been incredible,” says Dessureault. “We really strive to serve the community, to see all the faces again and have everybody come back.”

O’Connell encouraged the rest of the McGill community to pay the museum a visit, and noted the museum had “mass appeal” thanks to the variety of exhibits.

“It is absolutely surreal to just stand a few inches, and all that’s separating you is glass, from something that is 200 million years old. When can you say that you have that experience in your everyday life?”

The Redpath Museum Society (RMS) also allows students to get involved by assisting professors and curators of the museum with tours, events, and workshops.

Confronting the past

Though the museum preserves artifacts in stasis, it can also serve as a site for change through ethical and decolonial approaches to museum going. Redpath Museum features several archeological and ethnographic objects gathered through theft or illegal trading. James Ferrier, a former McGill Chancellor, contributed to Redpath Museum’s collection with Egyptian mummies that were presumed to have been acquired illegally from an illicit antiquities market.

Another familiar name, Thomas Roddick, former Dean of McGill’s Faculty of Medicine, donated another mummy in 1895 after a colonial British military mission in Egypt. Both of these household names that are celebrated around our campus participated in the theft of ancient artifacts that still sit in the Redpath Museum today.

Redpath is not the only Western museum to display artifacts out of context, diminishing their cultural and historical significance. Recognizing this fact could offer a different way of viewing at an exhibit like the World Cultures collection, where a critical perspective on conservation, curatorship, and preservation can trouble and open conversations about the holdings from Central Africa and Egypt. Just as the McCord Museum’s exhibit on Indigenous Voices has sparked similar discussions, working to empower sovereignty and vitality from larger arts communities remains a prescient and collaborative endeavour.

The museum is open to visitors from 9:30 am-4:30 p.m., Tuesday to Friday. (Maia Salhofer / The McGill Tribune)

The Redpath Museum is home to around 16,000 artifacts, including a central evolution exhibit with the famous dinosaur skeletons. (Maia Salhofer / The McGill Tribune)

McGill at COP15: A future for biodiversity?

Dashiell Rich, Oban Lopez-Bassols Contributors

2020 was a year that marked the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the public health crisis that spurred unprecedented timelines for vaccine development. However, 2020 should be infamous for another reason—it was one of the hottest years in history. Adding insult to injury, this was not some statistical outlier: The last eight years have all been categorized as the hottest on record. The average temperature has risen by 0.08 degrees Celsius—0.14 Fahrenheit—each decade since 1880, and since 1980, that rate has more than doubled to 0.18 Celsius.

Last month, while the Qatar World Cup engrossed millions, here in Montreal, an even more momentous event occurred: The 2022 United Nations Biodiversity Summit. Also known as COP15, the event concluded on Dec. 19 and saw almost 200 countries agree to the goal of halting and reversing biodiversity loss. With a “30 by 30” target, nations pledged to conserve 30 per cent of the world’s lands, seas, and inland waters by 2030.

The targets put forth by the attending nations were grand in scope, with goals like cutting global food waste in half, reducing harmful pesticide usage, and acquiring $200 billion by 2030 dedicated to protecting biodiversity. Held at the Palais des congrès in downtown Montreal, the summit came two weeks after the United Nations Climate Change Conference, known as COP27, in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. In contrast, COP27 focused entirely on climate-related issues such as curbing carbon emissions and adapting to climate impacts.

The fight for climate action has been difficult, with repeated setbacks like missing the 1.5 degrees Celsius world temperature target and nations’ failures to stick to emissions pledges. In many ways, biodiversity protection is as important as meeting climate targets because biodiversity upholds the world’s ecosystems—an environment with diverse species is more stable than a homogeneous one. The overharvesting of a couple of key species of marine life was a central discussion because of how it can break down ecosystems in unpredictable ways, along with the small-scale communities dependent on them.

Kristen Lalla, BSc ‘18, MSc ‘21, and current Physical Science Officer at Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), was a speaker at the conference. In an interview with The McGill Tribune, Lalla discussed her and the ECCC’s research after participating in the “Conservation Exchange: An innovative new approach to financing conservation” panel at COP15.

“We’re working on developing a biodiversity indicator that will hopefully be able to quantify the biodiver-

sity benefits of conservation projects,” Lalla said. “[The development] has involved a lot of reading, a lot of thinking and discussions both within the team and with others, and a lot of trying things out to figure out what works and what doesn’t [....] It’s not a super straightforward process.”

However, quantifying biodiversity efforts can be challenging because there are so many aspects to consider—population, habitat size, invasive species, and pollution. If these were left unchecked, species endangerment is a possibility.

would be with an icebreaker which does one track—$100,000 a day–and covers some small section of the arctic [....] They’re telling us something about what is happening in the ocean, and if they have to expend a lot more energy, then things may not be as good.”

Since seabirds, such as the thickbilled murre and ivory gull, are perched at one of the highest positions on the Arctic food chain, one can determine how well an ecosystem is doing by tracking the way these predators interact with their environment.

with other nations parroting the same complaint about the proposal’s perceived stringency.

As some wealthy countries pushed for ambitious new targets, representatives from the Global South, responsible for the world’s most biodiversityrich ecosystems, focused on securing the funding needed to meet such goals. Toward the meeting’s end, several representatives from developing nations walked out to protest the lack of funding their countries were receiving. A prominent figure in this protest was the lead climate negotiator for Brazil, Leonardo Cleaver de Athayde. Representing the nation that arguably holds the most biodiverse forest on the planet, he was frustrated with a lack of genuine engagement from the other side of the table.

Despite these complications, the final result not only included the 30 by 30 agreement but also some commitments to fund different forms of biodiversity protection, such as promoting environmental awareness or reducing consumer waste. The European Union (EU) promised to double its international biodiversity financing to seven billion Euros for the 20212027 period, calling on other donors to match this effort. Countries also committed to mobilizing $200 billion USD per year in domestic and international biodiversity-related funding by 2030, with $30 billion USD per year in international finance (public and private) from “developed to developing states.”

“Species at risk are a priority in Canada [...] and so those species at risk have legislative population distribution goals, and we can actually use those goals to estimate the benefits relative to those goals,” Lalla explained.

By comparing the initial populations of at-risk species to post-conservation populations, a numerical value is generated to gauge the impact of preservation efforts. This initiative, known as the Conservation Exchange, will allow the Canadian government to dole out biodiversity certificates— something similar to carbon credits— to benefit entities who work on promoting preservation efforts.

In addition to Lalla’s research, Kyle Elliot, a professor in the Department of Natural Resource Sciences and Canada Research Chair in Arctic Ecology, researches Arctic avian predator ecology. Professor Elliot’s research focuses on Arctic seabird migration— one of the many avian species that are impacted by biodiversity loss.

“We’re measuring the energetics—the energy expenditure and intake of arctic seabirds—and you can imagine them as being tiny little sampling devices for us,” Elliot said. “The traditional way of studying the Arctic

Suppose a seabird population has to go a few kilometres further to get the same amount of calories as they did a decade prior. This would indicate a substantial drop in the birds’ prey population or in their prey’s habitat size.

Currently, ECCC has over 20 initiatives ranging from the ecological gifts program, which offers tax breaks for whoever donates the rights to ecologically sensitive land; the Aboriginal Fund for Species at Risk, which supports Indigenous leadership in wildlife conservation efforts; and the Habitat Stewardship Program, which funds projects that directly contribute to the fulfillment of recovery objectives and population goals for species that fall under the Species at Risk Act (SARA).

In COP meetings, governments arrive at conferences with their own objectives in mind, so reaching a consensus often requires considerable effort and involves stripping the final resolutions of many strong commitments.

COP15’s plenary sessions saw negotiators continuously weakening proposed goals to get everyone on board. The United Kingdom delegates, for example, asked that criteria remain flexible and open to change,

Though these are steep figures, the impact of these policies will only be felt if countries actually stick to the agreements reached. For instance, concerns surrounding the “30 per cent restoration of land and sea” goal stem from the fact that no baseline year was established for reference.

The funding mechanism also remains vague regarding where the capital will come from and sounds eerily similar to past financing commitments that were never met. At the 2009 climate COP, countries agreed to raise $100 billion USD annually for climate action in developing countries by 2020. But this target has been missed every year so far.

All commitments to protect biodiversity still remain entirely dependent on the assumption that global warming will not decimate our environment.

“It’s fantastic to have this agreement [...] these types of aspirational goals are fantastic,” Elliot said. “It’s great to create national parks and protected areas in the Arctic, but it’s not going to do anything if climate change means there’s no Arctic left.”

The enticing ambition of COP15 should be treated with caution and will require consistent pressure for meaningful success. If governments do not detail how to achieve such goals, reaching them will be nearly impossible.

Several McGill professors participate in COP15 to further conversations about conservation

Over a million species are under threat of going extinct—a reality that has not been seen since the time of the dinosaurs. (Drea Garcia / The McGill Tribune)

Fact or Fiction: Do word games really keep your brain healthier?

Word games are proven to have a myriad of cognitive benefits

Madison Edward-Wright Managing Editor

Over the past few years, word puzzles and brain games have exploded in popularity. Most of us are familiar with the green, yellow, and grey squares of Wordle, acquired by The New York Times in January 2022, or have attempted to organize letters on a Scrabble board to no avail. This increased engagement with word puzzles has not gone unnoticed among scientists. Many now wonder whether the mental gymnastics

we do to solve word puzzles have any particular benefits on cognitive ability or overall brain health.

At first glance, we would expect the answer to be “yes.” Logically, we assume that anything that makes our brains exercise a little harder will be beneficial to our health in the long term. But what does the science say?

Well, there are some conflicting accounts. In 2019, a study was conducted on people between the ages of 50 and 93 to understand what kind of effects online word games had on the cognitive abilities of older people. The

researchers found that people who did not play any games consistently performed worse on measures of cognitive ability than those who played regularly. This idea, however, contradicts what researchers say about the drawbacks of spending too much time in front of a screen.

A wide body of research has concluded that increased screen time negatively affects the cognitive development of children and adolescents. In some instances, too much screen time has hindered children’s ability to develop strong psychophysiological resilience, or one’s ability to withstand psychological, physiological, and emotional violence.

So, maybe word games are good for your brain, but only if you play the ones in a physical newspaper or print out the ones online. Unfortunately, this might mean cutting back on your Wordle time—something The New York Times would not like.

In 2022, the word games market value was estimated at $2.47 billion USD—due in part to the sheer number of such games. There are hundreds of different types: Sexaginta-Quattuorlde is a game where you play 64 Wordle squares at once; SpellTower is a mashup of Tetris and Scrabble where you use adjacent letters to form words; and The Sunday Times regularly publishes a cryptic crossword where you have to decipher a clue to get a second clue that leads you to the word that fits into a traditional crossword grid.

Most researchers have concluded that

Top five scientific discoveries at McGill in 2022

whether you play word games online or on paper, the benefits of such mental exercise outweigh the negative effects of too much screen time. Daily mental stimulation through word games, and even other challenging mental tasks, help maintain and improve cognitive abilities such as memory and plasticity.

There is one more benefit of completing word puzzles—it’s what experts call the “aha” moment, and it’s arguably the best part. The “a-ha” moment is that feeling you get right after you have finished a crossword or secured a triple-word score square in Scrabble. When the brain completes a difficult task, it is flooded with endorphins, reducing feelings of stress and pain—mental pain, in this case.

A study conducted in Vienna in 2018 used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to evaluate how the human brain reacts when a person completes a mentally challenging puzzle. Scans showed that the nucleus accumbens—an important structure in the brain that helps manage emotions—is activated at the “a-ha” moment. This region is also linked to the dopaminergic reward system, leading researchers to link the “a-ha” moment with positive reinforcement.

While crosswords, the Wordle, and Scrabble may be hard, they are worth dedicating time to. Your brain benefits from the exercise and thanks you for the workout with endorphins. So, fact or fiction: Do word games and puzzles really keep your brain healthy?

The McGill Tribune says yes.

McGill researchers make strides in oncology, biology, and industrial chemistry

Russel Ismael Science & Technology Editor

This past year was a remarkable one in scientific research, especially when you add McGill researchers to the mix. The McGill Tribune is pleased to bring you the impressive advancements in science made at McGill over the past 12 months.

Forging a better treatment path for triple-negative breast cancer

Every year, approximately 5,500 women pass away from breast cancer, representing 14 per cent of all cancer-related deaths. Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) is considered one of the worst types of breast cancers because of how quickly it spreads throughout one’s body and how it cannot be detected through the three “entrance” hormones for breast cancer treatment (estrogen, progesterone, and HER2). So, it was encouraging when scientists Dr. Meiou Dai and Dr. JeanJacques Lebrun of the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) discovered a new targeted combination therapy to combat TNBC.

Both doctors are confident that their gene-editing approach will lead to breakthroughs in human clinical tri-

als, as their team identified 150 types of tumour-inducing genes in prior tests.

Cooks and scientists aren’t so different after all: Cooking techniques inspire new brain implant

Neural implants are widely used to treat brain diseases such as epilepsy and Parkinson’s. However, such implants trigger the brain’s foreign body response because the implant is more rigid than the surrounding brain tissue. To circumvent this rigidity problem, a team of researchers from the Montreal Neurological-Institute Hospital and McGill’s Biomedical Engineering department devised a solution—using silicon polymers, they created the softest brain implant ever, which goes undetected by the human immune system. The researchers achieved this by adapting cooking techniques like caramelization and sugar melting to the medical field, as the implant is made out of hardened sugar. Unorthodox inspiration is not an unknown phenomenon, so it is natural to see this tradition persist in the sciences at McGill.

Feeling ugly? There might be a reason for that: McGill researchers discover why plants produce “unattractive” flowers

Cleistogamy is a type of self-fer-

tilization in small, closed flowers that was first noted by Charles Darwin. Although Darwin could not study these flowers in full due to poor sample size, this changed when biology professor Daniel Schoen, among others, studied what Darwin had first observed.

Schoen gathered over 2,500 species of flowering plants to analyze the cleistogamy phenomenon, finding that bilaterally-symmetric flowers produce half the number of offspring compared to radially-symmetric flowers. The production of both open and closed flowers is favoured in areas where pollination can vary, thus safeguarding reproduction while preventing inbreeding.

A sustainable way of producing industrial chemicals

Nanocrystals are clusters of particles that are less than one micrometre in size and are widely used in many areas, like the cosmetic or pharmaceutical industries. They are the lifeblood of many devices, from solar panels to semiconductors. Professor Audrey Moores and her team in the Department of Chemistry developed a novel and environmentally-friendly way to produce nanocrystals through a process called high-humidity shaker aging. This method is groundbreaking because it uses fewer resources, is

more cost-efficient, does not require solvents, and produces a higher yield of nanocrystals.

Moores’ work contributes to research about transitioning to solventfree chemical reactions, as solvents are often toxic and harmful to the environment. In a consumerist world, learning to prevent waste will be instrumental for future generations.

Water pollutants may now be detected at a glance

Over 70 per cent of the Earth’s

surface consists of saltwater oceans, so McGill researchers are right to turn to saltwater to see what it can do for us. Professor Parisa Ariya and her team developed a dynamic technique involving artificial intelligence to detect spills like oil, heavy metals, or other biological agents. The real-time sensor that they developed may eventually be mounted on satellites to detect pollutants in all of Earth’s oceans down to the nanometre level, allowing organizations to act quickly in order to prevent aquatic ecosystem destruction.

The

(Christoph Niemann / The New Yorker

Finally, some parity

First month of international hockey competition challenges North American hegemony

Tillie Burlock Sports Editor

When it comes to international play in both men’s and women’s hockey, the conversation tends to revolve around two familiar suspects: Canada and the United States. Tournaments hosted by the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF)—the international governing body for ice hockey—are dominated

by discourse surrounding the two North American superpowers as fans wait for the ultimate matchup, usually in the gold or silver medal round. The dominance of these two countries is even more apparent in the IIHF’s under-18 and under-20 competitions. Since the inception of the men’s under-20 World Junior championship in 1977, Canada has won 20 gold medals, facing off against the U.S. five times since 2004. In women’s hockey, the pattern is even

more glaring with the U.S. and Canada meeting in the gold-medal game every year since the creation of the under-18 Women’s World championship in 2008, with the exception of a U.S.Sweden final in 2018.

While the Canada-U.S. rivalry is what draws much of the viewing audience to IIHF tournaments, the past few years have shown the desperate need for parity within international competition. And in 2023, we got just that.

At this year’s under-18 Women’s Worlds, the rising levels of competition were put on display as Czechia, Slovakia, Finland, and Sweden made their presence known. In the semifinal, the U.S. fell 2-1 to Sweden, with Astrid Lindeberg netting the game winner. The loss marks the first time the U.S. will not appear in the gold-medal game in tournament history. In the other semifinal, Finland forced Canada into overtime, and despite falling 3-2, the Finns made clear that they will no longer be pushed around on international ice.

To follow up the 2022 NHL draft in which two Slovakians, Juraj Slafkovsky and Simon Nemec, went first and second overall, Slovakia started to establish itself as a force to

be reckoned with. Tournament Most Valuable Player, Nela Lopušanová, a 14-year-old Slovakian forward, dominated with 12 points over five games and was a constant highlight reel. Lopušanová’s feats reveal themselves to be all the more remarkable when you factor in her play in the men’s under-16 league in Slovakia, where she is averaging 3.1 points per game. (Slafkovsky averaged 2.35 points in the same league.) The scoring leaders illustrate the tournament’s newfound parity with Czechia’s Adéla Šapovalivová and Tereza Plosova, Sweden’s Hilda Svensson, and Slovakia’s Ema Tothova, joining Lopušanová in the top 10.

As for the men’s 2022-23 under-20 World Junior tournament, Canada’s usually dominant team had some shaky moments, but this year, they weren’t against the U.S. On Dec. 26, Canada opened the tournament with a 5-2 loss to Czechia—a team without a gold-medal game appearance since 2001.

The U.S. faced a similarly shocking 6-3 defeat against Slovakia—a country that is yet to appear in a gold medal game. As the prospect of a U.S.-Canada goldmedal match-up faded away, some

Martlets basketball triumphs in tight game against UQÀM

Eliza Lee Contributor

Continued from page 1.

By the fourth quarter’s end, the score was tied at 55-55. After a brief McGill time-out with just nine seconds left on the clock, a layup by first-year guard Stephy Tchoukuiegno awarded the team the twopoint lead needed to secure the win.

In an interview with The McGill Tribune , Tchoukuiegno explained that two falls she took early in the game presented a challenge, but she remained focused on performing her best.

“I was just in the mindset of ‘play your game, don’t be stressed, and do what you’ve gotta do,’” Tchoukuiegno said. She also noted the importance of lively spectators in tight games like this one.“It feels good to have our crowd here supporting us.”

The win was especially meaningful for the team, as they lost both of their previous games against UQÀM this season, with the most recent loss being only two days prior.

According to the team’s head coach, Rikki Bowles, the Martlets went into the rematch with a driven mindset in light of the previous losses.

“Our expectation—what I told the athletes in the locker room—was to win this game,” Bowles told the Tribune . “I know it has been a struggle at times, but I thought we came in more confident than

in the past, more prepared, we knew what [the other team was] going to do, and it was just about going and getting it done.”

Martlet fourth-year guard Jessica Salanon mentioned that the team’s performance reflected what they had learned from playing UQÀM in the past.

“All the games we’ve got against them [were] tight games and we felt like we

gave them the games,” Salanon explained. “We made mistakes and that led them to win. So we knew that today, if we wanted to win, we [would] win.”

The Martlets will play next on Jan. 19 against the Laval Rouge et Or for their “Shoot for the Cure” game––a USports initiative to raise money for breast cancer research.

began to turn toward stars of the rising European teams.

Adam Gajan, a Slovakian goaltender who was not even listed on the team’s preliminary roster, took over the news cycle. The relatively unknown player skyrocketed to a potential second-round pick in the matter of a week. After a masterful 33-save performance against the U.S., Gajan shut out Latvia and carried his team to a nailbiter game against Canada in the quarterfinal. Despite falling short of a medal yet again, the Slovakian team proved that they are true contenders, adding a newfound level of parity to a tournament usually dominated by the Canadians, Americans, and Swedes.

But the story doesn’t end there. After a somewhat underwhelming match-up against the U.S. in the semifinals where the Canadians claimed a 6-2 victory, Czechia defeated Sweden in a 2-1 overtime win to face off against Canada in the final. With Canada gaining a 2-0 lead early on, Czechia tied it up with less than 10 minutes to go, taking the game to a thrilling overtime but ultimately losing 3-2. Following two invigorating match-ups, many Canadian fans are left asking the question: Does Canada have a new rival?

MOMENT OF THE GAME

Midway through the third period, Daniella Mbengo intercepted a UQÀM pass and made a fastbreak play, out-running the Citadin defence and scoring a swift layup to ecstatic cheering from the crowd.

QUOTABLE

“[We’re] just going to appreciate it [….] The athletes work so hard, and this has been a long time coming. I will never take a win for granted, so we’re just going to enjoy this one.”

–– Head coach Rikki Bowles, on how the team will celebrate their win

STAT CORNER

The top-scoring players for McGill were Mbengo, with 11 points, alongside Kristy Awikeh and Tchoukuiegno, who both scored eight points.

The team approached the game with confidence, drive, and a will to win

Nela Lopušanová became the first woman in IIHF history to score a goal using “the Michigan.” (sport.sk).

The game marks the Martlets’ first win against the Citadins since January of 2020. (Matt Garies)

Formula 1 neutrality legislation is anything but neutral

The FIA bans unapproved political statements for drivers

Zoé Mineret Staff Writer

On Dec. 20, the Féderation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) updated the International Sporting Code––a set of common regulations that apply to all Formula racing series––to ban drivers from making personal, political, and religious statements without permission from the FIA.

The FIA attempted to justify the ban by citing the organization’s commitment to upholding a principle of neutrality––the principle of political neutrality that is enshrined in the International Olympic Committee Code of Ethics. With this ban comes the threat that all drivers who do not maintain a “neutral” stance on personal, political, or religious matters risk breaching FIA regulations. Punishments for breaching the International Sporting Code regulations vary from fines to not being able to compete in a race.

The FIA’s ban comes after drivers such as Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton have begun to use their platform on race weekends to make political statements and speak out about social injustices. In 2020, after winning the Tuscan Grand Prix, Hamilton wore a shirt on the podium that read, “Arrest the cops who killed Breonna Taylor.”

Following Hamilton’s statement, the FIA cracked down on acts of protest, ordering drivers to keep their race suits zipped up for the entirety of the podium ceremony and post-race interviews.

By defining the confines within which drivers can share their political, religious, or personal views, the FIA is anything but neutral. The organization limits drivers’ freedom of speech and

obliges them to comply with the FIA’s own political agenda.

This move by the FIA reveals the organization’s hypocrisy. The new regulations serve to further muzzle racers, already a common practice within the FIA. In 2020, the FIA launched the #WeRaceAsOne initiative in an effort to denounce global inequalities. However, #WeRaceAsOne ceremonies were called off in 2022 as the FIA decided to “gesture towards action.”

Predictably, the FIA has failed to implement any direct action to meaningfully increase diversity within the sport. While silencing the voices of its own racers, the implementation and subsequent eradication of the #WeRaceAsOne initiative only demonstrates the organization’s refusal to commit to actual change. Rather than supporting their athletes’ fights against the global inequalities the organization claims to stand against, the FIA repeatedly chooses to condemn their actions and silence their voices.

The FIA’s position on political statements is unsurprising as the sport’s dedication to promoting neutrality is regularly weaponized as a tool to silence the voices of its racers, such as Vettel or in Hungary or Hamilton in Tuscany. By imposing silence through new

regulations, the FIA is strengthening its stance regarding the separation of sports and politics.

Moreover, the ban allows the FIA to continue to allow races in countries with widespread human rights violations without backlash from its drivers. For example, Sebastian Vettel and others were reprimanded by the FIA for wearing a shirt with the message “Same Love” at the Hungarian Grand Prix to protest Hungarian antiLBTQIA+ laws.

Several Grand Prix host countries accused of human rights violations also partake in sportswashing—or hosting important sporting events solely to improve their international reputation. In the case of Bahrain, the country signed a contract with Formula 1 that guarantees races will be held there until 2036 despite the reported ongoing human rights abuses. Thus, the FIA prefers to uphold the principle of “neutrality” rather than promoting the protection of human rights as enshrined in Article 1.2 of the Sporting Code.

But in practice, the FIA’s new legislation serves to prevent drivers from publicly denouncing the organization’s agenda. By slashing freedom of speech, the FIA makes it clear that their “efforts” towards

FINAL SCORES

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

L 55-48 at UQAM

WOMEN’S HOCKEY W 3-2 vs. Montreal

MEN’S BASKETBALL L 77-75 at UQAM

WOMEN’S VOLLEYBALL L 3-0 at Laval

MEN’S BASKETBALL L 72-71 at UQAM

WOMEN’S HOCKEY L 5-0 at Concordia

Redbirds fall to Ravens in front of packed Winter Carnival crowd

McGill records 4-2 loss in first Winter Carnival game since 2020

Ferreyra Contributor

On Jan. 13, in the midst of a snowstorm, the McGill Redbirds hockey squad (11–5–3) welcomed the Carleton Ravens (7–7–3) to McConnell Arena in front of a crowd of 1,029. After a hard-fought game, the Ravens defeated the Redbirds 4-2. This result bumps the Redbirds to fourth place in the East division of the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) standings, one point behind the Concordia Stingers and a mere four points ahead of the Ravens.

The evening kicked off with second-year centre, Caiden Daley, striking first. The goal came just over eight minutes into the first, off an assist by second-year Alex Plamondon and first-year Olivier Tremblay. The early goal set the intensity of the game and electrified the packed arena.

Head coach David Urquhart noted that the spirit of the crowd aided the Redbird’s strong start.

“You could feel the extra energy in the building, and our team was energized and responded with a great first period,” Urquhart wrote in an email to The McGill Tribune. “While it was not the result we wanted, it was fun to have the extra crowd support.”

The first period ended with unsuccessful chances by second-year forward Eric Uba and swift saves made by fourth-year goaltender Emanuel Vella in the final minute.

The Ravens evened the score at the top of the second, with a sharp shot making it past Vella in the opening minutes of the period. The Redbirds then squandered several attempts to retake the lead. Second-year forward Brandon Frattaroli’s rush from the Redbirds’ defensive zone all the way to the Ravens’ goal gave the fans hope but was ultimately fruitless.

Growing frustration came to a head with a few scrums in front of the net and forward JordanTy Fournier being handed a minor roughing penalty. This power play allowed Carleton forward Madoka Suzuki to swiftly bury a puck in the back of the McGill net, closing out the period with a 2-1 lead.

The third period opened with an altercation between two Carleton players and third-year forward William Poirier, setting the mood for the final act of the game. Renewed speed and tensions reigned, as a third goal by Carleton in the first five minutes left the Redbirds deflated with a two-goal deficit to recover from. First-year centre William Rouleau took it upon himself to bring the deficit to one, scoring on a power play with assists from forwards Uba and Frattaroli, reviving hope for Redbird supporters.

In the last moments of the game, the atmosphere heightened, as the crowd hoped for overtime. After pulling the goaltender with two minutes left, the Carleton offence managed to tally one last goal, in the last minute of play.

Team captain and fifth year defender, Taylor Ford, felt that his team had been outmatched

“We slowed down a bit in the second period and let them back into the game,” he conceded. “Overall, we played well and didn’t capitalize on our chances. Their goalie played well.”

“We had a strong third period but the late push was not enough to come back from the twogoal deficit,” Urquhart added.

Despite this loss, the Redbirds are still in the top half of the OUA standings, in fourth position, with the next face-off against Université du Québec à Trois Rivières’s Patriotes on Jan. 18, before confronting them on home ice on Jan. 21.

MOMENT OF THE GAME

The night closed with a total of 12 minor penalties, six per team, including five penalties for roughing, creating multiple power play opportunities..

QUOTABLE

“The McGill men’s hockey team would like to thank all of those fans who came out and supported us. The arena was loud all night and it was exciting for us to play.”

—Captain Taylor Ford

STAT CORNER

Those in attendance might have noticed that one of the two referees officiating the game, Elizabeth Matha, became the first woman to officiate a men’s game at McGill.

equality and inclusivity are a smoke screen, washing out the dark practices that continue within the sport.

Lewis Hamilton created the Hamilton Commission to improve the representation of Black people in U.K. motorsport. (The Independent).

Missing from the McGill roster was star defenceman Scott Walford, who is away competing at the Fédération Internationale du Sport Universitaire (FISU) World University Games. (Maia Salhofer / The McGill Tribune).

Julie