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The Department of Sociology and the minor program in Canadian Ethnic and Racial Studies are pleased to present

Nathan Glazer Emeritus Professor of Education Harvard University Prof. Glazer is the co-author of the path-breaking sociological work Beyond the Melting Pot, and for over three decades, was co-editor of the influential policy journal, The Public Interest.

”US Race Relations in the Age of Obama” Wednesday, March 24, 4:00 - 6:00 pm 3644 Peel Street, McGill Faculty of Law Maxwell-Cohen Moot Court (Room 100)

”Public Intellectuals in the United States: Arguing the World” Thursday, March 25, 2:30 - 4:30 pm Leacock Building, Room 232 855 Sherbrooke Street West For more information, please contact Prof. Morton Weinfeld: morton.weinfeld@mcgill.ca or Leslie Cheung: leslie.cheung@mail.mcgill.ca The public is welcome. Admission is free.

Conférence publique. L’entrée est gratuite.

This lecture is made possible by a grant from the Beatty Memorial Lectures Committee.

AVOID BRAIN FREEZE

THE MCGILL DAILY EDITORIAL ELECTIONS Heat things up this summer at McGill

RUNDOWN- March 24, 5p.m., Shatner B-24 ELECTIONS- March 25, 5p.m., Shatner B-24

www.mcgill.ca/summer summer.studies@mcgill.ca 514-398-5212

You must be staff to vote!

News

The McGill Daily, Monday, March 22, 2010

3

Charkaoui sues federal government After being detained for six years under a security certificate, local teacher aims to clear his name Max Halparin The McGill Daily

M

ontrealer Adil Charkaoui has launched a $24.5-million lawsuit against the government agencies and representatives who played a major role in his two-year imprisonment and four years spent living under strict house arrest conditions.

The last of Charkaoui’s conditions were struck down in September 2009, and in November his lawyers asked the government to issue him an apology and grant him both citizenship and reasonable reparations for the damage caused by his six-year ordeal.

“They asked the government to respond within 10 days – they didn’t, which left him no choice,” said Mary Foster, a member of the Coalition Justice for Adil Charkaoui.

“Adil’s struggle is extremely inspiring, and the fact that he is asking for an apology is symbolically important,” Foster said. “[His] life has been damaged, and there has to be some recognition for the rights violated in such a horrendous way.”

In 2003, Charkaoui was detained under a security certificate, a piece of immigration law that allows the government to use secret evidence to detain non-citizens indefinitely under threat of deportation. The

Quebec Bar Association and the Canadian Bar Association have both released detailed statements opposing security certificates.

In his role as the attorney-general at the time, Liberal MP Wayne Easter signed the certificate and was personally named in the lawsuit.

Easter said he was not aware that Charkaoui’s lawyers had asked for an apology and reasonable reparations before launching the suit. “[Charkaoui is] exercising his legal right in a democracy, and it will go wherever it will,” he said.

Easter added tht the government has to take a balanced approach to security issues. “Government has a responsibility to protect its citizens, and it has to take all measures to do that. At the same time, [we] do not want to infringe on people’s liberties,” he said.

In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled security certificate legislation unconstitutional, but delayed the effects of its decision by one year.

The following year, the Harper government introduced a new security certificate law and issued Charkaoui another certificate, although the conditions instituted under the old law stayed in place.

Throughout this time, Charkaoui, a French teacher and father of four, was forced to wear a GPS-tracking ankle bracelet – which he has called his “bracelet of shame” – and was not permitted

Stephen Davis | The McGill Daily

Charkaoui was cleared of his charges in Setpember. to leave the island of Montreal. He also had to be accompanied at all times by one of his parents.

“The toll this has taken on me and on my children is incalculable,” Charkaoui said in a press release.

“That is why my three oldest children – aged eight, six, and four – who lived through this nightmare with me, are also named as applicants.”

The lack of evidence presented by government lawyers and the

Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) prompted Quebec judge Danièle Tremblay-Lamer to lift the conditions and later remove the certificate in fall last year.

Hassan Almrei, whose certificate was also struck down, has also demanded an apology from the government.

Three Arab Muslim men, Mohammed Harkat, Mohammad Mahjoub, and Mahmoud Jabballah,

continue to live under house arrest due to security certificates.

Charkaoui’s suit names CSIS, the Canada Border Services Agency, the attorney-general of Canada, and the ministers of justice, public safety, and Immigration. Conservative MP Stockwell Day and Liberal MP Denis Corderre are also personally named.

Corderre did not respond to The Daily.

Unions oppose future Canada-Colombia free trade agreement Groups seek investigation into the treaty’s impact on human rights Evan Zatorre The McGill Daily

T

he Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) recently joined ranks with Amnesty International, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, and other groups that have called for Canada not to renew its the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (CCFTA), due to concerns for the treaty’s effect on Colombian human rights.

A proposal to ratify the CCFTA is included in Bill C-2, which was tabled by the Harper government on March 3, despite the recommendations of the House of Commons Standing Committee on International Trade.

The committee’s report on a similar bill, which expired in its second reading due to prorogation, called for a human rights assessment before ratification of the CCFTA, and that the “Government of Canada develop new social responsibility standards for corporations as regards compliance with universal human rights standards.”

Jen Giroux, an OPSEU executive

board member, explained some of the union’s concerns, which range from food sovereignty to land and worker’s rights.

“OPSEU met with 30 groups in August 2009, including indigenous groups and trade union members, and their concerns about human rights abuses led to our call for an independent human rights assessment before the passing of this free trade agreement,” Giroux said.

“Many Colombian farmers face hunger not through lack of production, but because the vast majority of their produce is sold to other countries. Union workers who voice their concerns are threatened by various paramilitary groups, and many have been murdered or disappeared entirely,” she added.

Giroux cited the case of indigenous leader Kimy Pernia Domico, who disappeared in 2001.

Domico testified to Canadian Parliament in 1999, exposing the damage to both his people’s way of life and the environment caused by the Urra hydroelectric dam, which was financed by Export Development Canada.

Paramilitaries later acknowledged responsibility for his death.

Berth Berton-Hunter of Amnesty International Canada said the international human rights group has also called for an independent assessment after meeting with various Colombian workers, journalists, and indigenous groups, in addition to Canadian government officials.

Both Giroux and Berton-Hunter emphasized the effects of the free trade agreement on mining and land.

“The main issue here is land.

Colombia has many mineral resources and hydroelectric power [sources] that rest on indigenous land. Thousands of people and children have been killed and pressured off of their land by the government and/or paramilitary groups, despite the fact that Colombia claims to have demobilized them,” BertonHunter said.

“Passing this deal would only disenfranchise the poor and give more power to mining companies and the economic elite, perpetuating the current situation.”

According to the Canadian government, the agreement is not aimed at lowering import tariffs or widening the market for Colombian goods. The treaty is described as an attempt to secure and increase

investment opportunities for Canadian companies in Colombia.

A press release by the prime minister states that “the Free Trade Agreement will provide greater market access for Canadian exporters of products…. In addition, the Agreement will provide greater stability and protection for Canadian businesses involved in oil and gas, mining, manufacturing, and financial services.”

The Canadian government also alleges the CCFTA will improve the human rights situation in Colombia by promoting economic development. According to the web site of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada, free trade agreements “promote economic development, which can strengthen the social foundations of countries and contribute to a domestic environment where individual rights and the rule of law are respected.”

If ratified, the CCFTA will include a Labour Cooperation Agreement, which has been included in similar treaties. The agreement will attempt to address some of the human rights concerns through a set of labour standards and a complaint procedure.

Giroux and Berton-Hunter worry that the provisions listed by the government will not be enough.

“Colombia has a better constitution on paper than Canada, but it is routinely ignored or worked around. Many Colombians have told me that they would welcome more economic development in their country, but not with the current issues,” Giroux said.

Berton-Hunter also explained potential threats to those that file labour complaints.

“Those who voice their concerns are continually threatened by paramilitary groups, who often have some connection to the government. At the same time the Colombian government routinely denies any involvement,” she said.

Giroux suggested that along with an independent human rights assessment, the Canadian Government should implement Bill C-300 on corporate accountability. “The Bill calls for corporate accountability in Canadian mining and oil companies when operating in developing nations and also allows local groups to file complaints with the minister of trade,” Giroux said.

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News

The McGill Daily, Monday, March 22, 2010

5

Cuts hit First Nations University Loss of federal and provincial funding could push institution toward insolvency Amelia Schonbek The McGill Daily

A

mid accusations of financial irregularities and mismanagement, the federal government announced last week that it will not reverse a decision to cut $7.2 million in funding from the First Nations University of Canada (FNUC).

Combined with the $ 5.2million loss in funding from the Saskatchewan government that was announced in February, this decision could mean that the university is headed for insolvency.

The government made the announcement in spite of the recent decision of the FNUC and its owner, the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations (FSIN), to address the government’s concerns by trans-

ferring control of the university to the University of Regina and establishing a new board of governors. “The [federal] government claims that the university has not managed its funds appropriately and has not taken the action recommended to address the issue,� said Jean Crowder, the NDP’s critic for aboriginal affairs. “However, what I know from meeting with both the Canadian Association of University Teachers, with somebody from the Board of Governors, with the grand chief of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations, with someone from the student union, from the faculty association, is that they have presented a plan to the government to address the issues, and the government really has had no conversation with them about this,� said Crowder.

FNUC’s finances have long been under scrutiny, and in a press release Indian affairs minister Chuck Strahl attributed the federal funding cuts to “long-standing, systemic problems related to governance and financial management.�

Critics of the university have alleged that it is not independent enough from the FSIN, and in both 2007 and 2008 it ran deficits of over $1 million. Rumours of unnecessary business trips to Hawaii and Las Vegas have been circulating, and most recently, Saskatchewan’s ministry of justice launched an investigation into whether $390,000 of a scholarship fund was mishandled.

Randy Lundy, who heads FNUC’s faculty council, compared the funding cuts to the residential school system.

“After having issued an apology for [the residential school] legacy, minister Strahl is enacting yet another policy of enforced assimilation by refusing to restore the $7.2 million in funding to the First Nations University of Canada,� Lundy said at a press conference on March 11.

The funding cuts precede a financial audit of the university, which is expected to be finished by the end of this month. “The federal government has announced that they need to save money, and they are looking at all kinds of opportunities to cut programs or services. This would fall in line with that,� said Crowder. “The provincial government has signaled that they would be prepared to come to the table if the federal government would,� said Crowder on March 15.

However, a meeting between Saskatchewan advanced education minister Rob Norris and Strahl the following day did not yield any sort of deal, and both governments’ previous promises to end funding by April 1 remained.

FNUC is the only university of its kind in Canada, and it offers an opportunity for First Nations students to study in a culturally supportive environment. “First Nations have had such a terrible experience through residential schools,â€? Crowder explained. “What the First Nations University does is provide an avenue for students to get culturally appropriate education. There’s a lot more support around tradition and language‌ that makes it easier for students to return, to come to school.â€?

Canada backs rights for people with disabilities Activists push government to fully comply with UN convention Andra Cernavskis News Writer

C

anada’s ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities last Thursday has garnered support among disability rights activists, though concerns remain as to when the convention’s terms will be fully implemented.

Minister of foreign affairs Lawrence Cannon has said that “Canada is committed to promoting and protecting the rights of persons with disabilities and enabling their full participation in society,� and that the ratification of the convention underscores the federal government’s “strong commitment to this goal.�

The convention protects the rights and dignity of persons with disabilities, and parties to the convention are required to promote, protect, and ensure the human rights of such persons.

Article 19 and 20 of the convention state, “Rights specific to this convention include the rights to live independently and be included in the community and to personal mobility.�

However, president of McGill Students Supporting Disabilities (SSD) Molara Awosedo asserted that the government would have to demonstrate its support for persons with disabilities by putting the convention into practice. “Charters are only as good as they are implemented. In Canada true change will come about only

if we use the Canadian Charter and therefore can hold the government legally responsible, which we have seen in the past,� said Awosedo.

Awosedo pointed to the lack of accessibility for people with disabilities using the Montreal metro system as an example of changes that needed to be implemented. “We feel that the metro system should be accessible to everyone and we feel that this change can come about. If more people start paying attention to disability rights hopefully people will get involved and speak up,� said Awosedo.

Only five Montreal metro stations are wheelchair accessible and equipped with elevators. “Although we do understand that there is specific transporta-

tion for those who are disabled, every person should have the choice to use the metro system,� said Awosedo.

Marianne Rouette, an official for the SociĂŠtĂŠ de transport de MontrĂŠal (STM), addressed these transportation concerns, saying, “We are doing a lot of things for disabled people in Montreal because we care.â€?

She added that the STM provides other forms of transportation more accessible to disabled persons, such as improved buses with access ramps and reserved areas for wheelchairs, and that three additional metro stations would soon be adapted to accommodate wheelchairs.

Catherine Frazee, director of Ryerson’s Institute of Disability Studies, drew attention to the chal-

lenges faced by disabled persons seeking to travel across the country.

The Vancouver Sun reported earlier this month that Frazee was unable to travel directly from Toronto to Vancouver during the Winter Paralympics because of her disability.

Frazee must remain in her wheelchair at all times and can only travel by train. Despite her efforts to coordinate her travel with VIA Rail, the company was unable to accommodate her wheelchair. Frazee was forced to travel to the U.S. to take an Amtrak train adapted for persons with disabilities.

There are approximately 4.4 million people with disabilities in Canada, accounting for 14.3 per cent of the population.

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News

The McGill Daily, Monday, March 22, 2010

Party eliminates special status of left-wing “political club” Erin Hudson News Writer

A

t a conference held over March 13 and 14, Parti Québécois (PQ) leader Pauline Marois announced her intention to distance the party from its progressive, left-wing, and unionist club, the Syndicalistes et progressistes pour un Québec (SPQ) Libre!

Marois asserted that political clubs should be eliminated from within the PQ’s structure, saying that the “special standing” of the SPQ Libre! was no longer compatible with the PQ’s party statutes.

“A number of members felt there shouldn’t be two types of membership. They thought it left them second-class members,” Marois said in a statement to the Montreal Gazette.

Marois expressed her hope that SPQ Libre! members would remain PQ members despite the elimination of the club.

The SPQ Libre! is an association

NEWS BULLETIN Province to ban religious daycares Quebec minister for family Tony Tomassi announced last Wednesday that the province will ban religious instruction in provincially funded daycares.

The Parti Québécois (PQ) welcomed the news, but demands the government go even further and formally secularize all daycares.

The PQ has argued that the provincial public-school system must remain non-denominational and that “religion appeared to be slipping back through the daycare system.”

According to Isabelle Mercille, spokesperson for Tomassi, “the mandate of daycares is to develop educational programs that foster the global development of the child, be it social, intellectual, or personal. There are no criteria pertaining to religion.”

Mercille stressed that the minister’s announcement did not ban religious teaching or education; it will just not be accepted in publicly funded daycares.

Angie Ekonomopoulos, director of CPE Hellenique Foyer d’Enfant,

mostly comprised of Quebec union leaders and was the only group with club status in the PQ. It remains unclear what the future of the SPQ Libre! and its members will be once its club status is revoked.

After the group’s March 18 press conference, the SPQ Libre’s web site stated, “SPQ Libre! is an autonomous organization. It existed before it was a political club inside the Parti Québécois and it continues to exist. Over the coming months, SPQ Libre! plans on undertaking a double action: inside the PQ and outside of it.”

“I think it’s obvious that the PQ is turning to the right,” SPQ Libre! leader Marc Laviolette said to the Montreal Gazette. “We’ve seen it with Madame Marois’s declaration on the public sector demands [on contract negotiations] and now this decision by the executive [to eliminate political clubs].”

This sequence of events has been deemed as evidence to some observers, including SSMU VP (External) Sebastian Ronderos-

Morgan, that the PQ may be veering away from its traditionally left-wing politics to increasingly moderate positions.

“Though student movement opinions are divided on this, I think there is a growing understanding that the PQ is not standing for the social welfare issues it had in the past,” said Ronderos-Morgan, expressing further concern over the potential impact right-leaning Quebec parties could have upon advocacy for lower university tuition.

He added that the PQ does not offer Quebeckers a meaningful alternative to the governing Parti Libéral du Québec.

Marois, however, maintains that the PQ continues to be a party of the centre-left.

“We’ve taken a turn, not to the right or left,” Marois said March 14.

“Our positions are based on common sense.”

SPQ Libre! contextualized Marois’s decision in a press conference March 18 with a statement from Laviolette.

“The decision not to recognize SPQ Libre! within the Parti Québécois is marred by irregularities and contrary to the party’s bylaws,” he said in French. “We acknowledge what has been rejected: it’s the political-club structure and not our ideas.”

The history and function of political clubs within the PQ began in 2005 under the leadership of Bernard Landry.

According to the Montreal Gazette’s Don Macpherson, political clubs were created in order to accumulate more support for the PQ in the face of competition with the right-wing sovereigntist party Action Démocratique du Québec.

SPQ Libre! leader Marc Laviolette said, “The strategy of Mr. Landry [was] to bring back a big coalition with the PQ for [Quebec] sovereignty.”

He added, “Mr. Landry’s successors, Mr. André Boisclair and Mrs. Pauline Marois, were not agreeing on that kind of strategy so no other political clubs were founded within the PQ. We were the only ones.”

a daycare in St. Laurent, stated that children at her centre do not receive religious teaching. They do celebrate holidays like Greek Easter, but without a religious overtone.

Ekonomopoulos was uncertain about the meaning of the ban.

“We don’t know how exactly they are going to define religious teachings. Almost all centres, here too, celebrate Christmas and Easter to some degree, albeit more commercially and from a Canadian culture perspective,” she said. “We close everything on Good Friday and Christmas; is that religious? We can’t create a society of neutrals. We have a freedom of religion and we have freedom of speech.

It’s a very fine line.”

The Beth Rivkah centre, a Jewish day care centre in Montreal, states on its web site that “all daily activities are driven by the spirit of Torah and Jewish tradition.”

Whether centers with religious orientation will be included in the ban also remains unclear.

“People don’t understand that these children are very young and to teach the religious aspects is beyond their comprehension anyway,” said Ekonomopoulos. “To a two-yearold, Easter is the Easter Bunny and Christmas is Santa Claus.”

—Jan Wollenberg

whelming margin to extend their three-week-old strike indefinitely.

77 per cent of the Syndicat des chargées et des chargés de cours de l’Université de Montréal gave the go-ahead in a general assembly held at the neighbouring Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) campus. 420 union members attended, a record for the assembly, according to Le Devoir.

The assembly was called in the wake of a petition signed by 200 UdeM lecturers calling for a vote to end the strike. Francis Legace, the union’s president, said the document had “no legal value.”

The union also voted with an 84 per cent majority to reject the university administration’s “final offer,” tabled Tuesday – the same day that the petition was released.

The university’s proposal would have given lecturers a 3.8 per cent pay increase and brought their pay in line with lecturers at UQAM. The union is holding out for 7.7 per cent and demanding decreased class sizes, both of which the university rejects.

—Eric Andrew-Gee

UdeM strike extended

On March 10, police officials from Operation Marteau searched the Brossard offices of Construction Frank Catania & Associés, one of

the largest construction companies in Quebec.

Operation Marteau is a provincial police force that investigates allegations of corruption and collusion in construction contracts. It is composed of police employees and a financial crimes squad.

Catania & Associés has been implicated in a number of issues recently. President Paolo Catania was charged with extortion in September. More recently, the company was criticized for its purchase of the Faubourg Contrecoeur site, which was previously a dumping ground for snow removal.

The site was bought under-value from the City, and is now billed by the company as an environmentally sustainable housing development, with 50 per cent of its units earmarked for affordable housing.

The company’s offices were visited in January by Sûreté du Québec officers. In February it was reported that the company offered to buy a historic Mont Royal building from the city if zoning laws were altered to allow the development of luxury condominiums.

The motion to grant the change failed, with opposition from Vision Montréal.

Catania & Associés did not respond to The Daily’s requests for comments on the investigation.

—Queen Arsem-O’Malley

Lecturers at the Université de Montréal (UdeM) voted by an over-

Stay caught up.

Anti-corruption squad raids developer’s office

news@mcgilldaily.com

WHAT’S THE HAPS

PQ turns against the SPQ Libre!

7

Cinema Politica Tuesday, March 23, 8 p.m.

Leacock 219 Silhouette City is an immersive journey through the recent history of American apocalypticism. Using archival video, movement propaganda, and original investigative material, the film tracks the movement of apocalyptic Christian nationalism and its most extreme adherents from the margins to the mainstream, the military, and beyond.

Discover Islam Month: Exhibit Tuesday, March 23, 11-3 p.m.

Shatner Ballroom Walk into an open exhibition and experience the world of Islam! There will be henna, Islamic art, calligraphy, booths about various topics in Islam, and of course, free food!

World Tuberculosis Day Panel Discussion: MISSING DRUGS Wednesday, March 24, 12:45 p.m.

Chancellor Day Hall, 101 The McGill Global AIDS Coalition will be hosting a panel discussion with three highly acclaimed professionals who will examine the impact of the global TB and AIDS epidemics, the consequences of an insufficient pharmaceutical industry, and Canada’s significance in each issue.

Sexual Assault Week: workshop Wednesday, March 24, 7 p.m.

5143 St. Laurent Workshop featuring Ignacio Rivera: an economic and racial justice activist, poet, performance artist, and essayist. Featuring a performance of clips from the one-person show Lágrimas De Cocodrilo/ Crocodile Tears.

Discover Islam: Cultural Diversity Friday, March 26, 7:30-10 p.m.

Shatner cafeteria Join the Muslim Students Association in exploring traditional food, clothing, and performances from across many countries and regions in the Muslim world.

Sexual Assault Week: film Saturday, March 27, 3 p.m.

5143 St. Laurent Screening of Nancy Schwartzman’s documentary film The Line. Discussion afterward of the line defining consent. Held at Gallery OFF Interarts.

8 Commentary

The McGill Daily, Monday, March 22, 2010

Think of the children!

Binary is for computers Quinn Albaugh

I

n recent years, doctors have started prescribing hormone blockers (HBs) for trans youth about to go through puberty. These drugs delay the onset of puberty until age 16, after which the standard treatment, hormone replacement therapy (HRT), becomes available with parental consent.

In retrospect, using hormone blockers would have saved me a considerable amount of trouble. I wouldn’t have had to deal with an unwanted male puberty. But in my case, I was too deep in denial to seek HBs out – and they still weren’t as mainstream then as they are now.

Nowadays, the Endocrine Society, a professional organization that deals with appropriateness of hormone treatments, recommends hormone blockers as standard practice.

But some people still have reservations about hormone blockers, arguing that trans youth aren’t capable of deciding for themselves whether HBs are appropriate, that trans youth might change their minds, or that it’s risky to mess with young people’s hormones.

These attitudes exist despite the reality that delaying puberty actually allows young people to avoid risk. If you have any concerns about being trans, allowing puberty to happen is dangerous. Trans people often become intensely depressed during puberty. But the risks of using HBs are relatively low; whenever a person on hormone blockers wants, they can choose to allow puberty to begin.

So why does anyone oppose this practice? Ingrained societal biases against both gender non-conformity and youth.

Thanks to ultrasounds, we start enforcing gender norms from before birth. Most people in North America receive gendered names.

Baby rooms and toys are often gendered male or female using blue and pink as colour cues. When they start going to school, they see gender-segregated bathrooms.

Our society abhors gendervariance, even in infants. Life & Style, that paragon of journalism, published a cover story criticizing Angelina Jolie for having her threeyear-old child, assigned female, wear “men’s clothing” and short haircuts, worrying that such parenting measures would “harm” the child (“Why is Angelina turning Shiloh into a boy?”, March 4). This kind of commentary completely dismisses children’s agency, since it assumes that only parents can make decisions about their child’s lives. But if the Life & Style piece is accurate, then her child actually asked to be called John and to wear such clothing. I

Olivia Messer | The McGill Daily

have to ask – what if Shiloh, or John, is trans? Life & Style doesn’t appear to have considered the possibility.

This coverage also assumes that children and youth are not reliable sources about who they are. This notion is pervasive in our society, particularly regarding queer youth.

People say, “It’s just a phase,” or, “How do you know?” Straight or genderconforming people don’t have to deal with these questions – their identities receive validation regardless of age.

This double standard, this denial of queer identities, doesn’t stop when we become legal adults. Since writing this column, people have asked how I could possibly know that I’m trans, and I’m 21.

Adults know better. Who cares if a child has been saying from the age of three that they’re different from what the adults think?

The idea that adults know who

children really are better than the children themselves flies in the face of many queer people’s life stories.

I knew I didn’t fit in with “the other boys” when I was seven. I’ve also met queer people who were certain in their identities at even younger ages. While these experiences are not universal, they show that children can and do know who they are at young ages.

But the widespread idea that young people can’t know their own identities because they’re too young isn’t just wrong – it’s actively harmful. This notion presents queer people with a no-win situation. If queer youth come out, society refuses to recognize their identities. If they don’t conform, they risk hostility and harassment. To avoid facing these problems, they have to deny themselves. That kind of denial leaves a deep and lasting psychological wound.

These problems become even worse when schools do not intervene against bullies. In 2009, Egale, a Canadian LGBTQ rights organization, released the results of their first survey of bullying in Canadian schools. The survey indicated that 75 per cent of self-identified lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning youth felt unsafe at school and that 95 per cent of the trans youth surveyed indicated that they felt unsafe. When queer youth feel unsafe, they are much more likely to try to be someone they’re not.

Parents – like Angelina Jolie – often take the blame for the existence of queer people. Focus on the Family and other right-wing groups believe that queer people are the results of “bad parenting.” Examples include the notions that absent fathers and overbearing mothers turn their sons gay. As a result,

they argue that society needs to “protect” children from the harmful effects of “bad parenting” and enforce what they consider traditional gender norms. But this entire argument rests on the idea that the existence of queer people is a problem, one that requires someone to blame. Queerness isn’t a problem – society makes it one by considering it problematic.

The rhetoric of “protecting children” serves to legitimate actions that actually harm children and youth. For example, whenever trans non-discrimination policies are discussed, social conservatives contend that such moves would allow male sexual predators to harass women, particularly girls, in women’s bathrooms by claiming that their gender identity is female.

But this argument never includes evidence that a sexual predator has ever used such a tactic. What’s more, nothing’s stopping a sexual predator from going into a women’s bathroom now – especially if they’re already female.

This framing also calls to mind an image of queer people as bogeymen, “deviants” who prey on children. Ironically, queer people, especially trans people, are disproportionately survivors of sexual assault. And trans people, including children and youth in school, face a higher chance of harassment if they look like one gender but have to use another’s bathroom facilities.

Instead of protecting anyone, opponents of non-discrimination policies only hurt people who need to have access to safe bathroom facilities.

We need to turn that classic right-wing argument – “Think of the children!” – on its head. Imagine what would happen if we actually thought of queer youth as people.

If we actually considered the needs of children, we wouldn’t force them to conform to arbitrary standards from birth. Instead, we would foster the idea that good parents don’t try to force their kids to be someone they’re not. If we actually considered the needs of queer students, we would not stand back and allow bigoted bullying to continue. Instead, we would implement anti-bullying policies in every school in Canada. If we actually considered the needs of trans youth, we would give hormone blockers to those who ask and make sure they can use the bathroom without fear. Won’t someone please think of the children for once?

Quinn Albaugh writes in this space every week. They want to hear what you think: binaryforcomputers@ mcgilldaily.com.

Commentary

The McGill Daily, Monday, March 22, 2010

9

Queer people and women better off in Israel Little bitter Riva Gold

I

n her letter dated March 11, U2 IDS student Jamie Birks begged The Daily to stop its torrent of anti-Israel coverage. Earlier this month, Mookie Kideckel called for an end to The Daily’s persistent marginalization of Israel supporters on campus, deriding the paper’s one-sided endorsement of Israeli Apartheid Week and its editorial that “diluted a complex conflict into a simplistic allocation of blame.” They’re both right – not only because one-sided coverage is often factually dubious and harmful to students on campus, but because The Daily has a mandate to concern itself with marginalized groups, and it is time to elucidate the oppression of sexual minorities and women in the Middle East.

McGill Daily: where were you to criticize the appalling treatment of LGBTQ people under Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza? Even today, homosexuality is illegal in Gaza. Palestine has no civil right laws that protect LGBTQ people from discrimination or harassment. Mahmoud Zahar, the most senior leader of Hamas, called queer people “a minority of perverts and the mentally and mor-

ally sick.”

The only refuge for persecuted LGBTQ Palestinians has, perhaps ironically, been found in Israel. Many have fled to Tel Aviv and Netanya, where they live illegally to avoid the physical abuse, death, or disownment that awaits them at home.

Several independent human rights organizations rank Israel the best in the entire Middle East in terms of LGBTQ rights. Israel is the only country in the region where LGBTQ people have the legal rights to live safely and freely. While samesex marriage is not yet legal in the State of Israel, the government recognizes all same-sex marriages performed elsewhere. It also grants same-sex couples common law marriage along with adoption rights and critical spousal benefits.

All Israeli citizens are protected from sexual orientation discrimination in employment, and LGBTQ Israelis may openly serve in the Israeli military. There is a vibrant queer community, an annual Pride Parade, and despite the attention given to the actions of a small ultraOrthodox minority, over 60 per cent of the Israeli population expresses support for equal marriage.

Aquil Virani | The McGill Daily

The treatment and status of women is also considerably different when Israel is compared to any of its neighbours in the region. In Israel, much like in Western liberal democracies, women have been guaranteed full legal equality since the state’s founding in 1948. Golda Meir, former Israeli prime minister, was only the third woman in the world to be a head of government. Since then, women have continued to work in high-ranking jobs, serve alongside men in the military, and participate as equals in the State of Israel.

Maybe The Daily ought to endorse participation in “Palestine and Gaza’s Apartheid against Women” week.

Honour killings continue to terrorize dozens of women annually in the Palestinian territories; the Hamas government has not attempted to

stop or condemn any of them. In fact, it is suspected of having established many of the very infrastructures which participate in them.

Women hold no ministerial position in either the Palestinian Authority or Hamas, and close to one in four Palestinian women report physical violence against them in the home. In the Gaza Strip, the Egyptian penal code on adultery applies, which allows for reduced punishment on violence against women.

Women’s economic opportunities are also heavily constrained.

Palestinian women’s participation in the labour market is the lowest among all Middle Eastern and north African countries, with an employment rate at an appalling 14.7 per cent. According to a study by the

Palestinians was reinforced by the image of an (oppressed) hand turned away from a double-locked door. The Palestinians have it more than hard – they have no way out; they are “locked-in.”

This reality of human hardship is what Daily authors, and thus artists, have tended to see as the crux of the Palestinian crisis, more than the letter of the laws written for the Palestinians (though these are important in their own right.) While Daily art comprises diverse media, political articles often feature illustrations or collage, which allow for a more imaginative, symbolic depiction of “real” conflicts.

In some sense it makes the conflicts less real. In another, it makes them more meaningful. Either way, it is advantageous for The Daily’s political artists, since they must communicate with their artwork the same entangled conflicts (racism, sexism, heteronormativity) and the same forward-looking, often distant ideals (for example, equality) that authors articulate in their writings.

whether this word might be misplaced.

The unfolding debate on Palestine and mixed reactions to The Daily’s coverage of the frenzied and surprisingly catty SSMU elections have led to questions about the limits to The Daily’s say in political and moral issues.

In the first place, The Daily should not have one single opinion on any subject. The Daily is available for students to introduce events and issues – in news, culture, and science – to the student body.

It is then the paper’s responsibility to dig deeper into the issues. The Daily invites authors and readers to comment on the issues introduced in the moral context of the Statement of Principles, which is to say with an eye to power relations, but also from their own perspective.

Women’s Affairs Center, 88 per cent of women in the region have been denied their inheritance.

This is not to say that it’s never legitimate to critique Israeli policy or to express sympathy for the people suffering in Palestine or Gaza.

Both are necessary elements of a fruitful and honest discourse about the Middle East. But we ought to think critically about who and what we support unconditionally.

The simplistic vilification of Israel and glorification of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas does violence to sexual minorities and women who continue to suffer tremendously in the region.

Riva Gold’s thoughts appear in this space every week. Write her at littlebitter@mcgilldaily.com.

The politics of imagery Public editor Mike Prebil

W

hile the hundred-some reasons to vote on the cover of the “Vote for…” issue (March 8) were generally less eye-catching than the Big-Brotheresque Martin Ssempa who appeared on the preceding issue’s cover (March 4), peering down on two gay smoochers in a Ugandan flag-themed bedspread, they were not really subdued, apolitical, or anything like that.

The cover itself doesn’t tell you to vote “for” or “against” anything, but a regular reader probably has some idea of the significance of the various terms in Daily journalism.

“Activists” are against inequality: good. “Dodging the question” is done by oppressors: bad. “Opacity” is what we have: bad; “transparency” is what we want: good.

Art in The Daily has a similar capacity to evoke a quick response.

Though art with a “cause” tends to draw our attention, not all artwork in The Daily has a bone to pick – art also exists in The Daily for art’s sake.

Still, the less political categories of Daily imagery are not necessarily apolitical. From Health & Education to Sci+Tech, to Compendium! (see March 15) and the photos used for News stories, we have seen that choice of imagery, like choice of word, can be a political statement.

T

he political images that accompany articles in The Daily derive from the struggles of marginalized communities, against “oppressors,” in “issues and events most media ignore,” (Statement of Principles, 2.3).

In “Locking the doors of the Knesset,” (Commentary, March 6) the indignation at restricted “civic and economic participation” for

A

n editorial “abstention” (March 4) got us thinking about the use of the word “apartheid” in the context of Palestinian affairs, and

T

he year has seen sensational stories where it has been easy to make a moral pronouncement.

Perhaps it’s been a bad couple of years for humankind. But if The Daily serves us well, we also know the folly of this kind of declaration in light of the smallness, the essentially a-global nature, of our lives at McGill.

In this world, who are we anyway?

As some seek again to ban a pro-life group in Canada (“Are we complicit in marginalization?,” March 18), in Turkey, trips abroad for artificial insemination (already illegal in the country) are criminalized. As our drugs issue goes to print with new approaches to addiction and drug medication (“Addicts helping addicts,” March 15), five million Russians are hooked, a number that threatens to grow as the drug war recedes from Afghanistan to splash more on Mexico. While a woman fights for the right to wear the niqab in French classes in Quebec (“Muslim women don’t need saving from themselves,” March 18), it is forced on millions of women elsewhere, who will probably never go to school. And Israel – maddeningly, inexplicably – continues to encroach on Palestine.

Perhaps the reality will be that we cannot really dictate our morality to people who are a world away from us and our way of life. What would we do in a world like that?

Mike Prebil writes in this space every other week. Send him your thoughts post-haste – the semester’s wrapping up soon: public.editor@mcgilldaily.com.

Want more Commentary? Go to mcgilldaily.com to read Julia Fishlock’s take on the Vancouver Games one month later and the full version of Sheetal Pathak’s piece on the niqab.

10Commentary

The McGill Daily, Monday, March 22, 2010

POINT/COUNTERPOINT

Hate speech: to ban or not to ban?

Interested in debates on similar topics? The McGill Debating Union holds debates open to the public every Monday at 6:00 p.m., in Shatner 302.

Linda El Halabi is a U1 Political Science and International Development Studies student. Write her at linda.elhalabi@mail.mcgill.ca. Carol St-Gelais is a U1 English student. Write him at carol.st-gelais@mail.mcgill.ca.

Linda El Halabi

W

hen someone defends the view that hate speech should be banned, you can almost see the response coming: “Banning hate speech is bad because it limits freedom of speech.”

That old reasoning goes like this: the value of democracy, supposedly, is in its ability to give everyone a chance to express themselves verbally, whatever that may entail.

Now, that’s bogus. You’d think people would have learned from the past, that they would know how weak democracy is against abuses of power like fascism, how it allows fascism to grow and gain popular support, and how democracy can eventually be broken by the same forces it helped foster. It all starts with disgusting slogans such as “The Jews are our misfortune” or qualifying Jewish people as a “subhuman race.” What do you get after a while? Six million dead in one of history’s most atrocious tragedies. Over three decades, Hutu children in Rwanda learned how to hate their Tutsi classmates from party propaganda, from radio stations, from their teachers, and from their parents at home. What was the result? A million dead and thousands of refugees in an enormous humanitarian crisis. This is what hate speech does. This is how genocides begin. This is why any form of speech that incites hatred and violence should be banned.

When we give the state the responsibility to protect our rights and freedoms, above all we are asking it to preserve our security and dignity as human beings. Hate speech in Germany is unconstitutional because citizens there refuse to allow antidemocratic forces to use the protection of the state to undermine it. In Canada, any law limiting freedom of speech is revoked on the basis of frustrating “the pursuit of truth, participation in the community, or individual self-fulfillment and human flourishing,” according to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

There is absolutely nothing in hate

speech fitting this description. All hate speech does is create a destructive environment where human dignity is endangered, where the individuals targeted are reduced to nothing more than the stigmatized features of the attacked group, suppressing their diversity of character, suppressing their right to be respected. Human dignity is worth limiting that has that effect on people.

Concerns about human security also make limiting speech worthwhile. When extremist clerics preach in public spaces to the youth of the Muslim community, commanding them to join jihad forces, and when they gain so much attention that their image is almost glamorized, it is the state’s duty to intervene.

When the media bombards us with images of these clerics shouting “death to democracy,” as the United Kingdom’s Omar Bakri does, we should never forget that these words were also shouted a few decades ago by a deranged person in Germany who actually succeeded in bringing death to much more than just democracy. No one doubts the effects of state propaganda, even of commercial advertising on people’s psyche. Can we be naive enough to ignore the effects of hate speech?

There is, of course, another side of the story. When these clerics get all the attention in the media, they incite violence against Muslims. With their distorted understanding of Islam, they make their faith sound as if it were mainstream, marginalizing moderate Muslims.

Hate speech not only suppresses the victims’ rights, but also the community from which the speaker comes.

A cycle of hatred is thus created.

Because multiculturalism and democracy are primordial values Canada wishes to protect, hate speech must be banned once and for all.

Carol St-Gelais

A

society’s level of tolerance for freedom of expression is necessarily linked to the expression of unpopular ideas, since popular ideas will always be protected by virtue of their very popularity.

Hate speech laws exist to protect people from violence, but it seems more likely that people who are willing to commit crimes against a person based on their nationality, race, sex, et cetera, probably did not decide to do so because of an Internet article. It is more likely that these people were unstable to begin with. It would be absurd to claim that the average person will go from being a law-abiding citizen to committing discriminatory assaults based on what they read on a white-supremacist web site, for example.

Apart from their complete lack of actual effect, hate speech laws are problematic because what constitutes hate speech is utterly arbitrary. Most complaints are arbitrated by the Canadian Human Rights Commission, which applies much less rigorous standards than criminal hate speech trials.

Under this model, people file complaints against their political or ideological opponents. This is a serious problem for a free society: that you can tell on someone for hurting your feelings, when in fact, there might be some truth or value to their criticism.

The right to freedom of expression is fundamentally important to a democratic society, but hate speech

laws place the “right” to not be offended by speech ahead of the right of expression. If offence is the actual metric that we are applying, then there should be no speech at all, since anything could be interpreted as offensive or capable of inciting hatred.

What’s more, under the current system, we seem to grant more power to those that have a lower “hurt feelings” threshold. For example, communities and groups that think it is valuable not to respond to hatred in any way have no power even if horrible things are said about them. On the other hand, individuals that have no problem complaining about the slightest offence hold the power to stifle any expression, and their power lies in how easily they are offended.

Even if one does not buy that free speech is important in this case, the effect that these laws have on hateful speech is tremendously harmful. Firstly, the people that hold these fringe views can claim that the government is persecuting them because of their views. Hate speech laws also push fringe ideas into the mainstream: the ideas that were previously expressed in the most extreme way possible are now disguised.

Hateful speech still originates from the same underlying hatred, but instead of being easy to identify and ignore, it’s now wrapped up in an appealing package.

Worst of all, in order to defend free speech, the mainstream needs to reaffirm the rights of racists to express their ideas. Thus those who hold these destructive ideas can gain the additional credibility of being defenders of free speech.

ll y

Sa L in |T he Mc G il lD ail y

12Features

Canada’s forgotten disease Stephanie Law investigates why First Nations, Inuit, and immigrant communities are disproportionately affected by tuberculosis

T

o most Canadians, tuberculosis (TB) sounds like a foreign disease, a disease of the past like polio

or cholera. But to certain minority populations in Canada, tuberculosis is as prevalent as the common cold.

“[Tuberculosis] is forgotten by most, but not gone. [There is] a new tuberculosis case in Canada every six

hours,” said Edward Ellis, manager of TB prevention and control at the Public Health Agency of Canada.

With about 1,500 cases reported each year and a six per cent mortality rate, that’s equivalent to one death every two weeks. With statistics like these, how is it that most of us are so unaware of this disease? The answer is quite simple: tuberculosis mostly affects marginalized and newcomer populations – aboriginal

Sally Lin | The McGill Daily

people, the homeless, immigrants, and refugees.

Inequity in infection “Across Canada, 70 per cent of the TB cases are foreign-born, most of the rest are aboriginal people, and only about 10 per cent are non-aboriginal Canadian-born – a rapidly shrinking proportion,” said Dick Menzies, director of the Respiratory Division at the McGill University Health Centre.

Evidently, tuberculosis has been nearly eradicated within the non-aboriginal Canadian-born population. High rates of infection have remained in other populations.

A 2008 Public Health Agency of Canada report, released in January, found that the rate of TB is 31 times higher in First Nations populations than in non-aboriginal Canadianborn persons, and a mind-blowing 186 times higher in Inuit populations.

Don’t believe claims of Canada’s low tuberculosis rates. Among the Inuit, the rate is about 150 cases per 100,000 persons each year, which is equivalent to the average rate in sub-Saharan Africa.

“When the Inuit have high tuberculosis rates, Canada can’t say that they don’t have a high TB rate. The [non-aboriginal] popula-

tion of Canada dilutes the rate so much that it becomes very misleading,” said Gail Turner, director of health services in Nunatsiavut and chair of the National Inuit Committee on Health. “The bottom line is that the rate among Inuit is unacceptably high.”

The government of Canada has set a goal to reduce TB incidence rate from 4.7 cases per 100,000 persons in 2007 to 3.6 cases per 100,000 persons by 2015. To do that, the incidence rate among the aboriginal people and the Inuit, in particular, will have to be significantly reduced. But even with a target of 3.6 per 100,000, the inequity and unequal share of the TB burden will persist.

What you should know about TB Tuberculosis is a treatable and curable disease in Canada, but treatment is long, intensive, and can have toxic side effects.

TB is an infection that usually affects the lungs, but will occasionally attack other parts of the body. It can be separated into two categories: latent TB and active TB. Latent TB means you’re infected but the disease isn’t actively affecting your health and is not contagious. A lot more people have latent TB than

you might think – I, for one, have it. Latent TB does not necessarily become active TB. In a healthy person like me, developing active TB is highly unlikely; it’s as likely as winning the lottery jackpot. Active TB is contagious, but not highly so, and usually only comes about in people who lack the capacity to stay healthy. If left untreated, active TB will kill 50 per cent of its victims.

There is treatment for both latent and active TB. Going on treatment for the latent type is a choice – recommended if you are at risk of developing active TB due to certain circumstances such as homelessness.

On the other hand, treatment for active TB is mandatory; the public health agency is obligated to enforce it.

“TB is the only disease in Canada that the public health authority has the actual authority to contain an individual. So for H1N1 or HIV, they can recommend how to behave, but they can’t force you; but with TB they can enforce confinement,” said Mary Ellen Macdonald, a medical anthropologist and professor at McGill.

The good news is that the six to eight month-long treatment for active TB is com-

pletely free.

“It’s free because the public health benefit of people taking tuberculosis treatment outweighs the cost of the drugs,” said Menzies.

Even though treatment is free for patients, tuberculosis is extremely expensive for Canada. Health Canada estimated that it costs $47,000 to treat each person with the disease.

Unjust treatment in the past European settlers brought epidemic TB to Canada in the 1700s, and from there, the infection was slowly spread to the aboriginal people by these newcomers.

The settlers quickly herded the aboriginal communities into tiny, crowded reserves and relocated their children to poorly-ventilated residential schools. Under these conditions, the TB epidemic spread like wild fire. Death rates in the ‘30s and ‘40s exceeded 700 deaths per 100,000 persons among the aboriginal people, and over 8,000 per 100,000 children that were confined to residential schools – these numbers are among the highest ever recorded rates of TB in the world.

To make matters worse, treatment wasn’t

14 Testimonials

In their own words....

McGill alums discuss The Daily Jennifer Markowitz, ’09

Sam Boskey, ’70

In retrospect, I didn’t take my education at McGill very seriously. If it weren’t for The Daily, this would have created a more serious problem than it has. The Daily challenged and enlightened me when I began reading it as a first year. In my second year, as a writer, it revealed to me the McGill and Montreal communities – whole parts of the University, city, and their cultures that would have otherwise remained unknown to me. I began editing for The Daily in my third year, and from this experience I received the education that I most value now. In addition to continuing to open my eyes to political and social issues occurring in the world around me, The Daily taught me about commitment, community, and collaboration. This is what I remember when I remember McGill. It’s what I’m sure every contributor of the past 99 years remembers as well.

The newspaper has invited readership, criticism, and participation for nearly a century. That’s a lot of years, a lot of students, a lot of opportunities. It has become an institution, one that is valuable for its contributors, readers, and critics. For just a dollar more and for the impact it provides, The Daily is something worth keeping around.

I guess I knew before coming to McGill that I would get involved with The Daily. I had been editor of my high school newspaper and my mother had written book reviews for The Daily back in the ’30s.

By the time I came, The Daily was clearly a “political” paper, covering the increasing concerns of student associations across North America. In the days before Internet and highspeed data transmission (the Canadian University Press communicated using a Teletype machine with mimeographed supplements), The Daily News editor would scan the New York Times and the Toronto Star for news of protests, occupations, and victories.

The Daily office was a warm community, and although not all staff (reporters, photographers, sports writers, etc.) were interested in the editorial politics, everyone felt that the paper was a learning community: neophytes walking in the door could be guaranteed attention, the veterans showing them the ropes.

The Daily itself was news, since much of the less-than-leftwing community at McGill constantly attacked it and every so often, Student Council would try to muzzle The Daily in one manner or another.

The Daily in the late ’60s was at the forefront of presenting certain “dangerous” ideas to the McGill community, which have, of course, become part of the mainstream since then: the right of students to participate in university governance (the administration’s resistance provoking student strikes and occupations); concern with the close ties between the Board of Governors and certain engineering researchers with the military industry; the place of women in the university community; the isolation of McGill from the effervescent changes in Quiet Revolution Quebec and the beginning of the independence movement; the ongoing resistance to the war in Vietnam – there were many American draft resisters amongst McGill students – and Canadian government complicity and the advent of recreational drugs and the “youth counterculture.”

The Daily could be counted on to cover events and present information and opinion from here and abroad, broadening horizons for students, many of whom were fresh out of high school in those pre-CEGEP days – all this while still providing witty coverage of sports teams (in my first year, a Daily contingent had its reserved tier at Redmen football games!) and a multitude of editorial cartoons.

Jennifer Markowitz was a Daily News editor, 2007-2008, and Coordinating editor, 2008-2009.

Charlie Clark, ’76 In 1996, exactly 20 years after I graduated from McGill, the alumni of The McGill Daily staff held its first-ever reunion. It coincided with, but was completely separate from, the official McGill entre-nous in Montreal the same weekend. Besides the expected resurrection of sentimental memories and renewed friendships, one regrettable observation leapt out at me: there was a generation gap. The gathering of some 200 was dominated by the baby-boomers (who attended McGill from the mid-’60s to the early ’80s), who practically ignored the venerable alumni from as far back as the ’30s as well as the current Daily staffers who were loyal enough to pay to attend. To my embarrassment, the dramas of ’60s-era radical politics and faded intra-staff politicking overshadowed any opportunity for Daily veterans of differing generations to come together. Since then, many friends from my era (I was Features editor in the class of 1976) have been disappointed to learn that the publication founded in 1911 that gave us so much to live for was no longer daily and was in perpetual trouble over funding. If I could get one message across to McGill’s current administration and student body, it would be that having a first-class daily newspaper is a vital component of a world-class university experience. It is an experience that transcends generations. I wish I’d appreciated this decades ago.

Charlie Clark lives in Arlington, Virginia. He has worked for Congressional Quarterly, the Washington Post, the National Journal, and Time-Life Books.

Joseph Watts, ’09 I remember a conversation I had with a dean once in which I asked why McGill doesn’t offer journalism as part of its curriculum. “We don’t teach ‘how-to’ courses here,” he said. Besides being pompous, he didn’t make much sense. Is that why there is no fine arts department? I sure hope there are “how-to” courses in something complex, like neurosurgery. Can you picture a prof standing next to a student with a hacksaw over a cadaver saying, “What do you think Derrida would have to say about methods of accessing the brain?” Well it is McGill, after all.

One thing I learned during my time at McGill is that not much the administration says or does makes sense – which is why I was so relieved to find an independent outlet within the McGill community to exercise my journalistic curiosities and, heck, even teach me a thing or two.

The editors use the phrase “The McGill Daily School of Journalism” to describe an annual spate of lectures and workshops offered to members of the Daily Publications Society (that’s any student at McGill), but it also refers to the paper itself. Without a structured, academic forum to learn about the importance and possibilities of journalism, the student body turns to its newspapers to foster debate, offer perspective, and inform opinion.

Every hand that works to produce an issue of The Daily – editors, designers, cartoonists, writers, and those they interview – invests in the promotion of community dialogue and profits from the experience of its creation. Detractors often question the relevance of an independent news source paid for by the student body. They see a campus divided into Trib readers and Daily readers, and form stereotypes accordingly. I assure you though, McGill needs The Daily every bit as much as The Daily needs its contributors and your $6 a semester.

Besides offering an opposing voice to an otherwise one-sided discourse, The Daily provides an exceptional training ground for a profession in dire need of quality journalists. Many alumnni have gone on to notable careers or prestigious journalism schools with only The Daily on their resumes. Their rallying cry of “a voice for the voiceless” strikes at the heart of journalism’s purpose and is the seed of journalistic integrity.

One dollar is hardly a price to put on The Daily’s invaluable service. Its absence would be an unpatchable hole in the fabric of McGill.

Joseph Watts was Daily Coordinating Culture editor, 2004-2006, and a Daily columnist, 2007-2009.

Sam Boskey was a McGill Daily staffer, 1966-69, and a Montreal city councillor, 19821998.

Ira Dubinsky ’05 For the last five years I’ve worked as a senior advisor to Jack Layton and the New Democrats on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. I’ve had the opportunity to work directly with elected officials, heads of government, and members of the national media, and every day I feel like I can have an impact on public policy and public discourse in Canada. But I want you to know that I couldn’t have arrived here without the incredible experience I gained working at The McGill Daily. Being involved in campus media is one of the best ways to get real-world experience and develop skills you could never learn in class or writing essays. The student press is one of the few places where you’ll find truly free and independent critical analysis, and it is a warm and welcoming environment in which to practice these much-needed skills. But more than anything, The Daily does an immeasurable service to the entire University community by reporting on the things happening around you and holding student leaders and University officials to account. The Daily is a valuable part of McGill and it deserves your support.

Ira Dubinsky was a Daily News editor, 2002-2004.

Benjamin Errett, ’01 The McGill Daily is the finest journalism school in the country. I speak from my time there, from 1999 to 2001, but also based on the graduates I’ve worked with and met. It’s also the cheapest – once you’ve paid your McGill tuition, that is. For a few dollars a year, you can get ink on your hands, carry on a proud tradition, and maybe score a few free CDs. It’s a good deal.

Its editors, writers, and reporters learn all the obvious stuff, but they also learn how to deal with a sometimes obstinate landlord, to compete in a crowded marketplace on campus and beyond, to share resources with their colleagues at the University’s only Frenchlanguage publication, and to run an independent organization dedicated to high ideals.

I was lucky enough to go straight from The Daily to a job at a national newspaper. I made life-long friends there and, most importantly, met my wife in its grubby little offices.

But even if you never set foot past its doors in the Shatner basement, The Daily makes your campus a better place. It does this by covering student groups and events, giving space to up-and-coming artists and writers – it published a promising young poet named Leonard Cohen back in the day – and, despite the fact that it’s nearly 100-years-old, it has energy that would put most senior citizens to shame.

Another dollar for The Daily will give you another reason to be proud of where you went to university.

Benjamin Errett was Daily Features editor 1998-1999, Coordinating News editor 19992000, and Coordinating editor 2000-2001, and is managing editor, Features, for the National Post.

The McGill Daily, Monday, March 22, 2010

15

Fiona Reid, ’72

Peter Kuitenbrouwer, ’84

I hadn’t encountered terrorism first-hand prior to that year. It was 1970, my second year as a McGill undergrad. It was terrifying and unreal at the same time. We read The McGill Daily for news of what was going on and to interpret the seemingly unbelievable events as they were unfolding: The War Measures Act. Armed soldiers in camouflage, on streets of concrete, amid brick buildings!

Friends disappeared. They’d been hauled off to jail. I read of Robert Lemieux, the lawyer for the FLQ, in The Daily, and one day was hitchhiking on Sherbrooke, and it was he who gave me a lift. I recognized his face from the paper. I will always remember the slow deliberate way he said “Oui, je m’appelle Robert Lemieux.”

The McGill Daily was our student voice, our source of news concerning McGill, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and the world. It mattered.

It is no surprise that engineering students at McGill are campaigning against The Daily. It was ever thus. During my tenure, we used to finish laying out the paper (waxing stories and headlines onto layout sheets) after midnight, and leave the flats in a box by the security desk in the Student Union for a cab driver to pick up to take to the printing plant. Enterprising engineers, who got wise to this practice, one night snuck up to the box and replaced the front page with their joke front page, which ultimately was the one that the printers printed and that got distributed all across campus.

One wishes that today’s engineering students were as enterprising and creative as their forebears; instead, they seem to have taken the road of obstruction and opposition to one of the most storied institutions of McGill University: The McGill Daily.

The whole reason I went to McGill in the first place is because McGill was the only university in Canada with a daily student newspaper. I knew I wanted to be a journalist, but I wanted to learn journalism on the job, not in a classroom. So I enrolled in political science and went into The Daily office. At the time I was a fire-breathing capitalist, devotee of Ayn Rand, and believer in the free market. Within a few months, a combination of radical Daily politics and poli-sci professor Sam Noumoff had turned me into a rabid communist, probably one of the most dramatic ideological transmogrifications in contemporary student history. And now I’m at the National Post, so go figure.

At any rate, The McGill Daily also taught me the skill, and the thrill, of journalism. We took on Jean Drapeau, the mayor; we advocated for women’s rights and against apartheid; we uncovered a plot by a couple of microbiologists to use McGill’s good name to pump a stock on the Amsterdam stock market for a machine that allegedly extracted gold from sea water. The vice-principal invited us into his office and offered to postpone all our exams, if only we would stop the crusade!

We had no end of fun; more importantly we kept McGill honest and our fellow students informed.

Today I live in Toronto and work as the city columnist for the National Post. I am troubled to learn that The McGill Daily, the newspaper, is in trouble. Civilizations and cultures depend on a free press to survive. McGill needs many newspapers, distributed in boxes across campus; most especially, it needs The Daily.

I urge McGill students to vote for the $1 fee increase.

Fiona Reid is an actor and Member of the Order of Canada.

Shannon Kiely, ’09 Newspapers matter. They matter to writers, they matter to readers, they matter to the people featured in their pages – in pictures and in words.

As a writer and editor of The Daily, I got to know my city and my world in a way I never could have from undergraduate classes in McGill’s huge lecture halls. In 2007-2008, we used to joke around the office that The Daily was McGill’s journalism school. From one vantage point, the office certainly does look like a teaching institution – students learn from one another in a non-hierarchical, equal opportunity setting. From another, The Daily is a service to McGill students and the Montreal community at large, offering an independent media portrayal of issues that are often made invisible in the mainstream press. It is because of both these roles that The Daily is an institution worth preserving.

The Daily makes students into grown-ups. McGill Daily writers and editors have a responsibility both to the people they write about and the people they write for to deliver accessible stories. I took this responsibility so seriously that it kept me up at night.

When I edited at The Daily, my stress dreams always revolved around typos, stories falling through, and misinformation getting through the four sets of eyes that edit each and every article printed in The Daily’s pages.

Sometimes, my nightmares came true. We don’t always get it right – few papers do.

But the commitment that I saw from my fellow editors and writers is unparalleled by anything I’ve seen out here in the “real world” in the year since I left The Daily. Editors and writers often made themselves available at all hours of Wednesday and Friday night to make third and fourth edits on stories before they went to print. We sought out writers from different departments and demographics. We sat with our writers while editing their stories in the hopes of seeing them improve. We spent the first half hour of every weekly meeting looking back at the previous week’s papers to see where we went wrong and what we could do better next time. We chased after stories we thought were important, and we attended to the ones writers and the McGill community brought to our attention.

Sometimes, we wrote because we saw the smokescreen around an issue that deserved more comprehensive and critical consideration. Other times, we wrote because we wanted to represent the stories of people whose stories don’t come through in the mainstream media.

In the year that I lived in the windowless McGill Daily basement, I was a student of The McGill Daily School of Journalism. It was the most valuable aspect of my four years at McGill. Every student at McGill deserves that same opportunity.

Shannon Kiely was The Daily’s Coordinating News editor, 2008-09.

Barbara Yaffe, ’74 The McGill Daily provided me with my first brush with journalism some 40 years ago.

And without question, allowed me to have a lot of good fun poking into the business of others, a pursuit I discovered at The Daily that was right up my alley!

Having a student publication on campus enables ink-stained wannabes to get a taste of the real thing and helps them understand if journalism truly is their calling. It’s also a crucial communications vehicle for students and teachers.

Not that my reports were all that “crucial.” I wrote about the McGill Redmen, hoping, of course, to get into the dressing rooms. But in fact, I did a lot more than that – I found my calling.

Barbara Yaffe went on to work at the Montreal Gazette, the Globe and Mail, and CBC-TV National News. She is now a columnist at the Vancouver Sun.

Alyssa Rashbaum, ’03 College years are fraught with bad decisions, but joining the staff of The McGill Daily is one choice I remain proud of to this day. The Daily turned me from rookie band interviewer to actual professional (employable) writer and editor for publications including MTV News, Vibe Magazine, Spin Magazine, Billboard.com, and others. The paper’s basement locale is more than an office; it’s a hands-on journalism school in a university that doesn’t offer one. With its staff of dedicated editors, The Daily provides the student body with an invaluable link to school politics, local politics, city culture, and more, and gives students the opportunity to become published writers in a paper that has a higher circulation (not to mention more widespread respect) than some national publications.

Alyssa Rashbaum was a Daily Culture editor, 2001-2002, and Coordinating Culture editor, 2002-2003.

Peter Kuitenbrouwer is the Toronto city columnist for The National Post.

Brendan Weston, BA ’86, MA ’88 What first drew me was that The McGill Daily was all about taking chances. The paper was about digging for the hard facts and about daring to tell the uncomfortable truths.

Some of those truths were unethical acts with only thin connections to the University.

Others were happening right on campus. But the paper soon teaches anyone venturing into its offices that its ability to independently inform students and staff about issues affecting the campus is only part of its value.

The Daily teaches that authentic learning requires that one verify facts for oneself, even if this is with guidance, and that it is best if it’s at least partly by making something tangible, not just in private debate. Only when you can say something in plain and concise language and can teach it well to others do you know you really understand it. The Daily’s value as a counterweight on campus, I think, stems from this last part.

Journalistic accounts are an antidote to the anaesthesia of musty academic and bureaucratic lingo.

I hope the newspaper is able to retain its full mission, regardless of its format. The campus and the whole city need it now as much as ever. Back when I was involved, I believed that few places outside the student press were willing to dig for the harder truths. Later media work only confirmed that ever-fewer parts of the commercial or state media will fund or publish such investigations; and that none now take to task, rather than fawn over, society’s elite. These once-standard media aims deserve The Daily as their champion, I think, if only because the University’s students still deserve unadulterated truths.

Brendan Weston was Senior News Editor at The Daily in 1986 and Editor-in-Chief in 1987-88. He has worked for the National Post, the Globe and Mail, CBC-TV, CTV, the Mirror, and Report on Business Magazine.

Julian Sher, ’75 I signed up as a young reporter for The Daily back in 1970 and hardly left the basement offices for the next few years of my university education. It remains among my fondest memories of my McGill years. I knew I wanted to be a journalist and I figured that was best way to learn – it was a journalism school every day and every night.

I learned how to write, how to edit, how to lay out pages. More importantly, I learned how to question (everything!), how to raise controversial issues, and how to combine fairness and accuracy with a passion for story-telling. We did some great things, we did some foolish things – and we became better journalists for it.

My years at The Daily helped prepare me for a career at the CBC and for my work since, as an investigative book author and freelance TV writer and director. From covering Afghanistan to the Iraq war, from the Hells Angels to child predators, I still carry with me the lessons I learned at The Daily.

Love it or hate it, agree with it or disagree with it – it doesn’t matter. The Daily plays a vital role in McGill’s life and in the formation of the next generation of journalists.

Keep it going and keep it strong.

Julian Sher is an investigative journalist and book author. He has written for the New York Times, USA Today, and the Globe and Mail. Visit him at juliansher.com.

Art Essay

UPSIDE

Aquil Virani

The McGill Daily, Monday, March 22, 2010

DOWN

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Science+Technology

The McGill Daily, Monday, March 22, 2010

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Effective aid overseas Engineers Without Borders stresses importance of sustained volunteer projects

Panelists discussed why some efforts succeed and some fail, as well as cases where politics inhibit development potential.

Emma Brown Sci+Tech Writer

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his summer, McGill’s chapter of Engineers Without Borders (EWB) will be sending three junior fellows (JFs) to work on development projects in rural African communities. Almost 40 JFs from across Canada will participate in the program, along with EWB’s 33 long-term volunteers stationed in several countries in southern and western Africa. Placements with partner organizations are chosen based on the projects’ longterm sustainability and capacity to meet the local population’s needs.

Armed with a rather large information package and a week of predeparture training in Toronto, the JFs are also mentored by the previous year’s participants on everything from cultural differences to the basic principles of agriculture.

JFs gain first-hand experience and feedback on the types of development efforts that are successful. panel discussion presented

by EWB on March 11 brought together two prominent members of the international development community to discuss exactly why some projects succeed and others do not. “Perspectives: The Realities and Intricacies of Development and

A

Aid” featured MP and Liberal Party critic on international cooperation Glen Pearson, and the executive director of Oxfam Canada, Robert Fox. Attended by almost 200 students and members of the public, the talk provided a lively forum for the two panelists to discuss their experiences with development and aid.

Pearson gave a frank – albeit less than shocking – examination of the inadequate state of Ottawa’s current discourse on aid. According to the MP, there are several areas where politics hinder the potential of Canada’s foreign aid initiatives.

“International development has become the victim of politics,” he said, expressing fears that global issues are losing attention within the political arena as politicians vie more for votes rather than values.

Pearson also discussed the lack of accountability and transparency within the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). A recent investigation conducted by the auditor general was unable to untangle the financial records of CIDA, and could not come to any conclusions as to approximately how much of the money allocated for aid in Africa makes its way back into Canadian interests.

While admitting that government actions regarding aid efforts can

sometimes be misguided, Pearson concluded by emphasizing that there is still a place for government: in cooperation with non-governmental organizations (NGOs). “NGOs often don’t have the clout to change human rights standards in the world or to provide access…. It’s going to take governments to do that. The problem has been, all along, that governments have stopped to lead, and then never follow their NGOs that actually have the expertise,” he said.

teered in Burkina Faso last summer.

Tavernese was able to help his host office with the ins and outs of using Microsoft Excel, but JFs’ duties vary in order to make sure they are adding value to what is already happening within the local organizations.

Robert Fox, with an NGO’s perspective on aid effectiveness, spoke about a need to change ourselves on a global scale – by shifting power and promoting gender equality and women’s rights. He pointed out that

“We now focus on people rather than technology” Luigi Tavernese EWB member

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riginally, EWB volunteers brought technical expertise to their host countries, but a shift in the organization’s principles has led to the kind of work that JFs do today.

“We now focus on people rather than technology; this is a change that the organization underwent in its early phases. Our role with respect to [our host] organizations is to find in what niche we can help them do what they’re doing better, and from there technology sometimes gets involved,” said Luigi Tavernese, a U3 Mechanical Engineering student who volun-

some NGOs are inadvertently working against progress. “I will be the first to acknowledge that within NGOs, you will find the good, the bad, and the ugly,” said Fox. “There are all sorts of NGOs on the planet that are doing work that is absolutely counter to the interests of the people...for whom they are doing their work.”

Anaïs Couasnon, U2 Civil Engineering, spent last summer in Burkina Faso and agreed with Fox on the importance of empowering women in developing countries. Part of Couasnon’s summer was spent working on a program to help women

Sally Lin | The McGill Daily

farmers develop record-keeping and management skills. Women farmers in her area would grow hibiscus to be dried and then exported to Western countries for profit. She saw the direct results of women gaining profit from their farms, as the profit would be used to send their children to school and help begin alleviating the cycle of poverty.

Both projects are representative of EWB’s continued efforts to effect sustainable change through its overseas volunteer program.

According to Fox, this is something many organizations are unable to achieve. “Too many NGOs follow the trap of ‘white man from away comes down to the south, tells them what they don’t have, what they’re missing, what they need.’ It’s a recipe for disaster. It’s a recipe for replicating, perpetuating, and exacerbating global poverty,” he said.

Through EWB’s system of providing ongoing feedback on their work, they hope to continue to provide effective development tools and strategies to those who need them most.

McGill’s Engineers Without Borders won Chapter of the Year at January’s national conference. If you’re interested in getting involved with the organization, or just learning more about the work they do, check out their web site: mcgill.ewb.ca.

Science+Technology

The McGill Daily, Monday, March 22 , 2010

SCI-DE BAR

Off the deep end When scientific genius goes to extremes

Plus or minus sigma

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MC2. He hasn’t taken a math class beyond high school and is mostly self-educated, but he has this crazy feeling that he’s right, and spent 12 months working on his concept.

University of Miami physics professor Brant Watson explains Berenz’s mathematical mistakes to him, and when Berenz still refuses to back down, Watson counters with a simple reality check: “If [Einstein] used MC, there would be no A-bomb on Hiroshima.” The conversation devolved into name-calling when Watson said, “One of the hallmarks of schizophrenics is that they get a good idea, and then they don’t investigate whether it’s right or not.”

Pursuing one’s ideas and pushing a hypothesis just a little bit further in the face of a set of contradictory data is not always a bad thing. Get a paper rejected for publication? Take another look, modify. It’s when one refuses modification of any kind that there’s a problem. A creation scientist starts out with the unmovable assumption that Noah’s flood is the reason for the Grand Canyon, and no amount of geology is going to meet that end. But luckily for Nash, there was a solution to the faith in aliens: medicine. And for Berenz, a time limit on his excursion into the world of physics: he gave himself 12 months.

There’s something about let-

Global Water Issues Monday, March 22, 7 p.m.

Biosphère, 160 Tour-de-L’Isle, Île Sainte-Hélène For World Water Day, the Biosphère presents two seminars and a visit of the “Canada’s Waterscapes” exhibit. Michel Poulin, a researcher at the Canadian Museum of Nature, will give the first seminar in French.

The second, by Mark Servos, scientific director of the Canadian Water Network, will be in English.

Green Revolution Thursday, March 25, 4 p.m.

Raymond building, 21111 Lakeshore, Macdonald campus Hosted by the plant science department, Gurdev S. Khush, writer and awardwinning researcher, will present a seminar entitled “Plant Breeding and Global Food Security.” Currently an adjunct professor at U.C. Davis, Khush is responsible for the development of hundreds of productive rice strains that now produce 60 per cent of the world’s rice.

Shannon Palus

he notion of the mad scientist, the one that goes beyond the morphological features of frizzy hair and messy desk, is a common one. Whether it’s Charles Darwin pursuing his theory in the face of social alienation or university students downing espresso and doing problem sets into the early hours of the morning, there’s something about being a little bit off that goes with intelligence. “I wouldn’t have had good scientific ideas if I had thought more normally,” said John Nash in an interview in 2005.

Winning the 1994 Nobel Prize in economics for game theory, Nash also spent years trying to crack codes he believed were sent to him by aliens via the New York Times.

He was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1959. In that same 2005 interview, he cites Vincent van Gogh as a fellow genius with a mental disability.

What’s the difference between ideas that are creative and ideas that are crazy? If Nash perhaps became great at mathematics by trusting his instincts, letting new, revolutionary ideas take hold and grow, could this have also been the trait that led him to trust the voice – his own – that told him about the alien cohorts?

In a story on the radio show This American Life, electrician Bob Berenz explains that Einstein was wrong: E is really equal to MC, not

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Neuro Film Series Thursday, March 25, 6:30 p.m.

Montreal Neurological Institute, 3801 University Cognitive neuroscience pioneer Brenda Milner and National Film Board director Munro Ferguson will screen Memento and discuss what the film reveals about amnesia.

Coming Revolutions in Fundamental Physics Ariel Appel | The McGill Daily

ting your mind run loose when you’re doing math homework or writing an English paper, throwing caution to the wind and putting a little faith in your instincts.

Creativity – or completion of an open-ended problem set, or essay – requires departure from the normal: an alteration of a previous conception or train of thought, old ideas blended into a new breed.

But not every conjecture, not every mutation on an old thought, not every extrapolation is correct – and in fact, the majority are not correct. After all, not every rebel has a revolutionary notion.

Shannon Palus writes every other week. Share your genius and write her at plusorminussigma@mcgilldaily.com.

Friday, March 26, 3:30 p.m.

Keys auditorium, Rutherford Physics building David J. Gross, Nobel laureate and director of UCSB’s Institute for Theoretical Physics, discusses the present knowledge in elementary particle physics, the experimental revolutions that might occur at the Large Hadron Collider, and the state of string theory.

Glass in Nature

Go on now go walk out the door just turn around now ‘cause you’re not science anymore weren’t you the one who tried to hurt me with technology you think I’d crumble you think I’d lay down and die Oh no, not I Science will survive as long as I know how to love I know I’ll stay alive I’ve got all my science to live I’ve got all my technology to give and I’ll survive Sci+Tech will survive Get involved. Write. scitech@mcgilldaily.com.

Sunday, March 28, 2 p.m.

Redpath Museum auditorium Accompanying the launch of a new temporary exhibit, which highlights the museum’s collection of Blaschka glass models, the lecture will focus on the silica and the varied natural life in fossils from the Burgess Shale.

Environmental Refugees Sunday, April 11, 4 p.m.

Redpath Museum auditorium Sunday Afternoon Science Documentaries is screening The Refugees of the Blue Planet, which explores the right to a clean, sustainable environment.

Science+Technology

The McGill Daily, Monday, March 22, 2010

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Portrait of a lab rat Concordia talk explores scientific inquiry and rodents as art the three rats of “Embracing Animal” lived out the remainder of their lives under the care of the museum’s nightwatchman.

The aesthetic of the installation was also a focal point, making High’s work more of a piece of multimedia art than an experiment.

Banners commemorating the different varieties of transgenic rats used in laboratories were hung on the walls, and the ashes of the rats from previous exhibits were displayed in illuminated orbs, acting as a fitting memorial for the animals that make our discoveries possible.

The methodology of each discipline also differs. High states that she has a different philosophical approach to her work: “It’s as if I came at it backward, coming from my own experience and then transferring that to the research subject.” Woodside agrees, maintaining that the spontaneity and playfulness encouraged in the arts is not possible when conducting experiments: “The constraints of the scientific approach mean that you have to pre-think every step of the experiment,” and once approval has been granted, even the most minute change may mean months of paperwork.

However, both women agreed that they approach their work with the same intent, trying to understand the animal in order to better work through a theory. Both want the rats to be as healthy as possible and seek to fully appreciate the animals’ needs. “If you’re going to involve any animals in your research,” says Woodside, “you have to understand what the animal’s world is like.” This change in outlook is fully endorsed by her artistic counterpart.

But High is not the only artist borrowing scientific principles. A growing community of bio-artists continues to blur the line separating scientific inquiry and artistic expression, in an effort to enrich both fields. Science and its conclusions can validate the notions put forward by artists and, in turn, art disseminates those same conclusions to a broader audience not usually exposed to scientific findings.

Alyssa Favreau The McGill Daily

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hough they seem diametrically opposed, the sciences and the arts have a long and interrelated history.

For centuries, artists and scientists have taken each other’s work as inspiration, using ideas and hypotheses and building on them.

Leonardo da Vinci exemplified how science and art complement each other and allow for richer exploration, something which continues today.

Concordia is now hosting a series of discussions focusing on bio-artistry, and the second installment, titled “Of mice and transgenic rats in art and scientific research,” further explored the influence of visual aesthetics in scientific study. The lecture featured artist Kathy High and scientific researcher Barbara Woodside, director of Concordia’s Centre for Studies in Behavioural Neurobiology.

Through her work with transgenic rats – rodents injected with human genetic material – High aims to work through the artist’s personal hypotheses by mirroring scientific research.

Her latest work, “Embracing Animal,” was part of a larger exhibit shown at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, and featured a 10-month installation that created an ersatz laboratory.

The purpose of the installation was to determine if the rats could become healthy when in a new environment, regardless of their genetic predisposition to suffer from rheumatic disorders. The animals were treated with alternative medicines including homeopathy, wholesome food, and an environment specially designed to house the rats comfortably for an extended period of time.

Through this work, High also wished to reevaluate the traditional scientist-lab rat relationship, seeing these animals as research partners rather than a means to an end. Suffering from her own autoimmune disease, she empathized with the rats, stating, “We have injected human materials into them. We have a real kinship with these rats, and still they are the forgotten workers.”

However, the testing of High’s hypothesis was decidedly unscientific. There was no con-

Jerry Gu | The McGill Daily

trol group used and no comparison of data.

All observation was conducted informally, and a telepathic interspecies communicator was even brought in to gauge the rats’ response to

Faculty of Science - Research Innovation Office

INVITING all SCIENCE STUDENTS interested in • • •

cultivating their entrepreneurial skills, translating tech innovations into products, commercializing a technology

Join us for the next meeting of

Science TEC (Technology Entrepreneurship Club) Thursday, April 8th, 2010 12:00 to 2:00 pm Adams Building (corridor) 3450 University, Room 027 Also find out about the upcoming Montreal startupcamp 6 Info: Erica Besso (514) 398-3897

www.mcgill.ca/science/rio

the exhibit. Even the termination of the project did not follow standard scientific practice.

Whereas lab rats are generally killed, either to perform autopsies or to avoid contamination,

The third and final installment of Concordia’s Art, Science, and Technology speaker series, entitled “Transformation and biodiversity in art and biology,” will take place March 31 at 5 p.m. at the Loyola campus.

We’ve only got two Sci+Tech sections left this semester.

What do you wanna see? scitech@mcgilldaily.com

FREE PIZZA, POPCORN AND DRINKS

a film exploring life meaning Wednesday, March 24, 2010 at 2:30 p.m. and truth The Browning Version

THREETIL WE’REOUT

Brief Encounter

Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 2:30 p.m.

Join us for some thoughtful film watching in the Chaplaincy Services lounge, located on the 4th floor of the Brown Building (3600 McTavish, suite 4400). for more information: jeffrey.barlow@mcgill.ca / 514.398.4101 Ecumenical Chaplain on Facebook

YOU’VE GOT TIME

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Culture

The McGill Daily, Monday, March 22, 2010

22

Putting the old and the new on paper Concordia student show follows the progress of printmaking into a new age Ian Sandler Culture Writer

S

ince the dawn of the computer, the way art is produced has undergone a paradigm shift.

Thanks to futuristic techniques that would astonish the painters of old, art made of plain old ink on paper seems all but lost. But what of the modern printmaker, and the art form once venerated by all? In fact, printmaking lives on, evolving in Montreal’s art scene partly through the work of Concordia’s undergraduate print students. “INK | Masters Printmaking Exhibition,” an art show organized by the students themselves, illuminates the revitalization of an ever-changing field. Incorporating techniques like lithography, woodcutting, mezzotint, and others, the artists featured in the exhibit combined these styles to challenge the notion of printmaking as a stagnant medium. Mika Goodfriend, one of the artists, remarked that “in terms of what you create, there are no rules, only the ones you impose upon yourself.” With the advent of digital technology, the artist is free to approach printmaking with an efficiency and creativity previously unimaginable. Adam Sajkowsi, another artist who has work in the show, expressed the opinion that “printmaking is about cross-referencing mediums to create new ideas.” By combining traditional printmaking methods with each other and also with digital techniques, artists can create textures and styles that go

beyond the original technology’s limits. Further pushing printmaking’s boundaries are the topics that the artists take on, which transcend the medium’s once-limited use in the religious and royal spectrum. “All Long Necks Deserve Scarfs,” a print made in a traditional woodcut style, for instance, depicts a llama in a scarf, satirizing the use of animals in clothing products.

Johnston Newfield, a second-year student in the printing program, challenges traditional printmaking even further. His print, “(a) gender,” which is accompanied by a sign stating “Come play with me,” invited viewers to move images of body parts and clothing apparel into whatever form they liked. Unlike a conventional print with a concrete message in tow, Newfield described his piece as “about letting go, giving it away to other people and letting them interact with it and interpret it in their own way.” Although they consistently challenge a centuries-old style of art, the students in Concordia’s printmaking program receive instruction in standard techniques. While still paying homage to the artists before him, Newfield noted with a hint of rebellion that “you have to learn the rules in order to break them.” To be able to engage in artistic revolution, one must be familiar with the limits one is trying to stretch. As the printmaking medium continues to adapt and evolve, the problem of purpose is bound to arise. Who is to say that one style is superior, that techniques are better now because of technology

Sally Lin | The McGill Daily

than when they were first created? No one can decide what is the “correct” way to make art. Brandon Gunn, a visiting professor at Concordia and the students’ teacher, mentioned that “everyone deals with [style] their own

way. The key is being able to justify it yourself.” Spurred on by a visually demanding society that craves fresh ideas, artists such as these print-makers work for no one but themselves.

With new techniques available, the

opportunities are endless, and the pressure to conform to traditional standards is non-existent. Choice is what exemplifies this growing medium, and innovation will inevitably continue.

sis of Canadian cinematography, and leads the viewer to ask larger questions about Canadian filmmaking in general. Have we done well in supporting filmmaking in this country? Is Canadian cinematography considerably different from that of Hollywood? Ultimately, have we done enough in the world of filmmaking to say that we have created a national cinema?

“I’m still very uncertain of what a national cinema means,” Thain commented. “In the Canadian context, it is very difficult to say that there is a Canadian national cinema. In terms of lacking a Hollywood-type identity, it has made Canadian cinema more likely to take risks with style, and the kind of ways of telling stories,” she continued. “In that sense, Canadian cinema is often closer to art cinema than commercial cinema.”

But Canadian cinema is not

without its faults, admits Galloro.

Northern Lights addresses this in one particular interview, in which filmmaker Sarah Polley draws on her own experiences as a woman in a field dominated by men.

“There could be more support [for women],” Galloro commented.

“Women aren’t really acknowledged like the men. There needs to be more emphasis put on their work and showcasing their talent.”

What makes Northern Lights unique, then, is its failure to claim what is distinctly “Canadian,” while showcasing Canadian cinematography in a way that also reveals artistic talent, regardless of cultural identity or gender. It’s both an exploration of Canadian filmmaking and an attempt to define Canadian culture as not completely exclusive but rather as a conflicted and negotiated identity that both accepts and denies outside cultures.

The luminaries of Canadian film Northern Lights retraces the history of cinematography in Canada Chelsea Blazer The McGill Daily

T

he question of what it means to be Canadian is not one that can be answered easily.

It’s common to reduce our national identity to a few things many of us share: our love for hockey, our stunning landscape, or our emphasis on multiculturalism. On the other hand, Canadian culture is often described not in terms of what we are, but in terms of what we are not.

We are not immersed in violence, we are not a homogenous society, and we are certainly not American.

And, as it relates to the Hollywood phenomenon, a harder question to address may be: does Canada have its own national cinema?

Northern Lights is a documentary that looks into the history of Canadian cinematography.

According to director Antonio Galloro, the film “provides an homage to those men and women who are extremely talented, and yet [whom] the general audience really doesn’t recognize.”

According to Galloro, cinematography is unjustly overlooked. “It is one of the finest forms of expression,” he says. “It is something that covers all forms of the arts.”

Northern Lights highlights the talent of Canadian cinematographers such as Arthur E. Cooper and George Morita, who have escaped the shadow of their Hollywood neighbours. “My interviewees are people that I have previously worked with, people that continue to inspire me,” says Galloro. “I have been fortunate to be able to interview such a talented group of individuals.”

There is no doubt that in this film cinematography is displayed as a

serious art form. “Cinematographers will make something fascinating out of anything they are presented with,” argues McGill professor Alanna Thain. Northern Lights explores this artistic ability through the work of a wide range of cinematographers and diverse film clips. In one segment, cinematographer Robert Bocking leads the viewer through one of his favorite shots, taking us from a low point over a river up to the tip of Virginia Falls, providing the audience with an expressive image of true nature. In another clip, the audience is brought into an overwhelmingly produced shot of the Canadian television show Instant Star. Despite their opposing aesthetics, both clips eloquently capture the cinematographer’s ability to create a distinct point of view, no matter the raw materials.

More broadly, however, the film introduces its audience to an analy-

Culture

The McGill Daily, Monday, March 22 , 2010

23

Able movements Corpuscule’s integrated dance performances reveal the abilities of the human body Anna Leocha The McGill Daily

W

alking into France Geoffroy’s Oiseaux de Malheur (rough translation: “Birds of Discomfort”) last Thursday night, I didn’t know what to expect from a show described as integrated dance. Informants had told me that the term refers to the integration of able-bodied and dancers with disabilities. The morning before the show, in an interview with France Geoffroy – art director, dancer, and founder of the Corpuscule Danse company – I expressed a keen interest in understanding more about the experience of a disabled dancer (Geoffroy is a double-amputee woman). How is the performance transformed with the integration of a disabled person?

And fundamentally, how do disabled people dance? Looking back, the direction of my questions seemed naive. Geoffroy was more interested in talking about the performance itself – a theatrical interpretation of themes of animals and obsession – and about the choreographer commissioned for the piece, the esteemed Estelle Clareton.

Geoffroy insisted: “Just wait ’til you see it. You will understand.

Just wait.”

I didn’t have to wait long. On that blue-lit, black-box stage, the four performers were all just characters telling a dramatic story through the visceral movements of their human bodies. The show opened with an energetic and dynamic routine by double-amputee dancer Luca

“Lazylegz” Patuelli, and continued to showcase the variety of uses for the human body in the main piece, Oiseaux de Malheur.

France Geoffroy was more of an actress in this piece, allowing Marie-Hélène Bellavance – a double amputee – and Annie De Pauw, and Tom Casey – both able-bodied – to move the audience with their corporeal poetry. Throughout the piece, the movements of each of the performers was driven by their anxious fixation on something they could not take control of: one of the dancers was unable to touch her foot to her head, another kept obsessively moving an industrial-sized fan around the floor, and another incessantly repeated a verse from a song until she was smothered into silence by a pillow. “Through simple images, you understand many things,” Geoffroy explains. Using very few props, an empty set, and dramatic lighting, the focus of this piece is bodies and the immaculate poses the human body – disabled or not – is capable of.

Clareton’s choreography challenges any preconceived notions of the advantaged versus the disadvantaged. In one of the show’s more dramatic moments, Bellavance lifts Casey, turning around on her wooden legs with the large man in her small arms.

When Casey returns to two feet, he lifts Bellavance, whose prosthetic legs are held and removed by De Pauw. It is only in this moment that we see that Bellavance’s body ends somewhere beneath her beautiful floral skirt. De Pauw takes Bellavance’s prosthetic leg and attaches it to the tip of her own foot, and with her newlyextended limb is finally able to

Corpuscule is comprised of both able-bodied and disabled dancers. complete her pose and touch her head.

The equipment, including wheelchairs, crutches, and prosthetic legs, transcends its utilitarian purpose to become a series of ornamental accessories in the piece. Casey, an able-bodied dancer, actually entered the stage in a wheelchair – subverting the distinction between able-bodied and disabled dancers that the viewer is discouraged from making in the first place. Casey used the wheelchair as a metallic dance partner, enhancing the visual harmony of his performance.

“The subject of the piece is not the disability,” asserts Geoffroy. “The poetry arrives once you can look

Courtesy of Danse-Cité

power and potential of the human body.

Modern dance fans won’t want to miss this innovative collaboration of Danse Cité and Corpuscule Danse. And if you’ve never experienced modern dance before, this is a moving introduction. What is a genre-twisting statement of movement for the dancers is, for the viewer, a visual spectacle that redefines the limits of modern dance.

past that.”

Geoffroy, who is now 36, lost her legs when she was 17. At that time, she had dreams of being a dancer. “Sure,” says Geoffroy, “the disability has an emotive charge.

People think, ‘If that happened to me, I would die!’ But you really have no choice. You just carry on with your life. I wanted to be a dancer, so that’s what I did.”

The reality is that her work is not so much inspirational as it is inspired. The emotiveness of the performance is less a result of the disability of certain performers, than it is of the quality of the art presented. Like any good dance performance, it showcases the

Oiseaux de Malheur runs from March 24-27 at Studio HydroQuébec du Monument-National (1182 St. Laurent). Visit corpusculedanse.com for more information.

at the Intersice loft in Griffintown, where Shper recalls that “everyone was dancing and having a great time,” in contrast to a recent show at Gerts, which Rener describes as “a strange venue” due to its “sportsbar feel.”

When asked about the relationship between university life and his musical pursuits, Rener – the only member of the band still attending university – says, “My program is notorious for destroying your social life and extracurricular activities.” He confesses that “it has been pretty tough to balance both, especially recently, as we have been playing lots of shows. The solution is lots of coffee and less sleep.”

“I feel like my life is split into two different worlds right now,” he continued. “The stuff I am doing in school seems so far removed from

band life that I try and keep them as separate as possible, to keep my brain from exploding. I never really dreamt that the Hoof would have as much success as it has had recently.”

The burgeoning success of McGill bands such as the Hoof and the Heel proves that the musical endeavours of students such as Rener can exist in harmony with academic life. The winning balance seems to be a combination of a strong work ethic and a creative division of time, though Rener admits, “I have been caught day-dreaming about playing shows in class on more than one occasion.”

As for the time being, he adds: “Right now I’m trying to keep my options open. I only have one year of school left, and after that, who knows.”

Hoofing it as a band McGill student musician on balancing art and academics Zara Meerza The McGill Daily

A

t this time of the year, balancing academics with passions and hobbies – be they artistic, athletic, or careerdriven – can be difficult, and usually comes at the expense of both.

Once student workloads get heavier and the sun begins to shine longer every day, the question of whether students’ extracurriculars are compatible with their studies proves to be a curious one.

And for the students who moonlight in up-and-coming Montreal bands like Braids, the F in Fresh, the Youjsh, and the Hoof and the Heel, there doesn’t appear to be an easy solution.

Farid Rener, a U3 Electrical

Engineering student at McGill, is the Hoof and the Heel’s drummer. The band also comprises vocalist and guitar player Harris Shper, vocalist and keyboard player Christine Hale, and bass player Al Mal, who respectively make their living as a professional musician, illustrator, and recording engineer. As a band, they have performed in New York, San Francisco, and L.A., purveying a brand of alt-folk described by Hale as being characterized by “a lot of ups and downs.”

Having met through mutual friends and music festival fundraisers, the group’s influences are as diverse as their origins. The four cut their teeth in metal cover bands (Rener), punk bands and string quartets (Shper), and alt country bands (Hale and Mal). Although

the band hails from Winnipeg, England, Vermont, and L.A., they formed in the summer of 2009 in Montreal, “the only place that feels like a home,” says Hale. It is a city that Shper describes as “always fun because we’ll have friends and family in the audience, as well as strangers.” He adds, “I think, as a whole, Montreal is a good ‘listening’ city.” The sense of community extends to fellow Montreal musicians, whom the band are avid fans of – particularly those with a foot in McGill. Rener comments, “It seems as though there are some pretty big bands coming out of McGill right now: Tonsstartssbandt, Braids, the Youjsh, et cetera. Lots of our friends are McGill students, so I think it is inevitable that we end up being part of that ‘scene.’”

Recently the band has played

24Culture

The McGill Daily, Monday, March 22, 2010

Nice day for a Dirty Wedding Local band releases second album hot on the heels of their first Whitney Mallett The McGill Daily

I

t was written in the stars that they’d meet. “I hitchhiked here from a small town in northern Saskatchewan, Lake Waskesiu,” explains Cody Dyck.

“I moved to Montreal when I was 17. Dropped out of school. Toured North America for three years sleeping in parks and on couches and playing music,” says Susil Sharma.

“Shortly thereafter, we flipped our van in a ditch somewhere in northern Vermont, lost all our money, and got deported. At that point I entered a brief depression and fled to Nepal where I received my mantra during my Upanayana [a Hindu rite of manhood].” Sharma then returned to Montreal to embark on the rest of his life.

As this was happening, Jeff Boyd was working in a play house in Hollywood. “I had come out of the house [where] I was living in Los Angeles – I was living on chicken corner. I opened the gate and there was a coyote. We just stood eye to eye. I knew I had to make a change,” professes Boyd.

He booked a ticket to Montreal, and met Sharma late at night in Parc Jeanne-Mance. Boyd and Sharma started playing music together.

Soon after, Dyck showed up on Sharma’s couch. The band Dirty Wedding was born.

The three have been playing together for over a year now. The Rolling Stones, Van Morrison, Otis Redding, Oasis, and Tom Petty are among their influences. They describe their music in one word: Soul.

Dirty Wedding aims to transcend the tendency of Montreal bands to cater their music to a hip niche audience. “We don’t subscribe to a scene.

What we do isn’t just for the Plateau; it’s for everyone,” Boyd explains.

“We don’t conform to anything that’s imposed on us,” adds Sharma. Tall claim, but from living with them, I

From left to right: Cody Dyck on guitar, Jeff Boyd on drums, and Susil Sharma on bass. know they’re not full of shit.

“We live together. Play everyday.

We don’t work jobs – we’re dirt poor, hustle for everything we’ve got,” says Boyd. And whether it’s intuition or sheer determination, they’re not counting on needing to do anything else. “There’s no plan B. We have to do this,” confesses Dyck. “It’s the only thing that makes any lick of sense in this topsy-turvy scheme.”

Dirty Wedding is releasing their self-titled first album this week.

“The last album we recorded in one take off the floor in one day,” notes Sharma. While the record was being produced, they wrote another album’s worth of songs. This second release is their real debut, they explain; it’s titled My Generation. Sharma proclaims, “It’ll be one of the biggest albums in the last decade.” He adds,

“We’re the best band from Montreal.

Second-best is Men at Work.”

Their philosophy is somewhere in between brotherhood spirituality and gang mentality. They want free love, and they want world domination. And, most importantly, they want to resurrect rock ‘n’ roll. “It ain’t just a thing; we’re going to be around for a long time,” Dyck predicts. “It may not be in Montreal. It

Courtesy of Richmond Lam

may not be in Canada, but someone’s gonna get an earful somewhere.” Sharma adds, “It’s an unspoken truth that silence is the juror.”

“There’s nothing but within,” says Boyd. “That’s where our music comes from.”

Catch Dirty Wedding at 9 p.m.

Thursday March 25 at Club Lambi (4465 St. Laurent).

Dreaming through reality Canadian recording artist Erin Lang finds her sound in Montreal Thomas Kim The McGill Daily

O

n March 26, local Montreal musician Erin Lang and her band, The Foundlings, will be opening for Sweet Mother Logic and Hooded Fang at Green Room.

Land describes her music as “orchestral-art-folk,” and draws inspiration from time spent in England and Germany, as well as from the many musicians she has worked with over the course of her career. Lang’s music conveys a romantic and dreamy, though not utopic, view of life and relationships. Her songs are carried by strong, whimsical melodies, an

almost light-hearted approach to her lyrics’ heavier topics.

“While my music tends to be dark in subject matter, I try to draw [the listener in] with a mood that, doesn’t necessarily reflect the songs lyrics, allowing the listener to interpret the songs for themselves,” Lang explains.

Lang attributes her dreamy point of view to her childhood, which she describes as a “fantasyworld.” While her musician father wasn’t a huge influence on her work, she does attribute her love and understanding of music to him.

After early experiments with the trumpet, she joined a friend’s band as the bassist at 13. While she

considered pursuing further education in theatre, Lang ultimately decided to continue with music. “It hadn’t occurred to me to be a musician,” Lang explains, “even though my dad was a musician, [but] when [the band] formed that year, it was really what I wanted to do.”

While her friend’s band didn’t last, Lang continued to play bass in other bands based around Toronto, before moving to England where she recorded her first demos. There, she was increasingly influenced by the European music scene and its “electronic sound.” Later, she recorded an album in Germany, a country that, according to Lang, “also has a good indie-electronic music scene.”

Lang returned home to Canada,

eventually coming to Montreal. With the new environment and a new band, she once again finds different inspiration. In particular, she has drawn elements of her live show from St. Vincent, whose music has been an important recent discovery for Lang. The Foundlings, her current band, is comprised of Pat Latreille on upright bass, John Corban on violin, Mona Varichon on French horn, and Dan Pencer on clarinet. She finds working with the band to be a more collective effort than the work she’s done in the past.

Since her return, Lang states that she has begun to see her music moving away from a “folk-tronic” sound, to a more “orchestral-artfolk.” Lang attributes this shift in

sound to The Foundlings and the different instruments they work with. “When I know who I am working with it affects the [song] writing, knowing there is going to be a certain sound to incorporate into the piece,” she explained.

Lang says that her live shows are “a place to get carried away in thought, with a dreamy view of love and reality…a chance to reflect and escape a little into another world, or [a place to give] yourself a way of seeing your world differently.”

Which is quite like the way she sees life itself.

Erin Lang, Sweet Mother Logic, and Hooded Fang are playing March 26 at the Green Room (5326 St. Laurent).

Culture

The McGill Daily, Monday, March 22, 2010

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MASTER SCHOOL OF BARTENDING

25

T

he Bachelors of Fine Arts’ blend of highbrow and lowbrow is evident in one of their promotional photos, taken one Saturday afternoon in front of the Arts building. A group of young people pensively stand on the steps dressed in togas obviously made from their bed sheets, while, off to the side, two guys salaciously pose in their underwear.

Naturally, the security guard chased them away immediately (partly because there was a second grade spelling bee inside).

As their sense of humour seems to be unwelcome on McGill grounds, the Bachelors of Fine Arts are taking to other venues – notably La Sala Rossa, where they will be performing on March 23.

Formed by friends and fellow performers, the Bachelors are putting on their second show as a collective, entitled Live Miseducation II. Current McGill student and founding member Toby Houle described their clever and self-deprecating comedy as “reaching for the stars and falling in the shit.”

The “loose collective,” as Houle describes it, currently comprises Houle, a comedian/poet/storyteller; McGill student Asaf “Safi” Gerchak – whom Houle describes as a “comedian-raconteur;” Chris During and his power-pop band the Bawdy Electric; comedians Chason Gordon and David Heti; and writer/photographer Ariel Fournier. The group’s style is evident from the material available on their web site. In one short story

by Houle, Peter O’Toole appears at

a suburban housewife’s door, and proceeds to pursue and seduce her with a vigour akin to Jason in Friday the 13th. Another post, by Gerchak, appears to be an essay on existentialism but ends up rambling on about the backspace key on a keyboard, referring to it as “a horrible pit of doom.”

Though this will only be their second show as the Bachelors of Fine Arts, they have perfomed together numerous times, and each is established on the Montreal scene. “It happened that we were all working at a Second Cup and then we all sort of clicked as a group and it sort of snowballed from there,” said Houle. “Chris and Safi have played shows together and I have done shows with Chris. It has always been these inter-pairings of headliners with other people too, but I guess after our first show last year…we just decided that we wanted to make it more formal and just get name recognition for the collective.”

The three Bachelors on the bill for Tuesday evening – Houle, Gerchak, and the Bawdy Electric – will be joined by Montreal comedians George Hamilton Braithwaite, who will act as MC between sets, and multi-occasion Just for Laughs performer Mike Paterson, who will play a musical comedy set under the moniker The Dan D. Lyons.

Describing how they got acquainted with the other two, Houle explains, “Safi had been performing with [Paterson] previously.... It basically just comes down to wanting to perform with your friends. You meet people you like, you really get along, and you respect what they do and love what they do and it sort of just flows both ways.”

Houle hopes, however, that the

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Bachelors of Fine Arts will be more than a comedy troupe and expand to become an art collective. “We’re sort of looking to diversify as much as possible,” says Houle. “In a perfect world, for example, one week there’d be a photo exposition that the Bawdy Electric might play at and the next week there’d be a comedy show with someone’s paintings in the front foyer. That kind of intermarriage would be ideal….

That’s what we’re shooting for as we keep cherry picking people from around.”

In the meantime, each member will stick to his forte for the upcoming show – Gershak will perform stand-up comedy, Houle will recite original comedic folk tales, and During’s band, the Bawdy Electric, will play a set. However, each will try to come up with something unique and different from his previous performances. “It’s just not possible to do the same thing over and over again. I think we’re all just really restless souls in that regard….

We’re always just trying to shake it up and set ourselves different challenges and every time beat those,” said Houle.

At a Bachelors show, the comedy arises from the clash of the Bachelors’ serious art collective intentions and sensibilities with their self-deprecating and campy shtick. Tomorrow night, they’ll reach for the pinnacles of the Attic Greeks while falling into the shit and getting their underwear and bed sheets dirty.

The Bachelors of Fine Arts will be performing tomorrow night at 8 p.m. at Sala Rossa (4848 St. Laurent).

Visit bachelorsoffinearts.wordpress.com for the group’s work and information about the show.

VOTE YES FOR THE DPS

Compendium!

26

The McGill Daily, Monday, March 22, 2010

Lies, half-truths, and the beginning of the end

Chalk artists all over campus

Tim Hortons is the Anti-Christ

Anti-propaganda propaganda fails to recognize stupidity, unintended irony Winston Jeffries The McGill Daily

A

Tictor Vangermann | The McGill Daily

Télésphore Sansouci The McGill Daily

T

im Hortons in the Redpath Oasis cleared the path for the coming of the Anti-Christ, that precursor of the Apocalypse and friend of the Dragon, the Beast, and the False Prophet.

This reporter was shocked to discover that Tim Hortons itself – that venerable institution of Canadiana, that defender of all true patriot love – is indeed in league with the Person of Sin itself.

I walked into Tim Hortons today to purchase a double double only to discover that 666 – the mark of the east – people had won in Timmy’s Dérrrrrrrrrroule le rebord pour gagner contest. Truly, this is a mark and a sign of the coming of the Beast.

And lo: when I returned to my lowly B-24 abode, what did I discov-

er there, tucked away on the side of my humble Google Electronic Mail account? Verily, it was the Beast’s

sign again – 666 “Spam” messages had piled up in the last 40 days and 40 nights.

“Signs and wonders,” I cried, alarmed and beleagured. Forsooth, the Day of Reckoning is upon us!

And so I phoned the Sex Worker of Babylon to see if she and her lifepartner were planning on staying long in our world. I got her “voice mail.”

And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle; and on their heads were as it were crowns like gold, and their faces were as the faces of men.

And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as the teeth of lions.

This news writer has seen the mark of the Beast in his very own spams!!!

ccusations of referendum bylaw infractions, poor handwriting skills, and general fucking annoyingness are being thrown around campus in response to the masked chalk writers who exhibited their discontent with the non-existent “McGill Daily fee” all over the place last Friday.

“Really? You’re using pink, blue, and white chalk – ugh, no wait, double ugh. If I tried, which I wouldn’t, I couldn’t have chosen a blander colour scheme with which to spread misinformed bullshit at pretty much every single building on lower campus,” said a former Daily Design editor.

While the campaign period for the Daily Publications Society (DPS) fee – which supports The McGill Daily and Le Délit français, the only French newspaper at McGill – ends today, students were perplexed at the anger expressed in the sometimes nonsensical groupings of text.

“If you’re going to campaign against something, you could at least know what it is,” one student said.

The No Committee denied any

Crossword-in-the-world Across

Mémène Sansfaçon

1. Cottage roofing 6. Married woman 9. “I’ll _____ it for you” 13. European blackbird 14. Winter shoe 15. Middle eastern fast food chain 16. Mental object with semantic properites: Mental ______ 19. Make home movies with: ___ corder 20. Ballerina staple 21. World Wide Web 22. Pursues thingsin-themselves 26. Winter sport 27. To fall in drops 28. Mother of Zeus 32. Doorb___ 33. Gang of friends 37. Frequent PHIL 200 example 39. Heideggerean humans?

41. North East Indian state 42. Friend 43. Portico, where Zeno lectured 44. Characteristic?

47. Rat-a-____ 49. When an object is merely observed 53. “How ___ you?”

54. Sign of VD 55. Rowing device 56. Passive aggressive tactic?

62. Nicholas was one

63. “Cogito ____ sum” 64. Underwear line 65. 2000 film: _____ Beast 66. Latin for thing 67. Expression: “______ with it”

Down

involvement with the chalkings, though their spokesperson did ask those attending the Vote No Facebook page to stop the madness, calling the actions “a little extreme.”

With the No Committee officially ruled out as a suspect, attention turned to Warah Soolf, who recently lost two elections in two weeks – first, for the highlycompetitive and paid SSMU president position, and second, for the barely-competitive and highly unpaid seat on the DPS Board of Directors.

“You know what, forget it, I’ll admit it. It was me and my gang of ‘Oriental’ ninjas. Actually, could you not print that? They don’t like to be called that, since, y’know, it’s not the fucking Dark Ages anymore.”

Lephan Stink, U3 Physics, also denied any role in the chalk attacks.

“Listen, if I saw someone do it, I’d be able to talk them out of it, like, on a personal level,” he said, adding, “Because during my one week campaigning I physically talked to every single undergraduate student at McGill – which is pretty much how I came so shockingly close to representing them to the McGill administration and various levels of government.”

35. Tasty dessert: ___-cone 36. Brother of Jacob, in Genesis 38. Act of vomiting 39. Data 40. Having wings 45. “Down there”: ____ parts 46. 2003 Jay-Z song 48. “Hanging on by a _____” 49. Writing 50. Just do it 51. Bad guys 52. To concur 57. Monotone humour 58. Pop artist: J-___ 59. Undefeated army?

60. None 61. To understand, sort of

1. High rock 2. Shade 3. Cleopatra’s snake 4. Archaic 5. Tidies up 6. _____ Carlo 7. Euphemism for fat?

8. Stationary part of motor 9. Chinese yoga: ___ Chi 10. Surrounded by 11. Covered by pine trees Solution to 12. Earliest “Put your politics where your mouth is” 23.

M I S T S M O K Y M Y R Millimetres T O P E E A E O A C H E abbr.

A D E P T E T U G O A L 24. DoubleI N T E R V E N T I O N I S reed wind G U E S S W A S T instruments L U N D S H A R E S 25. Killer C O M A P O I S E D N whale 29. A man’s?

A N I M A T E D C A R T O O 30. Ecole T H R E E O M I R E D Normale Y L E M P A P E R Superieure B O R I S A T S E A abbrv.

C R O S S F E R T I L I Z E 31. Proverb A M A H S D I D C O L T 32. To use G I V E S E N D R O V E a chair S T O R Y S C A A P E R

A N I M E A N T S D O S T