The McGill Daily: Vol. 112, Issue 2

Table of Contents

3. Editorial Divestment, not Decarbonization

4. News Analysis of McGill’s 2021-2022 audit

Divestment and CAMSR

7. SciTech Debunking personality tests

8. Culture Interview with John Williams Lanthier, local artsist of Usine 106u

11. Commentary

Amira Elghawaby appointed as Canada’s first Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia

12. Compendium! Reality Check horoscopes

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commentary + compendium! editors

Meena Thakur

culture editor

Eliana Freelund

Michele Fu

features editor

Zach Cheung

science + technology editor

Abe Berglas

sports editor Vacant

video editor Vacant

photos editor

Genevieve Quinn

illustrations editor

Clement Veysset

copy editor

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design + production editor

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radio editor Vacant

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contributors

Abe Berglas, Emma Bainbridge, Randa

Mohamed, Jeffrey Vacant, Elsie Yang, Clement Veysset, Olivia Shan, Genevieve Quinn

Divestment, Not Decarbonization

On February 27, McGill Communications announced in an email to the McGill community that some members of the Board of Governors (BoG) had requested to pass a motion on the question of divestment from the fossil fuel industry. The BoG is now undertaking consultations with the Committee to Advise on Matters of Social Responsibility (CAMSR) and the Investment Committee to determine whether the university should reconsider its position on divestment. This decision was made in a meeting on February 8 but was “inadvertently omitted” from the meeting highlights, according to the email.

For years, students and faculty have been calling on McGill to divest. In 2022, health care students and professionals penned an open letter to the BoG calling for divestment from fossil fuel companies and for democratization of the BoG; it was signed by organizations such as McGill Nurses for Planetary Health, the Nursing Undergraduate Society, the Nursing Graduate Student Association. On March 13 of this year, the Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) passed a motion to formally endorse this call to action. SSMU has also passed a motion to “ensure that the SSMU executives are actively advocating for divestment and demilitarisation” in their dealings with both the student body and the BoG. And of course, Divest McGill has been advocating for divestment since 2012, including organizing the longest occupation of a university building in McGill’s history, which took place last year.

As of November 2021, McGill has invested more than $65 million in oil and gas companies, about 5.4 per cent of the university’s total endowment. CAMSR previously considered the possibility of divestment in 2013, 2016, and 2019. The committee’s 2019 discussion came after the Senate passed a motion in September 2018 informing the BoG that they favoured divestment from fossil fuels. Ultimately, they advised the Board not to divest and instead recommended decarbonization and impact investment. Decarbonization involves McGill reducing its investments in industries with high carbon emissions, while impact investment means specifically investing in funds that would generate a positive social or environmental impact, such as in low-carbon or renewable energy funds. At the end of the day, both recommendations still involve McGill allocating some of its investments towards the fossil fuel industry. McGill’s decision to pursue decarbonization and impact investment rather than divestment received backlash from student advocacy groups such as Divest McGill and Greenpeace McGill. It also prompted Greg Mikkelson, a professor of philosophy and environment who’d taught at McGill for 18 years, to resign. “While divestment would have been a clear and courageous move to make, this de-carbonization concept is complex and confusing,” Mikkelson explained.

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The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s 2022 report found that the next few years will be critical in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. McGill aims to be carbon-neutral by 2040, but its efforts to do so have been feeble at best. The problem with McGill’s

decarbonization effort is that they focus on reducing the university’s investments in oil and gas, or shifting investments within this industry, rather than getting rid of them entirely. If McGill wishes to continue impact investing, it must occur in tandem with divestment. Even so, while impact investing might appear effective on paper, research has shown that it doesn’t tend to work in practice. Reducing McGill’s carbon footprint by impact investing, without divestment, is insufficient because it is often difficult for investors to determine which businesses actually have positive environmental impacts. If McGill truly wants to address the climate catastrophe and be a “leader in sustainability,” it must divest its money from all companies in the fossil fuel industry. Many companies that McGill currently invests in have been directly linked to environmental degradation, with Suncor responsible for polluting waterways and Canadian Natural Resources Limited responsible for oil spills.

Furthermore, McGill’s investments in fossil fuels are contradictory to the university’s supposed commitment to Indigenous reconciliation. For example, as of December 2022, McGill invested $2,610,419 in TC Energy, the company responsible for the Coastal GasLink and Keystone XL pipeline projects, both of which attempted to cut through Indigenous territories, including those home to the Wet’suwet’en and the Great Sioux Nation, without consent. TC Energy pressured the RCMP to conduct raids on unceded Wet’suwet’en territory to criminalize Indigenous land defenders blocking the pipeline’s construction, a move condemned by Amnesty International.

In a 2020 interview, former Principal and ViceChancellor Suzanne Fortier argued that divestment is an ineffective “symbolic gesture.” It would send an important message if McGill, one of the most prestigious universities in Canada, were to openly condemn the fossil fuel industry. Conversely, continuing to invest in fossil fuels shows that the BoG is willing to support the expansion of an industry that profits from environmental degradation and violates Indigenous sovereignty.

As CAMSR continues to deliberate on the question of divestment, it is crucial that students, professors, and other members of the McGill community make their voices heard to the committee by sending their concerns to bog.mcgill@mcgill.ca. As the university’s highest governing body, only eight of the 25 members of the BoG are elected by the McGill community. Following Mikkelson’s words, “In order to divest McGill, we have to democratize McGill,” participate in future actions calling for the democratization of the BoG. Support Divest McGill and other groups advocating for divestment and engage in actions at McGill or around Montreal demanding climate justice. It’s also crucial if you are a settler to show solidarity with Indigenous land defenders who are often on the frontlines of the fight against fossil fuel companies. This can involve showing solidarity with actions in your area, educating yourself and others (the documentary Invasion about the Unist’ot’en Campis a good place to start), or donating to a legal defence fund supporting land defenders.

Published by the Daily Publications Society, a student society of McGill University. The views and opinions expressed in the Daily are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy or position of McGill University. The McGill Daily is not affiliated with McGill University.

McGill Senior Administration Made Big Bucks Last Year

Examining McGill’s 2021-2022 audit

Emma Bainbridge News Multimedia Editor

Every year, McGill is required to submit an audit to the Quebec government detailing the university’s spending, the salaries of upper administration, and performance reports, among other things. From this audit, journalists were able to find out about Principal and Vice-Chancellor Suzanne Fortier’s $800,000+ salary for the 2020-2021 academic year, a fact that received considerable media attention and scrutiny once it was publicized. As McGill has recently submitted its audit for 2021–2022, the Daily decided to look into how much our administration is being paid and how this has changed from the previous year.

The Quebec government mandates that individual salaries be displayed for members of senior administration, which consists of Principals and Vice-Chancellors, vicepresidents, deans, the secretary general, and anyone else of equivalent rank. In the document, which can be found on the National Assembly website, compensation for each member of McGill’s upper administration is divided into their base salary and additional taxable income they received. For example, in 2020–2021, Suzanne Fortier received a base salary of $478,901 with additional taxable income of $382,070, earning $860,971 in total.

In 2021–2022, the total reported salaries of McGill administration members ranged from $147,603 to $595,325, with the average being $298,387 (Graph 1). The lowest-paid person was Robin Beech, Dean of Student Services, while the highest paid was Fortier. Fortier and David Eidelman, Vice-Principal and Dean of the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, were the only individuals whose total salaries decreased between 2020–2021 and 2021–2022. However, both saw an increase in their base salary, with Eidelman receiving the highest base salary of $533,624. Fortier, on the other hand, went from $478,901 to $492,543, a 2.8 per cent increase (Graph 2).

“This year, in addition to base salary, other salary components for [Fortier] and [Eidelman] included the payment of their vested portions of the supplemental pension plan for certain senior University staff in consideration of years of service since the beginning of their respective terms,” said Frédérique Mazerolle, McGill’s Media Relations Officer, in a statement to the Daily

In 2021–2022, the total reported salaries of McGill administration members ranged from $147,603 to $595,325, with the average being $298,387 (Graph 1). The lowest-paid person was Robin Beech, Dean of Student Services, while the highest paid was [Suzanne] Fortier.

“It’s important to understand that the Principal’s compensation plan is comparable to those of the heads of other U15 universities across Canada,” Mazerolle continued. In comparison to her $595,325, Fortier’s Concordian counterpart Graham Carr made $466,882 in total. Fortier’s successor, Deep Saini, made $558,154 in

2021-2022 as President of Dalhousie University.

While the total compensation received by most members of senior administration seems to have increased from 2020–2021, we did not find a statistically significant difference between overall total compensation in 2021–2022 versus 2020–2021. However, when looking at base salaries, we found that there was a statistically significant increase from 2020–2021. The average base salary was $283,522 in 2021–2022 compared with $276,102 in 2020–2021.

“Salaries are determined on the basis of the qualifications of the incumbent and the relevant market data for the position,” explained Mazerolle.

The individual who received the highest pay increase in both total compensation and base salary was Dr. Samuel Benaroya, Associate Vice-Principal and Vice-Dean of Health Affairs. Benaroya’s total compensation increased

from $223,233 to $356,196 (60 per cent increase), while his base salary increased from $223,141 to $338,775 (52 per cent increase).

Deans

Looking specifically at the Deans, it’s clear that Eidelman received the highest salary of all of them in every category (Graph 3). After Eidelman, Yolande Chan and Morty Yalovsky from the Faculty of Management received the greatest compensation. Aside from Beech, Arts Interim Deans Mary Hunter and James EngleWarnick received the lowest salaries.

How does that compare to

professors?

The Daily used data from January 2022 prepared by Analysis, Planning, and Budget to look at the median salaries of full-time McGill faculty in order to put the

Graph

Graph 2

salaries of senior administration into perspective. At McGill, faculty can be divided into tenured or tenure-track professors and contract academic staff (CAS). Out of all the positions, full professors with tenure or a tenure-track position had the highest median salary at $180,161. The lowest-paid position was that of faculty lecturer, a CAS position that focuses mainly on teaching, with a median salary of $86,582.

When comparing the salaries of tenured professors within each faculty, there was little variation in the median salaries of each position (full professor, associate professor, assistant professor) except for those of professors in the Desautels Faculty of Management, who earned more than their counterparts in other faculties. As shown in Graph 4, the median salaries for Desautels faculty members are large outliers compared with the median salaries for the same positions in other faculties. We were unable to do a similar comparison for non-tenured faculty as data on their salaries was often not provided for privacy reasons due to a low number of CAS positions in each individual faculty.

When comparing the median salary of full professors to their respective deans (Graph 5), we found that in most cases, when the dean of a faculty had a higher salary in relation to their counterparts, the professors of that faculty did as well. One notable exception was the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, where Dean Eidelman received a base salary of $533,624 while the median salary for professors in that faculty was $185,386.

The individual who received the highest pay increase in both total compensation and base salary was Dr. Samuel Benaroya, Associate Vice-Principal and Vice-Dean of Health Affairs. Benaroya’s total compensation increased from $223,233 to $356,196 (60 per cent increase), while his base salary increased from $223,141 to $338,775 (52 per cent increase).

Other management staff

In addition to the senior administration, the university also has to report data on the salaries of the staff managing the components of the institution (which includes faculties, schools, departments, institutes, etc), the administrative staff for services, and the management personnel of the support staff. For these positions, instead of listing individual salaries, the university provides the highest salary, the lowest salary, and the average salary. Overall, staff working with components of the institution were paid the most, while those managing the support staff were paid the least. The lowest base salary recorded for 2021–2022 was $57,330, a difference of $476,294 compared with Eidelman’s.

While every member of the senior administration’s base salary increased, this was not the case for other management staff (Graph 6). The highest salary recorded for someone working for one of the components of the institution dropped by $94,320, from $400,000 to $305,680. The lowest and average salaries for that category also decreased. The highest salary for the management of support staff also decreased, and none of the categories saw a large increase in base salary.

Not everyone satisfied with their salary last year

In the 2021–2022 academic year, many unions, including the McGill University NonAcademic Certified Association (MUNACA) and the Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill (AGSEM), came into conflict with the administration over their members’ salaries. The Floor Fellows, represented by the Association of McGill

University Support Employees (AMUSE), also went on strike demanding higher wages and retroactive pay from the administration. MUNACA president Thomas Chalmers told the Daily that McGill generally pays its employees less than other universities do. “The recent past has shown that the university has an enormous difficulty to accept wage increase or monetary compensation asked by unions even though they are absolutely legitimate,” Mario Roy, president of AGSEM, told the Daily in an interview last year.

Graph 3

Graph 5

Graph 4

Graph 6

Board of Governors to Decide on Revisiting Divestment Divest McGill’s Campaign Faces Urgent Call to Action

Elsie Yang News Contributor

On February 8, at the Board of Governors (BoG) meeting, several Governors asked the Board to pass a motion on the question of divestment from the fossil fuel industry. For over ten years, McGill community members have been calling for action from the Board and its Committee to Advise on Matters of Social Responsibility (CAMSR) to divest from fossil fuels, citing the urgency of the climate crisis, and more recently, the commitments of various Canadian and American universities to fully divest from fossil fuels.

Following the CAMSR’s meeting on March 16, the Board’s decision on the question of accelerating a review of its current socially responsible investment (SRI) practices will take place on April 20. If current plans are kept in place, any changes to the university’s position on divestment will not come until the spring of 2025.

For students who have been involved in the fight for divestment, the days leading up to April 20 are crucial. Alex Foster, a member of Divest McGill, told the Daily that “this is kind of the last chance for divestment for a while,” which places pressure on Divest to convince the board to take action now. “It feels pretty urgent… having these reconsiderations out of nowhere,” says Foster.

Divest members participated

discussion about divestment before we got there,” Foster told the Daily “It’s good if it’s heated because it means there are people who are passionate on the Board in one way or another.”

The last time that the Board considered the question of divestment was during a twoyear review period between 2018-2020. This review resulted in the implementation of a plan to decarbonize the university’s endowment fund through a “prudent yet ambitious strategy that includes divestment from highly carbon-intensive companies, including those within the fossil fuel industry,” according to an email sent from McGill Communications on February 27.

to divestment as a hopeful point toward convincing the Board to follow suit – “it’s different now that universities like [University of Toronto] and prestigious American universities [have divested]. Now that it’s coming closer and closer to home – I think that’s what matters to them.”

running out of excuses,” she told the Daily . “After the occupation last year, the realization that the university doesn’t really care about what the students think, and that even if we manage to get the whole student population aware of divestment, it wouldn’t really affect the Board. It’s been a bit disheartening.” Foster references Divest’s occupation of the Arts building last year in support of decolonization, democratization, and divestment. The occupation lasted for over two weeks, making it the longest occupation of a university building in McGill’s history. For Foster and many other members of the McGill community, the fight for divestment has further revealed the need for a democratization of McGill. “It’s a shame that at this specific moment where they make this decision [about whether to divest], it will be equally influenced by Board members or other universities [placing pressure on McGill to follow suit]. If the union was democratic, we would have divested already because the Senate and the students have already voted for it,” she told the Daily

in the Board’s community session at their February 8 meeting and handed out flyers to Board members beforehand that laid out the importance of institutional divestment and its implications for climate policy, the environmental consequences of not divesting, and financial arguments for divesting. “As we arrived at the community session, [a Board member] said that they were just having a heated

In a question addressed to the Board, a community member noted that McGill is the only major university in Montreal that has not announced a commitment to divestment. They also listed a number of major universities that have committed to total divestment from the fossil fuel industry, including Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, and the University of Toronto. Indeed, over 100 US schools and ten Canadian schools have made partial or full commitments to divest from fossil fuels, which advocates of divestment at McGill see as a clear indicator of the university falling behind in terms of its commitment to sustainability. Foster sees the rising number of universities committing

The April 2023 announcement has presented a crucial opportunity for Divest to take action, calling for changes in campaigning and messaging. A principle argument that Divest and other proponents of divestment have used relates to the term “social injury,” which is listed in the CAMSR’s mandate as “the grave injurious impact which the activities of a legal person is found to have on consumers, employees, or other persons, or on the natural environment.” The CAMSR has denied a finding of social injury based on their investments in fossil fuels, which would be required for their official divestment. Considering Divest has focused on this argument in the past, Foster says that the campaign may need to change strategies to achieve its goals. “[The Board] had no discussion of social injury in their report. That’s not really what they were looking at,” she told the Daily. Based on the Board’s lack of acknowledgment of social injury in the past and focus on financial consequences instead, “even if they change [their] mind now, nothing has changed in terms of social injury — that would show that it’s not about social injury.”

Instead, Divest is beginning to

look toward potential financial gains that may come from divesting from fossil fuels to support its campaign.

Taichi Saito, another member of Divest, spoke on Divest’s potential shifts in strategy to target the Board’s interests: “there is more and more research about the financial aspect of divestment, so we plan on talking to management professors,” he told the Daily. “There’s been a lot of improvement in renewable energy sources and technologies such as solar panels in the last decade... We often hear arguments about how Canada has a lot of oil and gas in its territory, but I think the faster we stop exploiting these resources, the faster we’ll be able to shift towards renewable energies and be independent of oil and gas markets.”

Foster expressed her frustration at the Board’s handling of the session and their general unwillingness to listen to the rest of the McGill community on the matter of divestment: “they’re

“The fundamental problem of the university being undemocratic and not caring about what the students or staff want — that will just keep coming up again and again, whether it’s divestment or not,” Foster added.

Regardless of the decision that is made on April 20, there is still a long way to go for Divest and other student movements that have been a part of efforts to divest. Foster notes that even if McGill commits to partial or total divestment in its endowment fund, it will likely continue to fund fossil fuel companies through its pooled funds. “McGill needs to divest from ‘actual’ fossil fuel companies, but [a large proportion of] McGill’s investments go into pooled funds, which have loads of problems on their own. That’s a whole other avenue for Divest to go down,” says Foster. “Divest will still need to exist – it just might not look the same as it did before.”

- Alex

member of Divest McGill

“It’s different now that universities like [University of Toronto] and prestigious American universities [have divested]. Now that it’s coming closer and closer to home – I think that’s what matters to them.”

Foster,

Clement Veysset |Illustrations Editor

Following the CAMSR’s meeting on March 16, the Board’s decision on the question of accelerating a review of its current SRI will take place on April 20.

The Danger of Personality Tests

Abe Berglas SciTech Editor

Personality tests are often fodder for conversation – a guess and check game of Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) types along with other quizzes done in tandem to explore differences in friends. The danger of these personality tests comes when we attribute importance to the results. According to Psychology Today, approximately 80 per cent of Fortune 500 companies use personality tests to assess employees for the purpose of coaching, development, and team building. The Myers & Briggs foundation offers MBTI certification programs, and it boasts that “many organizations engage the services of external MBTI consultants to present psychological type.” Outside the workforce, a 2016 study by the National Council on Teacher Quality determined that 59 per cent of textbooks suggest that students’ learning styles should be a consideration in lessons. Thus, there’s a precedent in seriously interpreting online questionnaires, which lack scientific foundation and are not transparent about their methods.

I was first initiated into the world of personality tests as a teenager. Around the same time I was exploring my sexuality, other identifying markers became available to me – namely, the microlabels assigned to me by quizzes on the internet. First, lauded by zealous middle school teachers, there was a quiz to discover our learning types, which was a product of the paid platform Career Cruising. The assessment was called Learning Styles Inventory, and it consisted of a mere 20 questions to determine whether we were visual, auditory, or tactile learners. A few months later, our class did a MyersBriggs test. As a lover of systems, the acronyms and neat classifications were a welcome mindframe to me.

The draw toward self-exploration was a healthy impulse. Especially as young adults, there are a lot of unkowns one has to grapple with: Who are you? Who do you identify with? Who is your community?

The potentially destructive facet is the advice that is given as a consequence. The learning type quiz dictates which educational environment you will thrive in. The MyersBriggs test identifies supposed flaws in your personality. There is also the Big Five Personality Test, which claims to identify your openness, conscientiousness, agreeableness, extraversion, and neuroticism. Another popular personality test, Enneagram, has a focus on self-improvement, meaning you are expected to rehabilitate your personality based on your results.

Advice that is anything other than individual is doomed to ignore traits – or combinations of traits – that are unique to a person. These tests also work on an assumption that we can accurately interpret possibly unclear questions and that we are able to accurately identify some pretty sweeping personality traits in ourselves.

Take a look at the Learning Styles Inventory, for example. The question, “If learning to cook, I would rather: a) follow written recipes; b) create my own recipes,

tasting as I cook; or c) be told how to cook” simplifies an activity with dozens of factors. For instance, the answer will change based on experience with cooking, and it is hard to answer if someone has no cooking experience at all. The question, “I find it easiest to remember: a) names; b) things I have done; or c) faces” is simply baffling, especially given that option b) can encompass all of human memory. Even ignoring the possible confusions in these questions, they point to superficial qualities in a person and assign them undue importance. At best, the Learning Styles Inventory is a frivolous introduction to learning styles, but the corresponding study tips imply that the Inventory tries to take itself seriously. There is no information on the Career Cruising website concerning the reasoning behind the questions.

The Big Five test is a more comprehensive questionnaire, allowing you to do a 300-question personality test. Although I imagine these results could be quite specific to the person, spending so much time self-analyzing can become unhealthy. It is a way of thinking about identity that is divorced from the community around you. With 300 questions, trivial subjects surface. The effect of “I love action” or “I go straight for the goal” on any of the Big Five traits is never explained. The calculations behind the results are a blackbox, and there is no way to discern how the test uses the data it collects to form its conclusions. While the Big Five test was created by psychologists with the backing of evidence, some online assessments have been revealed to

produce sexist results – ranking women as more disagreeable than men for the same traits depending on what gender one self-identifies as. This is because results are shown in comparing other test-takers with the same gender.

The Enneagram test attempts the most ambitious stab at your personhood. According to the website Truity, the Enneagram identifies a core belief that “drives your deepest motivations and fears — and fundamentally shapes a person’s worldview and the perspective through which they see the world and the people around them.” The framework is self-confident, but Professor Sanjay Srivastava of the Department of Psychology at the University of Oregon points out the lack of evidence and scientific theory behind the test. The fact that Enneagram does not acknowledge the lack of scientific background suggests that it is a commercial rather than evidence-based model.

Myers-Briggs has accrued credibility by basing the test off of psychologist Carl Jung, and approximately 3.5 million tests are administered each year. Despite the confidence in Myers-Briggs, it lacks empirical evidence to support the veracity of claims to capture someone’s personality. In an interview between a University of Wharton journal and Merve Emre, an associate professor of English at Oxford University, Emre claims 50 per cent of people who take the test receive different results a second time. Emre also points out that when participants disagree with their results in workplace evaluations, they are often told by MBTI test administrators that they’re not interpreting the results correctly.

Genevieve Quinn | Photos Editor

If anything, these tests are able to monitor our perception of ourselves – a very subjective experience that concrete questions can never fully account for.

Yet another flaw is that these tests are static. They record a moment in time, while our experiences in life are constantly shaping how we interact in the world. Another pitfall is confirmation bias, a phenomenon where we are more likely to believe evidence that supports our existing beliefs. Thus, when we receive results that validate our opinions of ourselves, we may accept them without enough critical consideration.

Finally, many of these personality tests cater to a specific audience – they are not universal. This was recently found in a study on the Big Five Test: a translated version of the test was given to a small South American tribe, and the results did not cluster into the expected five types. Not only do the tests lose accuracy when applied across various demographics, but they also reflect a rigid interpretation of personality. To put stock into such models limits our perceptions of people through a Western gaze.

Although I can understand the temptation to neatly classify a chaotic assortment of values and quirks, I am learning to embrace the ways humans are unable to be described in a paragraph. I am also learning to describe myself based on the actions I do for others and the way I react to real-life experiences, rather than trying to extrapolate meaning from vague statements such as “I am always prepared” (the Big Five). Although I will keep doing personality tests for fun, I will no longer be putting stock in them.

The pseudoscience and business-oriented model of personality tests overshadow their potential for serious interpretation

An Idle Mind is the Devil’s Workshop

An interview with John Williams Lanthier, local artist and docent of Usine 106u

Randa Mohamed Culture Contributor

Usine 106u is a self-managed artgallerylocatedinthePlateau on Rue Roy Est. Founded in 2006 by Eric Braün, Karine Fournier, and Mimi Traillette, the gallery showcases local art from collective and solo exhibitions. Usine 106u aims to break down barriers by accepting submissions from all artists who apply. On March 21, Randa Mohamed sat down with one such artist, John Williams Lanthier — who makes hypnotic sculptures out of found objects, paint, and a variety of mixed media — to discuss his creative process. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Randa Mohamed for The McGill Daily (RM): What is your role at Usine 106u?

John Williams Lanthier (JL): I’m a volunteer here. They call them docents in the museums — people who keep an eye on the art. Docents make sure nobody steals anything, but they also sell things and answer questions. And I help hang the art here. Once a month, we have all the artists dropping off and picking up their art to handle the transfer. And then we put together the jigsaw puzzle of all the different sized paintings. We try to fill all the space on the walls.

RM : Do you guys put up the new art before the Vernissages [exhibitions to showcase new art]?

JL: The Vernissages are on the first Thursday of the month, so we put it up on the first Sunday, I guess, or the Sunday before the Thursday.

RM: How many years have you been part of the Usine?

JL: Six, maybe seven. I guess I first showed up for a month or so, off and on, and then it became more permanent.

RM: How many artists have their work up in here right now?

JL: I think it’s like 35, 40.

RM: Could you describe what a Vernissage is?

JL: Well, it’s an event where people can drink and enjoy the

art at leisure and even meet some of the artists and talk to them. And there’s music.

RM: What do you do in your own work? Do you do mainly sculptures these days?

JL: I’ve been working with multimedia assemblages, but I still do some painting. I did a little mural inside the storage closet recently. But many sculptures do include paint.

RM: Did you start out doing sculptures from the beginning?

JL: No, I mean, I was painting for a while, but then I did in art school have a sort of 3D phase and then I went back to super flat and then I got back into the 3D.

Randa Mohamed | Culture Contributor

RM: Where did you go to art school?

JL: Concordia University. I did painting and drawing as a major and art history as a minor.

RM: Do you think that your work is reflective of themes in your life or that it’s kind of an unrelated outlet?

JL: It’s inspired these days mostly by the objects that I find, which have their own histories. And I just try to combine them in a way that makes sense, that tells a new story.

RM: So you feature a lot of found objects in your art. How do you find them? Do you spend days where you search

for things? Or is it more so just as you live your life, you come across things?

JL: Yeah, it’s more like that. I dumpster dive sometimes, but mostly when I pass by and there’s some cool stuff on top of a bin or a box or somebody puts a little sign: “for free”, or something.

RM: This one that you found, [pointing to a cement sculpture of a screaming head painted black] that was found in an abandoned building, you said?

JL: Yeah. I went with some roommates. It was super abandoned. Like total shit. Like all the water covering the floor. Very dangerous.

RM: So these are things which nobody’s going to be looking for anyways.

JL: Yeah.

RM: When you are working on pieces, is there any kind of music that you listen to or any kind of specific mood that you try to get into?

JL: I suppose when I would work on guitars, I would get some custom commissions, so musicians would give me their instruments and they would ask for, a sort of, theme. So, I would pick music that went with that theme. But right now I’m just sort of listening to whatever. Some days, nothing. But, I used to not be able to work without music.

RM: Do you plan things completely before you start making them, or is it just that you kind of start making something and then figure it out as you go?

“It’s inspired these days mostly by the objects that I find, which have their own histories. And I just try to combine them in a way that makes sense, that tells a new story.”

-John Williams Lanthier

JL : Exactly. Yeah, that. If you plan too much. It doesn’t leave much room for improvisation.

RM: Yeah. So, the series of sculptures that you worked on with the referees, for example, was it planned that it was going to be a series?

JL: The Beast Battles. No, it wasn’t. I just had a lot of fun with the first one. Then the second, and third. I think I’m at, like, 20 or 21 now.

RM: Could you tell us about those sculptures?

JL: Well, I just make little monsters and then make little environments for them to live in and fight. But I make another little character, the referee, with black and white stripes, and he’s there to make it more sporty, I guess. He’s monitoring it so it doesn’t get out of hand.

RM: Do you think that your work is affected by the different seasons that are happening? In the winter do you find that the work is different from how it is in the summer?

JL: It’s possible because of the found objects. That depends on the season, because people throw out different things. So, in the summer I actually find more Christmas-y stuff because it’s not as much of a hot commodity. So things are not necessarily matching the seasons. I have some Halloween things that I’ve been working on for a while. I’ve been working on it for maybe a year and a half. Just whenever I find a Halloween-y sort of thing.

RM: Have you been doing art your whole life?

JL: I used to do more crafts when I was a kid. I liked Lego and paper maché, friendship beads, paper dolls, that sort of thing. And then I used to draw comics. Then I got into more realistic portraits, I suppose. And then I got more surreal and then more psychedelic. And now it’s sort of in between pop art, surrealism and psychedelia.

RM: Growing up, was there a lot of art going on in your life?

JL: I was a clown. We did a lot of shows. And for maybe six, seven years before that, I was singing and dancing.

RM: Do you have any advice you would give to budding artists?

JL: Make time to do art every day, even if it’s just like, in the metro. And don’t get too focused on the results. It’s the process itself that keeps you engaged with it.

RM: Do you think that doing art can be a form of therapy?

JL: Oh, definitely. It’s helped me a lot to enjoy life, relax.

there some similar themes shared between everyone?

JL: Sort of outsider art, one could say. Not necessarily the minimal or tasteful conceptual art you’ll see

based on their associations with them. Like if that was like their favorite childhood toy or something.

RM: Do you have a favorite piece that you ever made?

chaosmosis, another word, is like osmosis, but chaos.

RM: Do you often work at home?

JL: I can do the pipe cleaner stuff there. I just need glue. And it’s not that messy. I can do it on the couch, watching a movie, or something. For almost ten days, I think, I didn’t have a phone since mine cracked. So yeah, I’d be just pipe cleaner-ing — sometimes while waiting for the metro.

RM: So you bring it with you everywhere?

JL: Well, yeah, I always have something to do when I’m out to keep from getting bored.

RM: Has the Usine been a good way to meet other artists and form a sort of community?

JL: Oh, definitely. I’m not that social a person, but yeah, here, I’m forced to engage with the artists who bring their work, and they’re mostly nice people, and I’ve learned a lot from seeing their creations here every month. I try not to steal too much of their style.

RM: Is there something that connects the artwork between all the different artists that are here? Are

in most galleries. It’s more street art, but it’s more of the moment, more real. They are regular people. This is their inner world that they’re sharing with us, whether or not they’re legitimized by the big institutions of art.

RM: Is there a message that you want other people to get from your art?

JL: No, not necessarily. I mean, some of them have a little narrative or whatever, or some sort of color scheme. But no, all these found objects, I guess, have different meanings for different people

JL: I have a collage that’s covering my apartment, all the ceiling. That’s probably the biggest thing I ever made. I spent a long time on that. It’s very 3D. It’s mostly black and white — all fractals and tracing paper and a lot of movement. A spiral cosmos. We called it entropia or chaosmosis.

RM: Entropia. What does entropia mean?

JL: I made that up in school with two other classmates. It’s from entropy, utopia, or dystopia. And then

RM: Do you usually like to keep your hands busy?

JL: An idle mind is the devil’s workshop.

If you’d like to keep up with John Williams Lanthier’s upcoming projects, you can follow him on his Facebook page, John Lanthier Art. Are you an aspiring artist in Montreal? Would you like to see your art displayed in a gallery? You can contact submit photos of your work to usine106u@gmail.com. For more information, visit Usine 106u ’s official website.

“I’m not that social a person, but [...] here, I’m forced to engage with the artists who bring their work, and they’re mostly nice people, and I’ve learned a lot from seeing their creations here every month .”

-John Williams Lanthier

Randa Mohamed | Culture

Contributor

Randa Mohamed | Culture Contributor

The Rage Against Amira Elghawaby

What the Elghawaby controversy says about Bill 21

Jeffery Vacante Commentary Contributor

On January 26, Amira Elghawaby was appointed Canada’s first Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia. Controversy surrounding her appointment has turned the public’s attention once again to Bill 21, the Quebec law that bans anyone who works in the public sector in the province, including teachers and police officers, from wearing hijabs, yarmulkes, and other overt religious displays while on the job.

A ll of Quebec’s political parties as well as the Bloc Québécois have come out against Ms. Elghawaby’s appointment, demanding that the Prime Minister withdraw her nomination. The main complaint about Ms. Elghawaby’s appointment stems from an opinion piece she co-authored in 2019 for the Ottawa Citizen in which she pointed to a poll that showed that a large majority of Quebecers who claimed to support Bill 21 also held negative views about Islam. “Unfortunately,” she wrote in the piece, “the majority of Quebecers appear to be swayed not by the rule of law, but by antiMuslim sentiment.”

T he province’s political leadership complained that Ms. Elghawaby was making broad generalizations about the province, unfairly painting all

Quebecers with the same broad strokes. Critics were quick to point out that Quebecers are not Islamophobic – or at least not any more Islamophobic than any other Canadians. Critics also objected to Ms. Elghawaby’s assertion that Bill 21 was in any way the product of Islamophobic sentiments, suggesting instead that it reflected the will of a majority of Quebecers who have worked hard since the Quiet Revolution to build a modern and secular society.

L eaving aside for a moment the fact that these points also paint the province with the same broad strokes as Ms. Elghawaby’s critics claim she had done with her opinion piece, the point about the Quiet Revolution is dubious.

T he popular understanding of the Quiet Revolution is that the 1960s represented the moment when Quebecers turned away from Catholicism and began the process of building a modern and secular society. It is true that this was a moment when the province threw off the shackles of the Church. But this was not done to achieve secularism so much as it was an attempt on the part of the political, professional, and business classes in the province to reduce the influence of the Church over the state in order to solidify their own positions of power within the state and within society.

O ver the last half century, historians have shown that the reforms of the Quiet Revolution were more about challenging the power of the Catholic Church than they were about challenging Catholicism itself. If one were to follow this reading of history, Bill 21 should be regarded less as an attempt to defend the supposedly hard-won gains associated with secularism that have been achieved since the Quiet Revolution and more as part of an ongoing effort to enhance the powers of the state – and, with it, to preserve the privileges of the largely white and male leadership classes in the province.

A long with Bill 96, which amended Bill 101 in ways that restrict the freedom of Quebecers who wish to obtain services in English, Bill 21 is intended to limit the freedoms enjoyed by members of minority groups who threaten to undermine the authority of the province’s leadership class. This leadership class has come to rely on its ability to defend the French language as well as the secularism of the society for its continued hold on

power. T he preemptive use of the Notwithstanding Clause to pass both laws means that any debate about minority rights in the province is effectively silenced. It is always troubling to watch a majority in any society employ the instruments of state power to limit the rights and freedoms of minority groups. Even so, the passage of laws such as Bill 21 and Bill 96 should be regarded as evidence that the Frenchspeaking, white, male, and “secular” political, professional, and business classes are not at all confident in their ability to maintain their hold on power. By attempting to limit the rights of religious minorities as well as the rights of those who wish to express themselves in English, the overwhelmingly French-speaking, white, and male power structure is attempting – just as it has since the Quiet Revolution – to shore up its position atop a secular and French-speaking society.

Olivia Shan | Managing Editor

I t is thus hardly surprising that the nomination of Amira Elghawaby to be Canada’s representative in the fight against Islamophobia should have aroused such anger from Quebec’s leadership classes. Her past comments about Bill 21 notwithstanding, her

very existence in a position of political influence – a position that might influence public opinion – represents an unacceptable threat to the power and privileges that Quebec’s male political leadership has accumulated for itself since the Quiet Revolution.

Even so, the passage of laws such as Bill 21 and Bill 96 should be regarded as evidence that the Frenchspeaking, white, male, and “secular” political, professional, and business classes are not confident in their ability to maintain their hold on power.

The main complaint about Ms. Elghawaby’s appointment stems from an opinion piece [...] in which she pointed to a poll that showed that a large majority of Quebecers who claimed to support Bill 21 also held negative views about Islam.

HOROSCOPES

Aries (Mar 21 - Apr 19)

try thinking of others for a sec babe. ask your friends and family what’s been going on in their life. Leo (Jul 23 - Aug 22)

just because it’s spring does not mean you need a whole new wardrobe. try saving your money for some experiences.

Cancer (Jun 21 - JUL 22) Jul 22)

When was the last time you read for pleasure? or watched a movie without checking your phone? look for some peace in your life.

Libra (Sept 23 - Oct 22)

you’re not as perfect as you think you are. get off your high horse, and journal for a sec.

Capricorn (Dec 22 - Jan 19)

Take all that crazy energy you’ve got and put it in cleaning your room. All those dust bunnies are really taking over.

just because it’s getting warmer does not mean you have to party every chance you get. stay in and make a good meal for yourself.

Scorpio (Oct 23 - Nov 21)

get out of your little bubble. You are living in a great city with over a million people, meet some new people.

Gemini (May 21 - Jun 20)

you think everyone is in love with you, and they are babes. You’ve got the power, what are you going to do with it?

Taurus (Apr 20 - May 20) Virgo (Aug 23 - Sept 22)

you’re not as self-centered as people think you are. stop worrying about what others think.

(Nov 22 - Dec 21)

okay you’re a little too codependent and someone had to say it. try not texting them f irst and see what happens.

Aquarius (Jan 20 - Feb 18)

Get your shit together. Make a list of whatever is going on with you, and make a decision for god’s sake.

Pisces (Feb 19 - Mar 20)

try holding your tongue when listening to your friends. remember, its their time, not a pisces pity party.