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News

The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 7, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

3

Quebec pushes back against shale gas Public hearings fail to address extraction methods Mari Galloway The McGill Daily

T

he provincial government held a series of public hearings on shale gas drilling from Monday to Wednesday night in collaboration with Quebec’s top natural gas and oil companies. Concerns about the social and environmental cost of the controversial energy extraction method have been mounting amongst Quebeckers in the lead up to the hearings.

Experts from nine provincial ministries, as well as representatives from Gaz Métro and the Quebec Oil and Gas Association, spoke about the shale gas industry and fielded questions from the public at the sessions, which were held Monday and Tuesday in the town of SaintHyacinthe, east of Montreal.

Opposition politicians have criticized Premier Jean Charest’s Liberal government for going forward with shale gas extraction before conducting research into the procedure.

Martine Ouellet, Parti Québécois MNA for Vachon in Longueuil, told The Daily, “The Quebec government does not have studies on how this will affect pollution or greenhouse gas emissions.”

“That’s the problem: there is a lack of information,” she continued. “If you look at the hearings, they kept repeating, ‘We don’t have that information, we don’t have that information, we need more information.’ There are no studies.

The public has not been consulted enough, and what we really don’t understand is why the government is listening so closely to the industry and not to citizens.”

Extraction of shale gas, a previously inaccessible type of natural gas found in shale rock deep below the surface of the earth, has taken off recently in Quebec due to technological advances and a process called hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.”

Companies drill a well to access the gas, into which they inject millions of gallons of water, sand, and chemicals under high

pressure, creating fissures that open the gas flow.

Questions remain about how drilling will affect Quebec’s plans to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. Industry and government representatives have marketed shale gas as a “cleaner” fuel. However, Natural Resources Canada has warned the federal government that fracking could increase carbon dioxide emissions, interfere with wildlife habitats, and deplete freshwater resources.

In the U.S., shale gas drilling has caused water contamination so severe that people living close to drilling sites could actually light their tap water on fire.

Some companies, such as Talisman Energy and Junex, have begun testing the viability of the gas reserves in the St. Lawrence Valley, and so far the government has issued 600 drilling permits.

The province has ordered its environmental protection agency, the Bureau d’audiences publiques sur l’environnement (BAPE), to review the practice and to report to govern-

ment officials by February.

However, critics say BAPE has not been given enough time to do a detailed study. A group of former BAPE members wrote an open letter published by the CBC last Friday, stating that the agency’s mandate “imposed constraints such that BAPE had neither the time nor the resources to stimulate rigorous and credible public debate.”

“Not only don’t we have enough time for proper study, but the documents are ridiculous,” said Kim Cornelissen, a spokesperson for the environmental group Jour de la Terre. “[In] examining shale gas we are not saying if it is good or not. We are saying we will do it, [but] how do we do it? It doesn’t make any sense.”

In a recent interview with the Gazette, Steven Guilbeault, deputy director of the environmental group Equiterre, wondered why the government was not taking more time before beginning drilling.

“There’s no rush. The gas is not going anywhere,” said Guilbeault.

“It’s not going to evaporate. It’s

UQAM students protest against tuition hikes Photo by Victor Tangermann Several dozen students, mostly from UQAM, protested the upcoming 2012 tuition defreeze outside Premier Jean Charest’s office building on McGill College yesterday, holding placards, singing, and making grilled-cheese sandwiches.

The sandwiches were “symbolic,” said Martine Desjardins, president of UQAM’s science student association, representing what students living on student aid can afford to eat with their seven dollar a day food stipend.

Stephanie Villeneuve, an education student at UQAM, said that Charest “should put himself in our place…and try to live on seven dollars a day.”

Other education students from UQAM made up a song on-site to express their discontent: Monday morning, we eat cheese sandwiches Because Charest is unfreezing tuition.

Because we are so poor, We can’t eat anything else So we settle for eating grilled-cheese!

Desjardins contended that the Charest government has not considered all the solutions to the underfunding of universities.

“The only solution that has been proposed [by the government] is to look for money in student’s tuition,” she said.

She argued that there are other ways of financing universities, such as taxing businesses.

Off-Campus Eye

not going to migrate to some other provinces or U.S. states. It’s going to go stay there. What’s wrong with taking six months, or a little bit more, to study this thoroughly?”

Cornelissen pointed to the close relationship between the provincial government and industry executives as a possible reason for the hurry. “[Former Hydro-Québec president] André Caillé and other industry leaders [are] really close to the government, so they are in a really good place to say [to the government], ‘You know, we know what we are talking about.’

It’s like it’s between family,” said Cornelisson, who nevertheless remains optimistic about halting development.

“I think that the people are way wiser than this trick that says we must have shale gas. I don’t think it will work.”

There is now a petition before the National Assembly to ask for a moratorium on drilling. The next public shale gas hearings will take place in mid-November.

4 News

The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 7, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

Student voices compete with new clock bells Photo by Ada Sonnenfeld

Members of the fledgling Mobilization McGill interrupted the unveiling of the new Roddick Gates clock last Friday, holding aloft a banner reading “Time to Listen,” next to the figure of a frowning clock.

The Mobilization McGill is an ad-hoc collective of students engaged in grassroots activism on campus. They have been heavily involved in the drive to boycott McGill Food Services.

Former Daily editor Sam Neylon is shown at right, speaking to a McGill Security Services guard. Nicholas van Beek is at left.

The newly-renovated Roddick Gates clocks were unveiled as part of a ceremony that included a bagpipe procession from the Arts Building lobby down to the Roddick Gates.

The Roddick clocks and bells were first installed 85 years ago, but slowly ground to a halt after years of inclement weather and deferred maintenance.

The new clocks are water-sealed and satellite-controlled. The bells are computerized.

Campus Eye

BlackBerry, RIM, Research In Motion and related trademarks, names and logos are the property of Research In Motion Limited and are registered and/or used in the U.S. and countries around the world. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Montreal Region Carrefour Angrignon Carrefour du Nord Carrefour Laval Centre Eaton Centre Laval Centre Rockland Fairview Pointe Claire Galeries d’Anjou Galeries Joliette Galeries Rive Nord

Jardins Dorval Mail Champlain Place Alexis Nihon Place Longueuil Place Montréal Trust Place Rosemère Place Versailles Place Vertu Promenades St-Bruno

Quebec City Region Galeries Chagnon Galeries de la Capitale Place Fleur de Lys Place Laurier Promenades Beauport

Elsewhere in the Province Carrefour de l’Estrie, Sherbrooke Centre Alma, Alma Galeries de Granby, Granby Galeries de Hull, Hull Galeries Terrebonne, Terrebonne La Grande Place des Bois-Francs, Victoriaville Les Rivières, Trois-Rivières Place du Royaume, Chicoutimi Promenades de l’Outaouais, Gatineau Promenades de Sorel, Sorel-Tracy Promenades Drummondville, Drummondville

News

The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 7, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

5

Criminalization of the survivors Jordan Flaherty talks to The Daily about New Orleans’s struggles five years after the storm

J

ordan Flaherty is a New Orleans-based organizer and journalist whose writing about community struggle in post-Katrina NOLA has gained national prominence. He spoke at McGill’s Faculty of Law on Tuesday, October 5, as part of the Community and Resistance tour. The tour aims to “build relationships between grassroots activists and independent media,” and educate young activists about the concept of “solidarity work” in disaster situations – which respects established local community leadership structures – as opposed to volunteerism, which usurps these structures. Flaherty spoke at McGill as part of Culture Shock, the weeklong series of events hosted by QPIRG and SSMU. Flaherty spoke about the history of New Orleans’ culture borne of community and organizing, and a recovery effort based on “survival of the fittest.” He spoke to The Daily the day after.

His book, Floodlines: Community and Resistance from Katrina to the Jena 6, was published this summer

by Haymarket Books.

The McGill Daily: A lot of people in the media have been calling the recent BP oil spill “Obama’s Katrina.” Do you agree with these parallels?

Jordan Flaherty: I do think that, in both cases, the problem is systemic. Bush’s adviser Grover Norquist said, “We want to make government so small that we can drown it in a bathtub.” The logical result of that policy – that started at least with Reagan, if not before – was this idea of making government ineffective, so that [the Federal Emergency Management Association] is not there when you need it; so that the federal Mineral Management Service is actually collaborating with the oil companies. The idea is that every aspect of government does not do what it’s supposed to do. I can’t really blame Obama for not making a radical change, because we’re talking about three decades of government policy that has done this. I think Obama is a change in tone, but not in direction. Definitely the drilling disaster is a continuation of what we saw with Katrina; of the government not doing its job to protect people.

MD: How do you feel about the oil drilling moratorium in the wake of the spill?

JF: The moratorium is too small a step. I think we need something much more major. We need to completely redefine the U.S. government’s relationship with oil companies. For people on

the Gulf Coast, there needs to be some real focus on how you can really reinvest in those communities in a real way, because they are hurting from the effects of the drilling over decades.

MD: Do you see the new U.S. health care reform as helping New Orleanians?

JF: On a basic, nitty-gritty level, there were some concrete benefits for Louisiana. Louisiana is the only state in the country, I think, that has a free state-wide indigent health care system. On a bigger scale, health care is a major issue.

Again, Obama is a change in tone, not in direction. We didn’t get anywhere near the Canadian system; we didn’t get the public option.

So we didn’t get the change that was needed, but there were some positive steps.

MD: Twenty current and former New Orleans police officers have been indicted for misconduct in their actions in the days immediately following the storm.

Have police relations deteriorated or improved since Katrina?

JF: We have a new mayor and a new police chief, and they’ve said that they’ll be addressing these issues and making these changes.

Maybe the fact that there have been these high profile investigations and arrests have made people feel that there’s been some progress. When I talk to folks in the community – especially folks that are active on this issue – people are incredibly angry and do not trust the police. They feel that the new police chief is bringing more random [police] stops. Of course we’re seeing that overwhelmingly in poor AfricanAmerican neighbourhoods. The struggle right now is on what form federal oversight of the police will take. If we can get some real positive reforms, that might make a difference.

MD: At the talk last night you said that the media, that America at large, had engaged in a process of “criminalizing the survivors” of the storm. It seems a fairly apt description of what has happened to people still living in inner cities across the U.S. Do you see any positive steps in Obama’s administration toward creating an urban policy in America?

JF: His early action was criticizing the cop who arrested [Henry Louis Gates Jr.], and then back tracking and inviting him to the beer summit. I think that really represents what we’ve seen from the Obama administration.

Again, it’s a change in tone, but are there real policies on the ground that are making a difference for people? We’re not seeing it. We’ve

Victor Tangermann | The McGill Daily

Jordan Flaherty stopped at Mcgill as part of the Community and Resistance tour. gone so far in the wrong direction over the course of decades that a slight altering of course is just not enough.

MD: How should the U.S. government facilitate the right of return for the 100,000-plus New Orleanians that are still displaced and with no ability to come home?

JF: The fundamental problem is that federal policy over disasters [is] governed under the Robert T. Stafford Act. The

Stafford Act specifies the rights that people don’t have. Instead, [federal disaster policy] should be governed under the international law that governs internally displaced persons, which the U.S. has signed on to. That law facilitates not only the right of return, but the right of people to have a say in the conditions of their return. And that’s fundamentally what we’ve really been missing.

If we just followed the relevant international law, we’d be mak-

ing a huge step forward. People from New Orleans have been fighting, fighting desperately to come back. The reason that more people haven’t is because the government is literally putting walls in front of them. The firing of teachers [in New Orleans], the sealing up of public housing. All these things are putting up walls in front of people instead of helping them.

—Compiled by Michael Lee-Murphy

6 News

The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 7, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

The principles of war The Daily talks to the Jerusalem Post’s Yaakov Katz about Israel, Iran, and the political uses of warfare Emilio Comay del Junco The McGill Daily

Y

aakov Katz, the military editor of Israel’s largest English-language daily, defended Israel’s right to pursue military action against Iran in a speech to around 30 guests at Hillel McGill on Tuesday. After his talk, The Daily had the chance to speak with Katz in Hillel House about Israel’s foreign policy, the possibility of peace, and the uses of warfare.

Born in Chicago, Katz moved to Israel in 1993, where he served in the Armored Corps of the Israeli Defense Force. He has since worked extensively as a journalist and editor, covering the 2006 war in Lebanon and Operation Cast Lead (Israel’s 2008 air campaign against Hamas in the Gaza Strip) for the Jerusalem Post and USA Today.

In his speech, Katz focused on Israel’s current standoff with Iran, arguing passionately for the use of military force against the Islamic republic. He also described Israel’s wars with Hamas and Hezbollah as proxy wars with Iran.

He later stated that if “Iran were to tomorrow begin to enrich uranium to higher levels, the levels required for nuclear weapons – go to what’s referred to as the “break out stage” – that would constitute the grounds for an Israeli strike against Iran, sooner rather than later.”

In his characterization of the threat of Iran developing nuclear weaponry, Katz also posited that the development of nuclear technology by Iran would “motivate other countries to test the NPT [Nuclear non-proliferation treaty] and to test the world’s willingness and readiness to take real and decisive action.”

When asked why Israel’s own officially-denied but widely-acknowledged nuclear arsenal hasn’t created a similar license in the international community, Katz paraphrased current Israeli president Shimon Peres’s response to a similar question.

“The nuclear program was to allow Israel to make peace not to make war and that’s part of the idea behind the program – to create a strong Israel so that enemies wouldn’t attack it,” said Katz.

Katz went on to underscore what

he sees as the fundamentally cyclical nature of the conflict.

“What we’re looking at today are cycles. ... All you can really hope for today [is] to postpone the next conflict for a significant period of time,” he explained.

According to Katz, war is essential in these cycles as a tool to reach settlements, a theorization he traces back to the early 19thcentury. “[Carl von] Clausewitz, who was a very famous Prussian military theorist…said that war is part of the process to create the conditions that will allow the diplomats, the political levels, to create some sort of just resolution,” he said.

Clausewitz’s most famous formulation – that war is politics by other means – has been thrown into question since the advent of world warfare and weapons of mass destruction in the course of the last hundred years. Nonetheless, Katz defended warfare as an essentially political tool.

“What war can do is create viable conditions in order to create new realities. And we’ve seen that, for example, in the second Lebanon war, in 2006. Israel was attacked.

Two of its soldiers were kidnapped.

Rockets were landing in Israel. And Israel decided to go to war. It could have decided to suck it up, to swallow hard and ignore what had happened. But it decided to go to war, and I think legitimately.”

Decisions like these, he argued, do not provide definitive solutions, but their short-term impact makes them worthwhile despite the human cost. Katz again used the 2006 war in Lebanon and the 2008 Operation Cast Lead as examples.

“The fact of the matter is that for the past four years there’s been quiet in Lebanon. So that war led to [UN Security Council Resolution] 1701, which led to this new quiet, which led to this new understanding of the threat from Lebanon. ... Operation Cast Lead in Gaza last year was very controversial, but also led to a new period of quiet which Israel has never had before, almost two years of quiet in the Gaza strip. Is it the end of the conflict? No. Did that war in Lebanon end Hamas or end Hezbollah? No, but it’s able to change the reality.”

Hearkening back to his cyclical view of conflict, Katz gave the example of the First World War as an effective, but temporary political tool.

Yaakov Katz spoke at Hillel House on Tuesday about Israel’s foreign affairs.

“Think back to the end of the First World War, when Germany was deterred until the beginning of the Second World War, when they were no longer deterred and decided to attack and invade Poland. So the concept is that these are all cycles and that’s what this warfare is all about. What Israel can hope for is that it can push off and stave off that future conflict for as long as possible.”

Katz did recognize the possibility of a paradigm shift in Israel’s situation with the arrival of new political actors.

“Hamas is part of the political process in the Palestinian arena, Hezbollah is part of the political process and part of the government in Lebanon,” he said. “Do we give them recognition? Do we talk to them? So that’s a whole separate issue in itself.”

Victor Tangermann | The McGill Daily

In response, he asked, rhetorically, “What is there to talk about if they don’t recognize my right to exist?”

However, Katz did not entirely rule out the possibility that Israel would benefit from negotiating with Hamas and Hezbollah.

“So Israel refuses to talk to them. Is that the right or the wrong move? That’s a good question.”

Pierre Trudeau said Just watch me ...to a journalist. Write for News. news@mcgilldaily.com

News

The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 7, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

7

Locked-out journalists go to press RueFrontenac.com hitting stands by the end of month with a weekly tabloid Lola Duffort The McGill Daily

T

he locked-out journalists of the Quebec tabloid Journal de Montréal, who have been producing an online newspaper for over a year, will begin publishing a free, weekly print version by the end of the month. It will be distributed across the Montreal region every Thursday.

Nearly two years ago, 253 Journal de Montréal unionized workers were locked out of their jobs after months of contract negotiations with Quebecor Media, which owns the Journal and is Canada’s largest newspaper publisher.

The workers are still on the street – and online. The week after the lock-out was initiated, the picketing workers created RueFrontenac. com, an independent, online news publication.

Jean-François Codère, a Rue Frontenac coordinator and founding member, said that the website is a way for the union’s members to “keep their professional relevancy, to stay in the media environment.”

Besides, he added, “We knew negotiations were probably going to last awhile, and we wanted to stay busy.”

According to Codère, a print edition had been a goal from the beginning. “We didn’t do it initially because of cost, but things have changed, the website is doing well…. Print is the next

NEWS BULLETIN Oil spill in the St. Lawrence On September 28 a Suncor Energy refinery conduit leaked 35 barrels of diesel fuel into the St. Lawrence River.

Residents of Rivière-desPrairies-Pointe-aux-Trembles, a town near the spill, began calling the fire department at 9 p.m., complaining of a strong smell of oil.

According to a statement released

by Suncor, emergency response teams were deployed immediately.

The company said the spill was a mix “of diesel fuel and water.”

The leak was recently deter-

step, it will allow us to reach more people,” he said. “With a website, you have to wait for people to come to you.”

The Frontenac administration is aiming for a minimum press run of 50,000. Codère said that in terms of coverage, the print edition will allow for a lot more than Rue Frontenac’s current web platform.

Though wages and job security were initially the main points of contention, the lockout has brought up another issue that may soon see a parliamentary inquiry – Quebecor’s repeated use of replacement workers during strikes.

The Journal de Montréal has continued to publish during the

lockout, despite a Quebec Labour Code stipulation that companies cannot hire new employees or freelancers – scabs – to replace a worker engaged in a labour dispute. Media companies get around this law using remotely-performed labour. Scabs don’t necessarily have to enter the Journal’s physical establishment, they can do their work online.

“The law was written in 1977, in a language that allows – now – for these giant loopholes. …

Quebec basically doesn’t have an anti-scab law right now,” said Pascal Filotto, secretary general to the Syndicat des travailleurs de l’information du Journal de

and the CSN were in Quebec City last month to present the national assembly with a petition, signed by some 24,000 people, demanding that the anti-scab law be amended to suit the modern labour environment. The assembly unanimously passed a motion proposed by Amir Khadir, the Québec Solidaire MNA for Mercier, to study how the law should be updated.

Filotto sees this as a sign that there is “genuine political will right now to modernize these laws.”

Olivia Messer | The McGill Daily

RueFrontenac.com is making the leap to print.

mined to be caused by a check valve that malfunctioned and caused the diesel to leak into the river. Suncor expects the clean-up efforts to be over by the end of the week.

According to a statement released on October 1, “there has not been an impact on wildlife.”

Chantal Rouleau, mayor of Rivière-des-Prairies-Pointe-auxTrembles, could not be reached for comment, but told La Presse that the citizens did not receive adequate information from Suncor, and pointed to a discrepancy between what Suncor was claiming and what the inhabitants were seeing.

Ronald Gehr, a professor in the McGill Engineering faculty and expert in water and wastewater treatment, emphasized that the

Montréal (STIJM), the Journal’s union.

In 2007, the Journal de Québec – another Quebecor-owned paper – lost a Quebec Labour Board hearing declaring work done online by freelancers to be in violation of the Labour Code. The ruling was then overturned on appeal by the Quebec Superior Court, and now the STIJM and the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN) are appealing the decision, which could send the case to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Representatives of the STIJM

St. Lawrence will not be gravely harmed by the oil spill.

“It’s true that there’s very little ‘wildlife’ on the St Lawrence River, at least not in the Montreal area,” said Gehr. “By ‘wildlife’ I mean ducks, geese, the sort of animals which would wash up dead on the shore…the impact of the oil spill, especially if they have recovered 30 of the 35 barrels, will be minor.”

“The major contribution [of pollution] comes from ourselves, you and me, in the form of treated sewage,” said Gehr.

Environment Canada, which is overseeing the clean-up efforts on the St. Lawrence, could not be reached for comment.

—Maria Surilas

Radioactive waste on the St. Lawrence?

Radioactive waste may soon pose a threat to the St. Lawrence, as an Ontario company tries to gain approval for plans to transport decommissioned steam generators on the river.

On September 28, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) began hearings to assess Bruce Power’s plans to transport 16 radioactive generators through the Great Lakes waterways and the St. Lawrence to a recycling plant in Studsvik, Sweden.

According to a story published in the Vancouver Sun, if radioactive waste were to leak into the St. Lawrence, the effects would last for centuries.

“A radioactive leak immediately doesn’t seem as bad because you can’t see it, you can’t smell it, and you can’t

taste it. It’s not like an oil spill which is a real big horrible thing immediately, but the long-term effects would be so much...worse,” Gordon Edwards, President of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, told the Vancouver Sun. According to a statement released

by Bruce Power, “The steam generators are considered low-level radioactive waste and are well within regulatory limits to ship… Much of the metal can be decontaminated, melted down and sold back into the scrap metal market.”

Mayor Gerard Tremblay recently sent a letter to the CNSC stating city hall’s opposition to the project, Le Devoir reported October 4.

—M.S.

Nixon said When the President does it it’s not illegal...to a journalist. Write for News. news@mcgilldaily.com

Letters

The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 7, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

8

Re: “QPIRG and Opt-Out campaign clash” | News | September 30

Shouldn’t QPIRG be glad to be rid of such malignant privilegers of White Maleness?

Matthew Powes U1 Arts

Where’s the beef, Sam Baker?

Re: “Where’s the beef, Daily et al?” | Letters | September 23 I, for one, would like Sam Baker to write a commentary piece, just so that the giant hole in his/her uninformed argument can be just that much clearer.

Let me extrapolate on a key consideration left out of that letter. Sam Baker seems quite familiar with Arch Café’s finances. That’s remarkable, since no student, not even those who ran Arch Café, has managed to obtain that information. Or maybe s/he believes that every word that comes out of the administration is entirely honest and truthful. “I simply want people to be evaluative and realistic,” Baker writes. Do you think Arch Café ran without a business plan? That plan’s effectiveness cannot be judged without access to their accounts.

Your argument was based on the assumption that it was a failing business, which would be impossible to verify at this point. So yes, please, further investigation would be nice. I think we’d all like to know what the actual profits or lack thereof were, and if “financially unsustainable” actually means “causing us trouble with the corporations we’ve contracted your source of on-campus food to.” And on this issue of the Café’s profitability, can we not place a value on the personality of Arch Café (which might/probably does turn a small profit) and its role as a refuge we, as students, can be proud to say is ours? I guess some would rather the administration tell them what they like, instead of deciding for themselves. I mean, we surely haven’t decided to pursue a university degree so that we might be able to think for ourselves and perhaps come to the conclusions that people don’t always tell the truth, and that money is not the only thing of value.

Lesya Nakoneczny U3 Geography (Honours)

Don’t make me wash your [expletive deleted] mouth out with soap!

There’s a recent trend in the campus papers that I find deplorable: swearing. The first time was in last year’s final issue where a text box thanked the news team for having “Done solid [expletive deleted]”.

Examples this semester include executives of the ASA and SSMU in interviews and a recent Daily opinion piece. I probably swear more than any of the people cited, but I do know where to use an appropriate level of discourse. Campus papers that discuss serious issues are not the media in which to be a potty-mouth (or -pen). Some administrators actually read these papers (evidence: the re-shelving panic last December) and a lower level of discourse does not endear our cause to them. I’m a big believer in free speech. I’m not calling on newspapers to censor their interviews.

I would like interviewees to watch their tongues when they talk to the press, especially anyone accountable to an organization, and I’m asking the Daily staff to adopt a more professional tone. If I’ve noticed this, you can be sure others have as well.

Alice Cooper was one of the first rockers to make his performances about shocking the audience, and he did it while never swearing. He thought it would “be too easy.”

Raphael Dumas U3 Civil Engineering

We’ll think about it

QPIRG and Conservative McGill both acting like silly-billies

Dear Daily, I own a vermicomposter. It requires a careful balance of nitrogenous waste (fruits and vegetables) and carbonic waste (paper and cardboard). The first is your normal food waste; the second is a little bit trickier. Standard printer paper has been bleached white, which releases toxins into the soil when put into the vermicomposter.

Newspapers are ideal, as the paper isn’t bleached, and the black ink is non-toxic. Colours, however, are harder to break down, and can produce toxic by-products as a result.

I compost The McGill Daily, but am often frustrated by the layout of the B&W and coloured pages.

These are often back-to-back, which prevents me from composting the majority of the newspaper. If you could consider the vermicomposting community at large when you think about which pages to print in colour, it would be much appreciated.

Re: “QPIRG and Opt-Out campaign clash” | News | September 30

Raphael Dumas U3 Civil Engineering

Trib flubs Arch Caf’ ’cott cred Dear Daily, For those of you who also read the Tribune, I wanted to make a clarification: I didn’t start the boycott of McGill Food Services, even though I am credited as doing that in the last issue of the Tribune (“SSMU will support campus food boycott,” October 5). While it’s flattering to think I would have that level of influence on campus, it’s not true and I should note that I have also never claimed to have started the boycott. I think some confusion arose because I started a Facebook group, but the reality is that the boycott is the product of a lot of people’s initiatives. In fact, AUS Council voted to endorse the boycott on September 21, hours after the Arch Café protest was dismissed by campus administrators. A lot of the heavy lifting has been done by the kids at Midnight Kitchen and former members of the Arch Café Mobilization Committee, now Mobilization McGill. So, like all great things, the boycott is the collective work of many, many people, and I hope it stays that way.

Erin Hale U3 Philosophy Daily staffer Former McGill Daily News editor

This current scuffle echoes many of the sadly infantile tendencies that arise in social justice groups such as QPIRG and in their traditional opposition. Gather a group of people who feel irredeemably wronged – by “patriarchy,” by “phallogocentrism,” by “neo-colonialism,” or what have you – and toss them in a ring with an equally puerile group of idiots, such as Conservative McGill has ably proven themselves to be, and the inevitable result is wasted column inches on what is frankly a nonissue. I doubt many students were persuaded by the offer of a free lunch in exchange for their optingout, and those that were, seem likely not to be the type to attend QPIRG’s meetings in any case, so why the fretting over their opting-out?

Shouldn’t QPIRG be glad to be rid of such malignant privilegers of White Maleness, such as would abandon the pressing plight of Palestine for the pithy sake of some hot ramen?

I respect QPIRG’s stated principles, and I also respect the values embodied by conservatism in general (if not in particular those ones enumerated in the actions of our current prime minister).

I only wish that the groups who would deign to bear such standards would have as much respect.

Matthew Powes U1 Arts

What Lesya said meant nothing, Reader. I want you back Hey Letters, “I need a back massage. And I’m hungry. And I’m lonely without you.” Oh baby, I miss you too.

I love giving you those massages, I love feeling your warmth under my fingers and beside me when we lie in bed together. Oh sweetheart, Letters, Letty, I think we have something really good together.

Or we had. These past few months, we’ve been kinda drifting apart, you know? We didn’t see each other all summer and that made me realize, I think we’re maybe not meant for each other after all.

Don’t be upset, baby; I don’t wanna hurt you. You are so perfect.

Letty, it’s not you; it’s me. You are amazing, so caring, always interested in what I have to say. You make me feel so interesting. But I’m sorry: I’m not as interesting as you want me to be. You’re constantly telling me to write to you, but baby, I just don’t know what to say. I just can’t live up to your expectations. I’m sorry, baby.

You remember when you caught me giving a massage to Sophia? And I told you it was because of her sore back? And when you found us in bed together and we told you we were just sleeping together because we were really tired? And when we had our mouths together and she told you I was just giving her CPR? Yeah, we lied. Sophia and me, we have something going on, it kinda took off this summer. I’m so sorry, Letty; I had to tell you sometime.

So c-ya baby, I’m so sorry things don’t work out with us. I know you’ll find someone perfect, someone who’s meant for you.

Reader P.S. Sophia says hi.

Sam Baker U1 Mathematics & Economics (Joint Honours)

The Daily received a bunch of letters about Norman Cornett this week. If you don’t want to see that drivel, send us letters. Electronically mail your missives to letters@mcgilldaily.com from your McGill email address, and keep them to 300 words or less. The Daily does not print hateful shit, so watch it.

Commentary

The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 7, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

9

Revisionism hurts “Judea and Samaria” is not the real problem Russell Sitrit-Leibovich Hyde Park

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Olivia Messer | The McGill Daily

Too many queer youth feel themselves drowning in a sea of homophobia.

No more queer suicides Ryan Thom Hyde Park

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ne morning in January, a few years ago, I walked into the Pacific Ocean. My plan was uncomplicated – just the cold, the tide, and death. The memory of that time comes to me in quick, sensory flashes: the sound of the waves crashing against the shore, the clench of numbness around my ankles, most vivid of all is the taste of salt.

The moment that still haunts me, though, is not that first, icy step into the water, nor is it the night that I decided to die. No – the most crushing, terrible pain I have ever felt was in the second I realized that I’d failed my suicide attempt, that I was going to live. I was going to live on, still maybe gay, still maybe transgendered, still friendless, still freakish, still ugly, still unloved. There is a tiny part of me that relives that moment constantly. A tiny part of me will live in that moment forever.

In the past month, there have been no less than six separate homophobia-related teen suicides reported by the mainstream American media.

Erratum “The union makes us strong” (Commentary, September 30) incorrectly stated the number of recently unionized casual workers at McGill. The correct figure is 3,000, not 300.

The Daily regrets the error.

These six American teenagers, who ranged from middle-school to college-aged, are not statistics. They are not a political platform. They are not poster children or martyrs for a cause. They are real, unique people who led real, unique lives. However, they represent, both individually and collectively, what has been for generations an open secret among queer youth: that living in a homophobic world is the kind of silent hell that makes death attractive.

Ellen DeGeneres recently said on her talk show, “One gay teen suicide is a tragedy – four is an epidemic.”

Yet the sad reality of the situation is that this “epidemic” has been quietly murdering untold numbers of young people for years – and none of the survivors escape unscathed.

Six teenagers lost in one dark September is heartbreaking news.

We need to remember, however, that these six are only the latest to lose their lives. I do not doubt that every day of every week of every month of every year, there is a queer person who attempts suicide in response to the constant threat of physical or emotional violence. The sad truth is that queer children and youth must come to terms with the knowledge that as long as they live, there will be people who will discriminate against them and revile them. Death is only one facet of the terrible reality that homophobia can create; for many queer youth, life too contains horror and despair.

As humans, as activists, we are told that hope is the answer, that we must remind queer and ques-

tioning youth that “it gets better.”

Indeed, the It Gets Better Project is an internet initiative that many queer people – including its founder, Dan Savage – have begun to take part in, making videos that remind queer youth that life after school does indeed get better.

But hope is only half the battle.

For some of us – the lucky ones – life does get better as we move on, change social circles, grow older.

Others are not so lucky. Some, like Seth Walsh, Billy Lucas, and Asher Brown, are lost to suicide. Some live in hell for years, in that terrible space between life and death. It is time that we stopped waiting for life to get better. It is time we made it better – we need to make life better than death for queer youth.

I will never forget the taste of the sea, the crash of the waves, the day I tried to die. I mourn the dead – and I mourn the living, those who suffer now. The former, we have lost. We have not yet lost the latter and we must try to lose no more. For every homophobic attack, we must band together tighter, for every insult, we must cry out in answer. We will fight for those who are feeling lost, freakish, ugly, unloved – we will fight and we will live.

A vigil for queer youth who have committed suicide will be held at 7 p.m. tonight at the Roddick Gates.

Ryan Thom is a Queer McGill coadministrator and U2 Theatre and Psychology (Joint Honours) student. Write him at admin.qm@ gmail.com.

consistent theme in Palestinian society is a rewriting of Jews out of the history of the region. Even as Mahmoud Abbas conducts “peace” negotiations with Israeli prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu, PA-run television aired a documentary on Rosh Hashanah in which, the camera panning to the Western Wall, the narrator explained, “[Israelis] know for certain that our [Arab] roots are deeper than their false history. We, from the balcony of our homes, look out over [Islamic] holiness and on sin and filth [the Jews praying at the Western Wall].”

According to a Fox News interview with Dennis Ross, former Middle East envoy of the Clinton administration, during the Camp David Accords, Bill Clinton stormed out in disgust as Yasser Arafat claimed that there had never been a Jewish temple in Jerusalem.

Clearly, to Noah Lanard (“Words hurt,” Commentary, September 30), an attempt by Jews to reclaim their own history is “offensive” and “fear mongering.” In fact, according to his Hyde Park, “words hurt” – and most hurtful of these is the use of the historical terms Judea and Samaria.

The term “West Bank” has not, historically speaking, been in long use. Jordanian authorities coined the term 60 years ago after they conquered this territory during Israel’s War of Independence in 1948. By contrast, Judea and Samaria have their origins in Biblical days and were used consistently until very recently.

As Yoram Ettinger, an Israeli diplomat, has written, “Worldrenowned travelers, historians, and archeologists of earlier centuries, such as H. B. Tristram (The Land of Israel, 1865), Mark Twain (Innocents Abroad, 1867), R. A. MacAlister and Masterman (‘Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly’), A. P. Stanley (Sinai and Palestine, 1887), E. Robinson and E. Smith (Biblical Researches in Palestine, 1841), C. W. Van de Velde (Peise durch Syrien und Paletsinea [sic], 1861), Felix

WANTED +LETTERS +HYDE PARKS +READERS’ ADVOCATE WRITE TO COMMENTARY@MCGILLDAILY.COM

FOR MORE INFO

Bovet (Voyage en Taire Sainte [sic], 1864) — as well as Encyclopædia Britannica and official British and Ottoman records (until 1950) refer to ‘Judea and Samaria’ and not to the ‘West Bank.’”

The Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria has continued unbroken to the present day, with the exception of various periods in which the occupying powers did not allow Jews to live there – for example, during Jordan’s illegal occupation from 1948 until 1967.

Following the destruction of the Second Temple and the exile of the majority of Jews from the land of Israel, Hebron remained one of the centres of Jewish life in Israel, home to many important rabbis, yeshivot, and synagogues throughout history. It was only in 1929, following Arab riots throughout Israel, when 67 Jews were murdered in a pogrom in Hebron, that the community was destroyed, only to be rebuilt following Hebron’s liberation in 1967. The reason why Jews built settlements in Judea and Samaria following its liberation in 1967 was because the Arabs ethnically cleansed these lands of their Jews during the 1920s and 1930s.

Lanard may find the names “Judea and Samaria” offensive, but more offensive is the dangerous revision of Jewish history.

Jews did not live there two thousand years ago, leave, and then show up again in 1967 demanding the Palestinians leave. Jews lived in the Judean and Samarian cities of Hebron, Bethlehem, and Shechem under Roman, Byzantine, Crusader, Ottoman, and British rule. Advancing Arab armies during the 1948 war found Jews in Judea and Samaria.

If there is to be any hope for peace in the Middle East, it will come when the Arabs recognize the right and historical presence of the Jewish people in the land of Israel. This refusal, not Jews building homes in Judea and Samaria, makes any peaceful coexistence impossible.

Russell Sitrit-Leibovich is a U1 Political Science student. Write him at russell.sitrit.leibovich@gmail. com.

10Commentary

The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 7, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

Should we eat cake?

Arch Café protests miss the mark Daniel Meltzer Hyde Park

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hough I support the reopening of the Architecture Café, I cannot help but take issue with the activism that arose from its closure. My issue is not with the act of protesting itself – I have signed the petition; if I had Facebook, I’d have joined the group which I assume exists; I was present at the protest on September 22. My plight, however, arises when I stop to consider just why exactly students, myself included, care so much for the Arch Café, and what the reasons are for our sudden burst of rebellion against an administra-tion whose mistreatment we’ve become accustomed to.

During the rally, one of the “leaders” announced through a megaphone that we were demonstrat-ing to let the administration know that they can no longer disregard students’ needs, as they have been doing for some time now. If this were really true, wouldn’t we have held protests much earlier? I don’t know of a single McGill student who has never at some point been disgruntled by the administration’s actions, nor one who felt so strongly as to hold a protest over it. One of the other megaphonists finished his speech with a slogan we are all acquainted with and which, I believe, speaks truer to the individual student’s reason for wanting to save the Arch Café: “Let them eat cake!”

Using that saying, falsely attributed to Marie Antoinette, leads us to understand that it is not the students’ needs, but rather their wants, that act as the driving factor behind this example of student activism. In The Daily’s article “Hundreds rally to save Arch Café” (News, September 23), EUS VP Internal Allan Cyril was reported to have said, “We don’t want fast food anymore. Arch Café was the last student-run food service on campus [sic] and we really want it back, cause it was really good food and it’s really cheap.” The protesters are no longer revolutionaries who have nothing, fighting to get what they can from the aristocratic elites. They are the elite! And they’re being led by their stomachs and their wallets.

In truth, economic and gastronomical reasons do tend to motivate many protests, but they’re often the fore-runners to the ideals. One does not protest for cake or cheap food, but for bread and the money to buy it with. That brings about real civil disobedience. Our options are limitless: a world of taste for under ten dollars is within walking distance of any class. While the cause tries to be noble, it is ultimately selfish. This is not to say that it can’t still be a worthy cause, if the approach were changed.

As stated in Nicholas Dillon’s open letter to Morton Mendelson (“Do your job, Deputy Provost,” Com-mentary, September 20), the Deputy Provost’s plan to take the Arch Café and turn it into a study

Tom Acker | The McGill Daily

It’s great the Arch Café closure galvanized students, but the problem’s broader than one eatery. space is unintelligible, yet it’s in McGill’s budget. Students, if you were to hold a protest, then why not take issue with the budget and the rising tuition fees as so many other university students throughout Montreal already have? Look at the larger issues at hand – fight back without using Zach Newburgh’s empty catchphrases – and maybe

then Heather Munroe-Blum won’t be so quick to brush us off.

The reopening of the Arch Café is definitely a cause worth fighting for, but not on the basis of the current claims. The root budgetary problem should be of much greater concern. The students need to be made aware of the real issues, and maybe then more than half of

Leacock 132’s capacity will show up. Together we can change McGill life as we know it, but only if we all understand what we should really be fighting against.

Daniel Meltzer is a U2 English Literature and Philosophy student.

Write him at daniel.meltzer@mail. mcgill.ca.

Small loans (to the poor), big results (for the rich) Microfinance covers up some crooked dealing Ted Sprague Hyde Park

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eter Shyba was not wrong when he wrote that “microfinance has become one of the biggest buzzwords of this decade” (“Small loans, big results,” Health & Education, September 30). Microfinance has indeed been touted as a magic bullet with real potential to solve that nagging question of poverty. Stories have been recounted, repackaged, and retold to convince the whole world of their success. So-and-so obtains such micro loan, and within X number of months, she’s saved Y amount of money and builds a house of her own. The story is easy to digest, thus its success in convincing people: provide the poor needed capital, and they’ll climb out of their wretched lives.

In and of itself, the idea seems benign and noble. However, we don’t live in a vacuum. If only we

could just fit the whole world into our neat little idea, but this is not the case. Microfinance is now dominated by big financial institutions. It has turned into a macro-racket: a $30-billion market, with big players like Crédit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, the French insurance group AXA, and the Blackstone and Carlyle

for the poor.” This is akin to saying that it’s all right for businesses to build sweatshops in poor countries if it means providing jobs. This mentality is the exploiter’s; it takes advantage of the desperation of the unemployed poor.

The penniless poor, eager to improve their life but lacking

We can, and we need to, move beyond capitalism. groups, just to name a few. The microfinance industry’s high average portfolio yield – 22.3 per cent annually, according to one study – coupled with the appearance of helping the poor has attracted these multinationals. For them, microfinance is a goldmine.

One might reply: “What’s the problem? It’s alright for big businesses to make a lot of profit if it means more capital is available

means, gracefully accept the loans only to taste their bitterness when the installments are due. Most of us here don’t even read the small-print clauses of loan agreements. It’s no surprise Bangladeshis living in mud huts don’t either.

Microcredit is a “new kind of debt trap,” as Bangladeshi philosopher and activist Vandana Shiva says. It scoops up hundreds of millions of people who have so far been out

of reach from the snare of the capital and forcefully – with tricks and sugarcoated loan packages – ties them to the system. It sucks people into a permanent dependence on credit.

The secret to microfinance’s high portfolio yield lies in its interest rates – 20 to 25 per cent. This interest casts a heavy shadow upon borrowers’ household. To meet their instalment payments, they are compelled to work from dawn to dusk, dragging along their whole family – spouses, children, old parents, siblings – to engage in feverish production. Because most borrowers depend on voluntary family labour, there aren’t any labour standards. Workers’ safety, restrictions on child labour, overtime pay, holidays, and minimum wage are concepts alien to this system. This is the only way a household could produce enough to meet the payments. At the end of the day, microcredit is creating micro-sweatshops.

Muhammad Yunus might have been sincere in his endeavour, but I am not interested in a psychological analysis. Good intentions are not enough to justify folly. Microcredit, like other buzzwords such as “sustainability,” has been co-opted by the very system that it wishes to redress. It’s a band-aid solution that has become a new tool of exploitation.

I can already hear someone replying: “It’s better than nothing.”

But there is another option. We don’t have to reconcile ourselves to choosing between false solutions and nothing. We can, and we need to, move beyond capitalism. I don’t have the space to lay out my ideas about what needs to be done. But let’s at least take the first step of thinking beyond capitalism. That would suffice for now.

Ted Sprague is the pseudonym of a Masters II Chemical Engineering student. He can be reached at ted_ sprague@yahoo.com.

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Commentary

The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 7, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

11

Haunted by techno Adam Banks Hyde Park

W

Tom Acker | The McGill Daily

The Tories’ meddling with the surveys hurts minorities and favours farmers.

Fooling around with the census StatsCan work modifications will hurt marginalized Ian Sandler Hyde Park

I

n the coming year, the Canadian census will change dramatically.

Until next year, the census will comprise a short-form survey given to 80 per cent of the population and a long-form survey distributed to 20 per cent, both of them mandatory.

Starting in 2011, as per controversial changes decided on by the Harper government, the census will take a new direction.

With the upcoming census, the mandatory long-form will disappear, replaced by a voluntary long survey sent to one in three households. The short form will be sent to all Canadians and will remain compulsory. The census plays a

cial information collected through the census. With just seven questions on the mandatory short-form dealing with such broad topics as age and household occupants, the survey leaves out the people who benefit most from a collection of statistical information: minorities lacking appropriate funding. “We acknowledge that we might not get the same level of detail [as in previous years],” Rosemary Bender, Statistics Canada’s assistant chief statistician, said in an interview with the CBC. With less data collected, how will the government bolster those communities who need the census to help get their voices heard?

This is part of a move to consolidate government control over the census. Bender claimed that

This is part of a move to consolidate government control over the census. pivotal role in allotting funding to various sectors of the economy, minority groups, and educational establishments, an effort that a voluntary census cannot effectively aid.

Justifying this decision, Erik Waddell, a spokesperson for Industry Minister Tony Clement commented that the redesign was “made to reasonably limit what many Canadians felt was an intrusion of their personal privacy.” With the ostensible goal of looking out for Canadian citizens’ best interest, the government is forfeiting cru-

“Statistics Canada’s role is to execute the decision made [by the government],” despite the comments

by Munir Sheikh, former chief statistician of StatsCan, who resigned following the Conservatives’ decision. Sheikh said during a parliamentary hearing this summer that “the fact that in the media and in the public, there was this perception that Statistics Canada was supporting a decision that no statistician would, it really casts doubt on the integrity of that agency, and I as head of that agency cannot survive in that job.”

Though they scrapped the obligatory long-form census for the general public, Conservatives have retained the mandatory longform agricultural census, sent to all Canadian farmers. “If you’re sitting and trying to put together policy and direction for where you want policy to go,” Roy Bonnett, president of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, said to the CBC, “you need to have that kind of [information] in place.”

Although the long-form survey was allegedly too intrusive for the average citizen, demanding the details of a farmer’s work appears both legitimate and necessary.

Where information on minorities such as education, mode of transportation, or even place of dwelling, once asked by the mandatory long-form, proves useless to the Canadian government’s economic agenda, a farmer’s crops and techniques furthers Canada’s economic growth, the Conservatives would say. Constituting 8.3 per cent of Canada’s GDP and employing 13.1 per cent of the population, the agricultural sector may seem more important then the protection of minority rights.

Abandoning all hope of statistical security, the defiant Harper government will be left with a skewed portrayal of the population.

Through voluntary polls on schooling and transportation, ethnicity and employment, we may ask what the population really looks like. In truth, however, the Conservatives’ guess will be as good as ours.

Ian Sandler is a U1 Anthropology student. You can write him at ian. sandler@mail.mcgill.ca.

hether you call it house, techno, club, dubstep, witch house, or drum and bass, it’s all the same to me now – the mortal enemy of my ears and my sanity. It doesn’t matter where I go in this city: technoesque music permeates the peace of every street, apartment, and metro station in Montreal. I once liked this particular brand of music.

You know, when I was really stoked on amphetamines.

Have you ever seen the hordes of people at festival raves where this music is played for hours upon end? Let me describe what it looks like. Picture your generic 300person lecture hall class. Multiply that by four. Add roughly 600 pills of ecstasy. You cannot escape the repeated, pulsing drumbeat, as it is played on gigantic speakers until five in the morning. The end result resembles a fucking zombie apocalypse.

House music, like a significant other, gets old after a while.

Everything’s good and dandy until you move in with each other and realize that everything that comes out of their mouth is boring and repetitive. There were the days in which I once enjoyed these genres of music in moderate doses, at least when I ignorantly listed “Ghosts N Stuff” by deadmau5 as one of my favourite songs, but now these synthesized scores of faux-European

sentiment haunt my every move.

Don’t get me wrong: if I’m as drunk as a 20th-century author, at a club on the Main, and in the middle of accidently violating the personal space of many a lovely woman, then bring on the electronic-based eardrum bashing. I’m all for that. It’s most effective in an environment of debauchery, dancing, and drug-laden adventures.

Not, mind you, in any place where you’re trying to study, hang out, or sleep.

It’s always there. In the study room of my residence. In the elevators of the hotels that I sneak into in order to use the bathroom. In the Eaton Centre. At each of these locations, I find my head subconsciously bobbing to the rhythm of electronic nonsense. What happened to normal pop music? The kind that deserves to be hated on. Techno is harder to make fun of than, say, Justin Bieber.

I miss the days of getting shitty 90s music stuck in my head, because I could easily listen to it and cure the auditory itch. Unfortunately, every single damned club remix smorgasbord has a ridiculously forgettable name, and is made by DJ something-or-other. Thus, when a song like this gets stuck in your head, you’re completely fucked. Techno, please get out of my life.

Adam Banks is a U1 Arts student.

Tell him what you think about house music at adam.banks@ mail.mcgill.ca.

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12 Features

Progress, failure, ho one damnable l

Perspectives on the HIV/ A Charlotte Hunter The Strand (University of Toronto)

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oronto (CUP) — I went to Namibia this summer expecting to have gained a better understanding of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa by the time I returned, and in some ways I did. I learned about the different types of antiretrovirals (the drugs that inhibit various stages of HIV’s life-cycle). I got a glimpse of how gender inequality can prevent women from protecting themselves from the virus, even when they know how. I saw evidence of a booming funeral services industry and watched as 70-year-old women took their orphaned grandchildren into an HIV clinic for treatment. But I returned to Canada infinitely more confused about the maddening web of social, cultural, economic, political, and epidemiological factors that allow this damnable little retrovirus to rage across the region than when I left.

I spent two months working at an HIV/AIDS clinic in northern Namibia as part of a University of Toronto internship. Namibia is just north of South Africa, wedged neatly between the Atlantic Ocean and the Kalahari Desert, and has a population of about 2 million.

Namibians are some of the friendliest, most welcoming people you will meet in your life. Tragically, 15.3 per cent of adult Namibians are also living with HIV. In the Oshana region where I lived and worked, the percentage was even higher.

I don’t think I had ever felt more conspicuous in my life than when I walked into the Communicable Disease Clinic (CDC) of the Intermediate Hospital Oshakati on the first day of my internship.

The dim lighting and long line of tired-looking men, women, and children stood in stark contrast to the cheerful yellow walls and pristine cleanliness of Casey House, the Toronto AIDS hospice that I had been volunteering at for the past three years.

My time at Casey House was coloured by incredibly moving oneon-one conversations with the hospice’s clients. These interactions afforded me the privilege of learning about the AIDS pandemic through the personal histories, heartrending frustrations, and courageous perseverance of individual people living with HIV. In contrast, the CDC was visited by over 300 patients each day.

The sheer number of patients removed this personal, compassionate element that I had grown used to in Toronto. It wasn’t that the CDC staff didn’t care about their patients; it was the undeniable truth that there was no time to ask someone why they hadn’t been taking their HIV medication regularly or to provide them with any sort of individualized counselling. My days passed in a dizzying frenzy of new patients being registered, blood tests being ordered, and antiretrovirals being dispensed. I had to consciously remind myself that each one of these people was dealing with a personal tragedy as compelling as that of the Casey House clients I had come to know so well.

And yet, moments of humanity quietly crept into the desensitizing chaos of the CDC. One interaction I had with a patient particularly stuck with me. A young woman of the same name and age as my older sister had come into the clinic to receive two painful injections for an STI she had received from her boyfriend. When the nurse explained to her that she would continue to be re-infected if she didn’t ask her boyfriend to use condoms, the woman explained that she had asked him and that he continually forced her to have unprotected sex. I almost started to cry right there in the examination room.

This kind of gender violence seems to be another epidemic altogether in Namibia. From my own experience of a taxi driver putting his hand on my thigh during my daily commute home, to the hundreds of elderly women I saw come in for HIV medication after very likely being infected by their philandering husbands, it became clear that women had it rough in Namibia. This profound power imbalance between genders needs to be addressed if Namibia is to make significant progress at stemming the spread of HIV.

Images of the HIV/AIDS epidemic didn’t exist solely within the hospital grounds – they were everywhere. My fellow U of T students and I spent a great deal of time with Miss Doris, a passionate and indefatigable woman who taught African dance to local children, some of whom were AIDS orphans or were living with HIV themselves. Many of these children lived in an informal settlement called Oneshila. “Informal settlement” is basically a fancy term for a slum, and this one was filled with corrugated tin houses that had to be abandoned for three months of the year when the land flooded.

We knew very little about the private lives of these children, away from the concrete porch where the girls would learn their dance routines and the muddy soccer field where the boys would show off their skills in bare feet. But we were told that one of the

The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 7, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

ope, frustration, and little retrovirus

AIDS epidemic in Namibia

All photos courtesy of Charlotte Hunter

older girls would ask Doris to safeguard her antiretroviral pills when the group travelled for dance performances. We learned that many of these children were living with aunts, uncles, and grandparents, as their own parents had succumbed to AIDS. When you are living in the kind of poverty that is ubiquitous in Oneshila, extra mouths to feed and extra school fees to pay for are not an easy burden to bear. In addition, we were told that some of these children were sexually or physically abused by those who were supposed to care for them.

With its ability to tear families apart and increase poverty, HIV has exacerbated the hardships of life in Oneshila. On one of our weekly visits there, I began to wonder if we were exacerbating them, too. One of the local boys had been taught to drum while the other children danced, as his crooked legs forced him to depend

on crutches. As we watched the dance rehearsal, an obviously inebriated woman came up and began stumbling between the rows of dancers until she reached this boy. We were told that this woman was the boy’s mother and we watched as he squirmed uncomfortably under her critical stare. She began to yell at him in Oshiwambo, the local language, and one of the older girls told us that she was threatening to beat him that night. Doris confirmed that this woman had been known to be abusive in the past. We asked why she was upset and were told that she was angry that her son was spending time with Westerners. Our mere presence was making his life that much harder. What was worse, there was literally nothing we could do to help him.

We spent a lot of time trying to decide if things were getting better, if this murderous virus was slowly being brought under control in countries like Namibia. At first glance, the free antiretrovirals being handed to hundreds of patients each day at the clinic seemed to indicate that at least the treatment side of the problem was being addressed, even if the prevention side still remained a mess. However, many conversations I had with hospital staff and responses to surveys I distributed as part of my U of T project showed otherwise. Antiretovirals only suppress HIV effectively if the patient takes their medication in the correct dosage every day, a measurement known as adherence. Many patients came to the clinic to receive a new month’s supply of pills, yet their old bottles were still filled with leftover pills. Others arrived several months late to refill their prescription. This indicated that they were exhibiting poor adherence and that they were at risk of becoming resistant to the very medication needed to save their lives.

There were many social and structural reasons why people didn’t adhere well. According to the hospital staff, some patients with limited education didn’t understand that if they missed more than a few pills each month, the HIV hijacking their immune cells would no longer be inhibited by their current drug regimen. Others lived in isolated villages and didn’t have access to transportation to come in for their new prescription on time, or couldn’t afford the transit fares. Some patients might have been afraid to take their pills in front on their family or co-workers for fear of being stigmatized.

Others refused to take the harsh medication on an empty stomach, a chronic condition in a food insecure and poverty-stricken region.

The hospital staff simply didn’t have time to get to the bottom of each incident of poor adherence. And so the underlying conditions that led to poor adherence, whether they included depression, fear, poverty, lack of education, alcoholism, inaccessible transportation, social isolation, unemployment, or any combination of those factors, were left untreated. What good are the millions of pills donated by USAID if people don’t have the support needed to take them correctly?

While I chose to focus this article on the HIV/AIDS-related aspects of my summer in Namibia, I want to emphasize the point that Namibia, and the rest of southern Africa (I also spent time in South Africa and Zimbabwe), is much more than just a region suffering from this nightmarish epidemic. Namibia was one of the most beautiful countries I’ve ever been to, with vistas ranging from giant sand dunes in the Namib Desert to the seemingly endless savannah of Etosha National Park. There was also an incredible energy and a sense that southern Africa is on the cusp of a new era of development, a feeling that was intensified this summer by the regional pride surrounding the FIFA World Cup. Although my experience this summer left me feeling even more confused about the causes of and solutions to the HIV/ AIDS pandemic, I can’t help but feel that some part of the answer lies in refusing to succumb to the feelings of helplessness or apathy that can arise from reading the dizzying statistics that jump out at you from every global health textbook and WHO report.

Remembering the humanity of each individual living with and fighting against HIV, no matter how far away they live or how different their culture, is an important step towards giving this global health disaster the urgent attention it deserves.

13

Health&Education

The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 7, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

14

Wireless sedation The Daily talks with the world’s first tele-anesthesiologist

R

esearchers in McGill’s Department of Anesthesia and at the University of Pisa recently teamed up to perform the world’s first application of remote-controlled anesthesia, or tele-anesthesia. A team in Montreal, led by tele-anesthesiologist Thomas Hemmerling, administered the procedure to patients more than 6,000 kilometres away in Pisa. The procedure is shaping up to be an important application of telemedicine — a new wave of medical treatments that harness modern communication technology to transcend geographical distance in providing medical care.

The Daily recently got the chance to talk with Hemmerling about his medical first.

McGill Daily: Can you describe how this procedure was carried out?

Thomas Hemmerling: We have installed what we call an anesthesia cockpit. In that anesthesia cockpit you have two basic connections. One is an automated system here in Montreal that connects to an automated system in Pisa, Italy. [From Montreal], we control an automated system in Italy that controls all three components of anesthesia. So it makes your patient sleepy, takes the pain away and relaxes the muscles… The second part of the cockpit controls several webcams in the operating room and has an audio communication with the local team in Italy. [One camera] looks at the vital signs monitor, one camera looks at the surgical side, one looks at the anesthesia machine and one is a so-called free floating webcam which we

can use for whatever I want to see. And we do the pre-operative assessment of the patient via a normal video link.

MD: What brought McGill and the research team at Pisa University together?

TH: I have a longstanding scientific relationship with the University of Pisa…so Pisa was an obvious choice to do this as a ‘proof of concept.’ And that’s exactly what it is. Don’t forget that there was always an anesthesia team in Italy as a backup. And obviously the anesthesia team in Italy doesn’t need my help...but let’s say you have a remote location. In most of the countries in Africa, anesthesia is actually provided not by specialists but by nurses. And you could imagine that these nurses, if they have something like this tele-anesthesia, might definitely benefit from it and the safety and the quality of anesthesia might be improved.

MD: Can you describe what it was like to work with another team through video communication?

TH: We’ve noticed that the advantage of having a remote team is that we sometimes recognize certain things earlier than the local team because they are focused on other issues and we are standing back, controlling things on different monitors.

MD: Did you run into any problems during the surgeries?

TH: [First] we needed to establish the [video] connections.

But once everything was set up, throughout that proof of concept period of 20 patients we did not have any problems at all. Obviously, we were looking at problems of what happens if the internet goes

Photo courtesy of Doctor Hemmerling Research Lab

Hemmerling performed his novel procedure for a site more than 6000 kilometres away. down. The risk of interruption is very big [in remote areas]. The beauty of our tele-anesthesia is that two remote anesthesia automates are communicating with each other.

That means that if for some reason we had lost contact, the local anesthesia automate would still provide anesthesia until we reestablished a connection…so that is basically a safety net.

MD: What other applications do you see in the future of tele-medicine?

TH: There are two directions which I see here. One is the preop evaluation: if I could ask you

questions before surgery through a video link and do certain measurements of the airways…then I don’t think you have to come in for a pre-operative visit… It saves costs, it saves trouble, and it’s more comfortable for the patient.

The second thing is that I think in general medicine needs to think globally. We have all these programs together with Africa and we are trying to get the specialists there. But as a matter of fact if you look at countries like Rwanda, there are [about] less than ten specialists for the whole country. And that’s not going to change overnight. All

over the Third World, anesthesia is provided not necessarily by specialists, but very often by less skilled generalists or very often by nurses.

If you have a system like that then in selected cases you could actually use [tele-anesthia]…it’s a backup, it increases safety and it increases the quality of anesthesia… By using these combinations of video communication, audio communication and automated systems, I absolutely believe that you can increase the safety and quality of anesthesia in the Third World.

—Compiled by Gemma Tierney

In the zone Are Canadian students “intellectually disengaged”?

Serena Yung Health&Education Writer

A

s students, we are so often concerned with the ideals of education – that lofty vision to learn most effectively, aim for personal growth, and enhance our unique capacities.

For several consecutive years, Canada has been in the top six out of 41 countries around the globe in test scores for reading, writing, and science. Yet, it is only the 29th in the world for student engagement in studies, the school, and the community. At a talk at the annual ArtsSmarts learning symposium in Montreal last Tuesday, “Education Today in Canada: What Are Students Telling Us,” Penny Milton, the Chief Executive

Officer of the Canadian Education Association, explains her viewpoint on these issues.

Of these three insufficiencies, Penny Milton is most concerned with “intellectual engagement” – the emotional and cognitive investment in learning.

According to a study on Canadian schools, 63 per cent of students fail to attain intellectual engagement; they have no motivation for what they learn. Moreover, this problem for students begins to worsen from grade six – where real studying begins. Most notably, student groups with highversus-low intellectual engagement differed not in their home environments, but in their school experience.

The effects of school environments on students may be

explained in part by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s theory of “flow.” When we’re in “flow,” we are so deeply focused on a task, that we lose track of all space and time; this intense, almost trancelike concentration in that task brings us an enormous satisfaction. Yet, to reach this deeply rewarding state of flow, we must balance our “skills” with the “challenge” of that particular task.

When both our skills and the challenge level are low, we are apathetic. High skills and low challenge leads to boredom, while low skills and high challenge provide anxiety. The best balance would be having a highly-skilled person matched with an equally challenging job.

Using Csikszentmihalyi’s model, 8,427 high school students were

studied for their attitudes toward the language arts. Seven per cent were “apathetic” about the subject, 19 per cent were “anxious,” and 31 per cent simply bored.

Only 43 per cent, less than half of the students, experienced “flow” and genuinely enjoyed what they were learning.

In the light of this problem, Milton exhorts that we must improve and transform our education system. Teaching should veer from mere instruction to a designed learning experience; learning must turn from facts and content to real problem-solving.

All in all, she emphasizes the overwhelming importance of fully engaging the students. Only then will they actively change themselves and strive for personal growth and success.

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Health&Education

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15

The ties that bind Alyssa Favreau looks at North Americans’ definition of family, and its problems

S

ince 2003, Indiana University sociologist Brian Powell and his team have surveyed thousands of Americans, asking them what exactly counts as a family.

The study, conducted three times between 2003 and 2010, shows that though all family types have been steadily gaining recognition, there remains a core group of Americans who will only label the traditional, nuclear model as a family at the expense of many others, including single parents, same-sex couples, couples without children, and common law or unmarried partners.

Powell and his team found that the percentage of Americans who considered same-sex couples, – with or without children – a family has risen to 33 per cent, compared to 25 per cent in 2003.

Powell also found that the legality of the relationship served to legitimize it in terms of public opinion. “One thing we found was that if you told people that a gay couple is legally married, they were much more likely to say that they count as a family [compared to] a gay couple who lives together, even if they’ve been living together for ten years,” he said in an interview with The Daily. Since same-sex marriage is legal in Canada, Powell believes that Canadians are more likely to be inclusive in their definition of family.

The attention that same-sex relationships has attracted has also helped to validate them, added Powell. “One of the factors is simply that there’s been more of a discussion regarding same-sex issues publicly. When we did our surveys in 2003, one thing that was really noticeable was that a lot of people were really uncomfortable even saying the words gay or lesbian. They would lower their voices, like it was taboo... or something bad. Ironically, even those people who were really opposed to same-sex marriage, by talking about it out loud and publicly, became more comfortable with the terms and ideas,” he continued.

He further noted that the increased number of people who realized that they had gay friends and relatives further contributed to the inclusion of same-sex couples a family.

However, regardless of sexual orientation, in both the United States and Canada, unmarried or common law couples, along with single parent families, are considered to be lacking in comparison with more traditional structures.

Dave Quist, executive director of the conservative research group Institute of Marriage and Family Canada (IMFC), said that “children have the best outcomes when raised by their married, biological parents.” He believes that though many varying types of family are steadily gaining recognition in Canada, “we should be striving for the ideals, rather than watering down social policies that are actu-

ally harmful to the outcomes for children.” Quist believes that when couples merely cohabit together, the children present are “less likely to thrive behaviorally, emotionally, and educationally.”

And though John Sandberg, associate professor of Sociology at McGill, agrees, he believes “the aspects of the general environment that tend to be associated with family structure are much more important” than the structure itself.

Factors such as conflict in the home, opportunities for age-appropriate stimulation and education, supervision, and developmental planning all play a part in the welfare of the child, said Sandberg. “It also often has to do with income differences after a divorce [or] lack of secondary source supervision.”

But Powell doesn’t believe that these concerns should affect what constitutes a family. “The reality is that children are growing up in many different types of households,” he said. “Think about the implications for the child who grows up being told by others that they’re not a family. Being told that their situation’s not real, that their living situation is not authentic.”

Even Quist admitted, that “unfortunately, the ideal doesn’t always exist. Divorce does happen.

Cohabitation happens. Single parent families exist.” But despite the concerns some might have regard-

become socially isolated,” she said.

“Childlessness is approaching 20 per cent in women, and that’s huge.

We can no longer assume parenthood for all...we need to assimilate those [child-free] couples into our society and recognize that it’s a viable life path.”

As for Canadian couples, “it’s very similar,” said Scott. “The only difference is that because there are better maternal leave policies in Canada, people wonder, ‘Well, why don’t you? You get the whole year off.’ ... There’s a questioning that happens with Canadian couples, whereas most Americans understand that there is a financial burden [involved in] having a child.”

ing the relative success rates of different types of family, as Sandberg says, “having more parents in a loving household without conflict is always a good thing.”

In Powell’s research, the presence of children had a legitimizing effect on how a couple was viewed.

In the 2010 survey, 100 per cent of respondents considered a married heterosexual couple with children to be a family, while 83 per cent considered an unmarried heterosexual with kids to be a family, and 64 per cent considered a same-sex couple with kids to be a family. Remove the children, and the percentages dropped down to 92, 40 and 33 per cent respectively.

Laura Scott, head of the Childless by Choice Project advocacy group and author of Two is Enough: A Couple’s Guide to Living Childless by Choice, said that these findings are representative of how couples living without children are often excluded from the general definition of family. “The perception is that they’re just a couple, not really a family,” she explained.

“There’s an attitude that if you’re a [child-free] couple, it must be temporary; eventually you’ll have children.”

This perspective, Scott said, often leads to a social marginalization of couples who are childless either by circumstance or by choice. “As a childless person you

Powell is optimistic that the definition of family will continue broadening. “When we first did the surveys, it was really anybody under 30 that was open in their definitions. By 2010, it’s more like people under the age of 38. There’s simply going to be an increase of people coming of age who are going to be changing the overall tenor of the debate...so I think it’s going to keep on increasing.”

Scott agreed. “I think I do see a broadening of the definition of family, but it’s slow. It’s behind the curve based on our reality,” she says. “A married man and woman with a number of children, what we would term the traditional

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family, is actually a declining demographic, and trends of delaying marriage, of delaying child rearing, which is happening both in Canada and the U.S., are driving that. In our media and in our cultural portrayals of family, we can see a broad range of families, but our institutions, policies, and law haven’t caught up to that. But hopefully they will.”

But whether these changes in perception are positive is still up for debate. “Public perception and real measurable outcomes are two separate matters,” explained Quist.

“I may like or prefer something, but that doesn’t mean that it is good for me or those around me. Public perception toward many things has changed over time, but that doesn’t mean that that acceptance is beneficial to all.” Sandberg, however, said its too early to tell what effects these changes will have.

“There are more people choosing not to have children, more people having fewer children, more people having children in cohabiting relationships, more people having children without partners than in the past and the average age of childbearing is going up,” he noted. “Are these things better or worse? They’re just different.

There are so many other variables that confound these changes that it’s hard to say.”

Families can be as varied as the individuals who make them up, and if common perceptions continue to broaden, it can only serve to legitimize the arrangements and potentially the lifestyles of those in positive family environments, regardless of their definition.

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16Health&Education

The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 7, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

Cloudy with a chance of...

How to indulge in the easiness, versatility, and probably dubious origins of meatballs Dine with Dash is a new recipe column by U1 Physiology student Thomas Dashwood. Send recipe reccomendations, dietary restrictions, and grievances to thomasdashwood@gmail.com.

Dine with Dash Thomas Dashwood

T

he humble meat ball: both a universal cultural delight and staunch representative of the “suspicious ground meat concoctions” food group. Yum. But, when made with love (and with identifiable animal parts) meatballs can be a versatile, economical, and student-friendly food. And so here, to tantalize your taste buds and to help you put dinner on the table at least one more night this year, is a recipe for simple, perfect meatballs and a few ways to alter them into something equally satisfying.

Makes: A lot.

Ingredients: • • • •

•

1 egg 2 slices leftover bread (remove crusts) 1 small onion, diced finely or grated 1 kg ground meat (beef, pork, chicken, turkey, veal, you name it) Salt

Method: Beat egg in a small bowl until frothy. Tear bread into egg and let it soak.

Mix onion and meat in a large

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bowl, adding about 1 ½ teaspoon of salt. Do not compact the mixture when mixing.

Beat the egg and bread mixture and add to the meat. Mix again, lightly, until completely mixed.

Shape into desired meatball size.

Fry on medium heat in a small amount of oil until cooked through, roast at 400° for about 15 minutes (will depend on their size) or cook in a sauce or soup for at least 10 minutes.

All types of meatballs can be frozen on plates and then stored in big plastic bags. Can be cooked from frozen, just increase time accordingly (don’t be afraid to cut one open to check if it is done).

Variations: Italian: Use any meat, or a mixture. Add 3 minced cloves of garlic (or use a cheese grater), 1 teaspoon each of dried basil, oregano and thyme and chili flakes (if desired) with the onion. Cook using any method above (very convenient for adding to store-bought tomato sauce).

Turkish: Use beef. Add 2 cloves of garlic, minced, 2 teaspoons of cumin (ground or seed), 1 teaspoon of ground coriander and fresh or dried chili with the onion. I suggest you fry or roast these ones (great in pita), or add to a vegetable stew.

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This might be entirely arbitrary, but I tend not to mind paying extra for ground meat that is not from “fresh and frozen parts” (or free range, if within budget). In my own (illogical) way, this says to me that the meat may be from a single animal. Undoubtedly, it won’t be.

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Chinese: Use any meat. Add 2 cloves of garlic, minced, half a thumb-sized piece of minced ginger and a small handful chopped coriander (if desired). One quarter of the meat could be replaced with ground tofu. Cook in a noodle soup, fry or roast to eat with rice, or add to a stew.

Application Deadline: October 17th, 2010

write for healthned healthandeducation at mcgilldaily.com

Culture

The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 7, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

17

SELLING OUT Kristine Quan Culture Writer

W

aking up in the morning and trying to find clean clothes, let alone a whole outfit, can be a daunting task. But coordinating one’s ensemble can be an interesting way to express individuality and creativity. So being constrained to wear the same piece of clothing every day for a year seems like it would be fashion suicide. Well, that’s what Sheena Matheiken did.

Founder of the Uniform Project, Matheiken pledged to wear one little black dress (LBD) for an entire year. If that wasn’t difficult enough, she challenged herself to make her LBD unique every single day without buying anything new.

For those unfamiliar with the little black dress, here is your fashion history lesson. The LBD has become a staple item of women’s wear. Some

tics of the LBD and applied them to today’s anti-corporate movement. She writes on the project’s website that the premise behind the challenge was “to counter the uninspired demands of the corporate world,” where she felt “she was drowning in the doldrums of an advertising career.” This project was not only meant to purge Matheiken from fashion excess; it was also a philanthropic initiative. Matheiken was raising money for the Akanksha Foundation – a non-profit organization that provides education to children who live in Indian slums. The Uniform Project’s mission, as outlined on the website, was to “revolutionize the way people perceive ethical fashion and place social responsibility at the center of consumer culture,” and “use fashion as a vehicle to make acts of charity more inspired and playful, enabling individuals to rise as role models of style, sustainability and social consciousness.” But have Matheiken’s efforts with the Uniform Project

The Uniform Project... is becoming an increasingly banal and commercialized concept. claim the origins of the LBD date back to the 1920s designs of Coco Chanel, who wanted to give women a piece of clothing that was long-lasting, affordable, versatile, and available to the widest market possible. Thus, she created the dress that has become ubiquitous in every woman’s closet.

M

atheiken took the versatility, affordability, and long-lasting characteris-

created a greater awareness of sustainable fashion? Or has the idea itself become a commercialized practice?

D

uring the Uniform Project’s first year, Matheiken garnered a following of supporters and by April 30, 2010, had raised $103,374 U.S.D. for the Akanksha Foundation – giving 287 children in India the opportunity

Olivia Messer | The McGill Daily

A sustainable fashion initiative goes awry

First Last / The McGill Daily

Sheena Matheiken aims to bring fashion, philanthropy, and mild anti-corpratism together. to attend school. While Matheiken was working on the project, people became increasingly interested in trying it for themselves. This inspired Matheiken to develop the Do-It-Yourself Uniform Project platform. The same premise underlies the DIY Uniform Project as Matheiken’s personal challenge, except that participants can create their own timeline to commit to one LBD and raise money – most choose to participate for one month. The project is now in its second year of these monthly pilot projects, and the question of whether commercialization has eclipsed the original philanthropic aim still remains.

As often happens when something becomes popular, the Uniform Project has inspired numerous imitators and encountered mass-production. Similar projects sprouted around the same time as the Uniform Project’s inception, such as Six Items Or Less, which on its website claims to be “a global experiment examining the power of what we don’t wear.” As well, the Great American Apparel Diet has participants pledging not

to buy anything new for a year.

Although these two other projects may not share Matheikin’s philanthropic goals, the idea behind them is similar to the Uniform Project.

I

f you visit the Uniform Project website, you’ll see that the project is not only a platform for women to represent “philanthropy, fashion, sustainability and social commerce,” it has also become a channel for Matheiken and the Uniform Project crew to market their LBDs. Although Matheiken created the challenge in order to get away from the corporate world, the Uniform Project has now come full circle by offering its followers an online store. The Uniform Project lets fans of the challenge purchase their own little black dress and LBD patterns making the idea seem like it was an activity waiting to be mass-produced.

The dress – modelled on the one originally created by Matheiken – costs $150 dollars. Only 10 per cent of this goes to the Akanksha Foundation. The Uniform Project is now seeking a C.E.O., looking

for “the passion for building a forprofit enterprise balanced with a strong social mission.” It seems that the company’s commercial expansion is now the focus of the project. The act of commercializing the Uniform Project taints the appeal of the challenge as a way to promote sustainable fashion and philanthropy.

There is no doubt that the Uniform Project has led people to look at the melding of philanthropy and sustainable fashion in a new light. And Matheiken, along with the U.P. crew and pilot participants, have created a platform where fans can participate in the social commerce of the Uniform Project. However, as the Uniform Project grows in popularity, it is becoming an increasingly banal and commercialized concept.

Cause marketing is a well-established practice in the corporate world, used by brands for over thirty years. Though it was founded to challenge corporatism’s domination over contemporary fashion, the Uniform Project has ended up a prime example of how complete this domination is.

18Culture

The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 7, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

Sex and the secular Queer theorist Michael Warner on religion’s authority over sexual morality Ed Dobson The McGill Daily

L

ast Friday, Thomson house hosted a group of intellectual minds surpassing even those of its usual residents. Whilst the graduate students drank their end-of-week pitchers, downstairs a group of Montreal professors, students, and activists waited beside the usual McGill cheese boards. Michael Warner, the Seymour H. Knox Professor of English Literature and American Studies at Yale University, was the night’s featured guest. A specialist in Queer Theory, Warner is perhaps best known for his book The Trouble with Normal. Published in 1999, the work challenges the idea of normalizing the queer community toward established conventions (such as marriage) in order to gain true liberation and equality. As well as claiming that “marriage is unethical,” Warner defends pornography and sex outside the home. The book aimed to cause somewhat of a stir – a part of Warner’s anti-normalizing ethos. For Warner, the queer community should not be made to fit

“normal” society, but rather “normal society” can learn from queer communities what is wrong with the “normal” ideology.

But that was then, and this is now. Warner has since worked on various other, yet interrelated ,topics, such as “The Portable Walt Whitman,” a figure around whom many of Warner’s interests coalesce.

As well as an early beacon of sexual liberation, Whitman can be seen as a key secular figure. This intersection is the specific focus of the paper Warner presented on Friday: “Sex and Secularity.”

The paper, as Warner stated himself early on, is somewhat of a confused bag of ideas; it is not the unified thesis we are trained here at McGill to produce. It is a conversation starter, which, at its most basic, asks why there is “a uniform silence on the topic,” why no one has sought to write on and defend the sexual conduct of the secular as a separate question from their lack of belief. Sex is used by the religious, “now more than ever,” as “a defining frontier between their faith and the secular.” An example of sex being used as a beacon of misguided and

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immoral secularity, Warner suggests, is the Pope’s repeated claims that homosexuality is one of the great threats facing the world today.

The central point which arose in the discussion was that these kinds of claims are not in keeping with religious history. Fifty years ago, the Pope could not say things like this.

The false narrative of religious antisexuality and secular pro-sexuality is the fiction on which these modern viewpoints are enforced. In fact, fluctuations in religious views regarding sexuality can be traced through history; in the Christian tradition it was the Reformation and Puritanism that changed previous, more liberal, attitudes towards sex, glimpsed, for example, in medieval literature.

The growth of a secular community, it seems, has led to fears of religious extinction and hence a panicked response. People are eager to prevent the “danger” of secular sexual immorality from spreading.

This has gone so far that in America sex offenders have recently been deemed beyond the law. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that if someone is convicted of sexual offence they can be imprisoned indefinitely, beyond the length of their legal sentence. How has it come to this, that sexual offence (at least alongside terrorism, suspects of which are still regrettably outside the law) is America’s biggest fear?

Olivia Messer | The McGill Daily

The problem, Warner and others have decided, is dramatization.

The solution: de-dramatization. The idea is to suggest that the issue is far less important than it is made to be.

Being gay is not an affirmation of identity; it is not an all-encompassing way of life which an individual asserts against everything else. It is merely an orientation. The fear is held by those who oppose it; they fear a threat not really present, but

it is easy to convince people that it is. As a part of this solution, it is suggested that we must erase the binaries of religious and secular; sexually conservative and sexually transgressive. These orientations need not be so viciously grouped and we must acknowledge variance and points of similarity within them. There can be an ethical and secular sexuality; ethics here are not the domain of the religious only.

FUBAR at Fort McMurray Mocumentary sequel is more about beer than bitumen Erin O'Callaghan The McGill Daily

T

he creators of the Canadian cult classic mockumentary FUBAR are back with a sequel, and it is greasier and funnier than before. With some semblance of a budget and a higher quality feel to the threadbare production, Montreal-born director Michael Dowse picks up where he left off, but five years later. Not surprisingly, headbangers Terry (David Lawrence) and Dean (Paul Spence) have not gone anywhere. The film opens with a party to celebrate Dean being testicular cancer-free for the past five years, which quickly deteriorates into a destructive eviction party – including chainsaw wreckage, an acid trip gone awry, a fire, and more beer than any liver could handle. With nothing left in Calgary, Terry and Dean head up north to Fort McMurray in search of fast, easy money at the oil sands and of course, more beer.

Fort McMurray, referred to as the Mac, provides a gritty background for the hilarious antics of Terry and Dean. With not much else to do in town, the oil workers head to the local strip club, Peelers, after work

each day, where Terry falls in love with a local waitress named Trish (Terra Hazelton). Hazelton is brilliant in the film; some of the funniest scenes involve blowout fights between Lawrence and herself.

While some reviewers have picked up on the so-called environmental aspect of the movie, there is really nothing that addresses the environment besides the incredible shots of the smokestacks in Fort McMurray, and the brief introduction of a hitch-hiking hippy Dean and Terry pick up on the highway on his way to protest the oil companies. They promptly ditch the hippy, but not before stealing his weed.

Canadian movies have addressed Alberta’s skewed energy policies numerous times before – Burning Water, a documentary released almost simultaneously with FUBAR 2, tackles head on the detrimental effect of drilling for coal bed methane on local water wells. Just last week, James Cameron himself headed up to the oil sands to publicly declare his support for the first nations tribes living with the horrific effects of Alberta’s oil industry. FUBAR 2, on the other hand, is about getting drunk and not giving a fuck. If audiences pick up on the environmental disaster created

by the oil companies in cities like Fort McMurray, it is a positive, but unintended, side effect. As Spence said in an interview with the Hour, “The story is, Terry and Dean have to go up north to make some quick money. That’s the headbanger dream. And there was no intention of a social commentary, the fact that we’re in Fort McMurray isn’t because we have some message to pass on, it’s because that’s where headbangers from Calgary would go to make a quick buck.” The movie does showcase the very real phenomenon of young men moving up north to work on the oil sands and make quick money. However, the oil sands dream is quickly dashed.

Dean realizes he cannot handle the work and stages an injury in order to receive worker’s compensation, while Terry is laid off due to a drop in oil prices.

“Knowledge of non-knowledge is power.” With these words, Spence sums up the idiotic confidence of the pair, one of the many characteristics that make them so appealing to audiences. Terry and Dean are just as stupid and crazy as ever, but they also grow (a little) during the film, making the pair even more loveable, and perhaps relatable, than before.

Culture

The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 7, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

19

Comfort me with apples Where to harvest fall’s bounty Oliver Lurz Culture Writer

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all is underway and the boughs are creaking under the weight of more apples than you could possibly bake, crunch, stew, or can.

Just the smell of a ripe apple brings on a Proustian flashback to autumnal English orchards.

Especially heavenly when baked into pie, it’s undeniable that apples are the ideal fruit. Unfortunately, the vast majority of apples in any supermarket are mediocre at best.

Imported from around the globe, these varieties are selected chiefly for their shelf life, disregarding notions of flavour or environmental impact.

No matter how tasty it is, the idea of my fruit having more air miles than me is troubling. There’s a whole host of strange and brilliant apples out there, like October’s delicious Cox’s Orange Pippins, which are sidelined by those homogenous bland things in the fruit section of Provigo.

The solution to this is to go out and pick your own. But if like me you don’t own a car (and you shouldn’t: you’re a student in a medium-sized city with a centralized population) getting to an orchard can be problematic. It was with this in mind that I researched the best ways to pick your own apples near Montreal using public transport.

Here’s what I discovered.

Your first option is to go on an “apple escapade” operated by the Agence Métropolitaine de Transport (AMT). This is certainly the simplest way to PYO. Just call (514) 287-7866 to book a place, and then turn up at the train station. AMT will shepherd you straight to the orchard, and then take you home later that day laden down

with bags of apples. The total cost of the adventure is $29.50 – a steep tag for students, but one that includes the train fare and the price of a fivepound bag of apples. The last of these outings takes place on October 9 and the train departs from Gare Centrale (895 de la Gauchetière O.) at noon, returning at 5 p.m. It’s easy and hassle-free, but the strict schedule also gives the whole thing the feel of an overly-prescribed day out, sort of like a school trip but without the novelty of leaving school for the day.

Instead, I suggest you make your way to an orchard independently. Try visiting Le Pavillon de la pomme (1130 boulevard Laurier, Mont-Saint-Hilaire. To get there, all you have to do is ride a five dollar commuter train from Gare Centrale to Mont-Saint-Hilaire, crossing over the Victoria Bridge (spectacular) and through the suburbs of Montreal (snore). Five stops later you’ve arrived, and from the station, it is a mere ten-minute walk to the orchard. Le Pavillon de la pomme has over a dozen varieties of apples to choose from, and sells them at a ridiculously low cost. On a clear sunny day, this is an unbeatable way to spend an afternoon.

Another option is to go to Verger Senneville. The nearest commuter rail station is Sainte-Anne-De-Bellevue, from which it is about a 30 minute walk (see Google Maps for directions) to the orchard. This hike takes longer than the one at Mont-Saint-Hillaire, but it makes up for it by taking you through a bird sanctuary and some really quite picturesque countryside.

Verger Senneville is open weekday afternoons and all day on weekends until mid-October, so hurry up and enjoy it while the season it lasts.

Hand-picking ensures a quality not found in supermarkets.

Westward, ho Deux Frogs dans l’Ouest takes on anglo Canada John Watson The McGill Daily

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fter a Winter Olympics that was heavily criticised for being Anglo-Canadiancentric, Quebec filmmaker Dany Papineau attempts through his new feature film Deux Frogs dans l’Ouest to “open our Québécois people onto the world.” Setting his film in the same location as this year’s games, Papineau raises the question of what it means to be Québécois in a predominantly anglophone nation.

Deux Frogs dans l’Ouest is a Québécois film set outside of Quebec. Marie Deschamps, a 20-year-old girl from rural Quebec, decides to drop out of CEGEP in order to travel to the mysterious, exotic land of Whistler, British Columbia, in a classic coming-ofage story. Evoking the historical colonization of our country, Marie sets off to find herself and see a side of her country that is as geographi-

cally and culturally different from her life experience as Switzerland.

On the way, Marie struggles with many difficulties – such as being penniless and independent – but the greatest of these is her exhaustive effort to learn English. In Whistler, Marie meets a number of young people from various walks of life who, just like her, want to be free and adventurous, and learn something about themselves.

Deux Frogs is, to Papineau, an important and quintessential story for Quebec youth identity, as “every fall, hundreds of young Québécois migrate toward the West and end up in Whistler without a cent, with the goal of experiencing a few snowboard runs on one of the most well-known mountains in the world.” However, influenced by his own experiences, Papineau’s achievement sometimes portrays anglophone Canadians as having a tired, unsympathetic relationship with their French-speaking counterparts.

Though Marie’s travels to the West are posited as an entirely

estranging and “foreign” experience, Papineau has to continually bring his audience back to a comfort zone wherein the character’s Québécois identity and means of expression are not lost. Notably, the only person who Marie has a meaningful relationship with is fellow Quebecker Jean-Francois – half bad-ass snowboarder, half gentleman who can sleep next to her without touching (unlike an advantage-taking anglo encountered earlier in the film). Even the film’s primary antagonist Gaby, a spoiled and moody roommate, is able to converse in French. Gaby straddles the French and anglo worlds, as well as many others (she is immediately identified by Jean-Francois as “bilingual, bisexual, and bipolar”) yet can’t truly connect with either of the ever-modest Quebecois who she lusts for in the end. Being “bi” – through language or sexuality – only leaves Gaby sad and alone in the end.

This heteronormative narrative is at play throughout Deux Frogs

dans l’Ouest. With such naivety that would astonish my eight-yearold cousin, Marie mistakes her new gay roommate Brad’s rainbow pride flag, asking “Which country are you from?” Later, Marie feels inspired to explore her sexuality, immersing herself in a sexual relationship with Gaby (complete with a ratings-boosting topless lesbian sex scene), but eventually refuses her in favour of Jean-Francois, who isn’t always trying to have sex with her. With Brad’s open gayness carefully sanctioned off and Gaby’s incessant sexual moves on the mostly-straight Marie, the film’s attempt at inclusivity borders on homophobic.

With a premise that has the potential for a great film that explores a number of important issues in contemporary Canada, in the end, Deux Frogs is about as entertaining as a made-for-TV teen flick without really exploring the linguistic and cultural dynamics between anglophone and francophone Canadians.

Anna Foran for The McGill Daily

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Classifieds

20 Culture

The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 7, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

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150 character limit. There will be a $6.00 charge per contract for any characters over the limit. Prices include taxes. MINIMUM ORDER $40.50/ 5 ads. Lost & Found ads are free. Other categories include: Movers/Storage, Employment, Word Processing/Typing, Services Offered, For Sale, To Give Away, Wanted to Buy, Rides/Tickets, Lost & Found, Personal, Lessons/Courses, Notices, Volunteers, Musicians, etc.

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Lessons/Courses

Timothy Lem-Smith | The McGill Daily

Gilgamesh is part café, part luxury furniture store.

Sophia LePage The McGill Daily

CANADA COLLEGE www.collegecanada.com Any Language Course: 7.00$/hour TESOL Certification Recognized by TESL Canada.

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since childhood? McGill Vision Research is looking for study participants. Please call Dr. Simon Clavagnier at 514-934-1934 ext.

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www.mcgilldaily.com/classifieds

U

nless you’re headed to Salon de Quilles bowling alley or you’re in the market for an industrial radiator, chances are great that you haven’t ventured beyond the highway overpass, cheap produce stalls, and the rundown apartments that line upper Parc Avenue.

In this desolate area, however, lies an anomaly: Gilgamesh, located at the cross section of Parc and Beaubien, is a luxury furniture store and café owned by Tobin Belanger. Gilgamesh’s clean, renovated exterior is a distinct contrast to the dingy discothéque and the carpet warehouses the area also houses. Though it might seem like an odd area to have the store, for Bélanger, who lives in the studio just above Gilgamesh, the location made perfect sense.

In a telephone interview, Bélanger explained that buying out the downstairs floor was better than letting it go to “some shady guys who wanted to open a crummy fast food restaurant.”

The area where Gilgamesh is located won’t be deserted for

long, however. “There’s a huge medical campus from Université de Montréal going in right… down the street and so it’s pretty obvious that there are going to be a lot of changes here in the next five to ten years,” Bélanger explained. Just as the Plateau and Mile End have become gentrified in the past few years, the implementation of a school campus up on Parc will surely bring change even further north in Montreal as well: “It’s sort of a natural thing where first it’s derelict, the artists move in, the furniture people move in, and then the condos start getting built and that’s already happened here,” Bélanger commented.

Upon entering Gilgamesh, what’s most evident about the store is the furniture – items stacked on top of one another, spilling out the door to the street curb, offering customers an eclectic mix of “revamped, vintage and retro and classic” pieces. Clientele mostly consists of the “Outremont and Plateau/Mile End young professional” crowd; prices are reasonable considering the usual overpricing of designer furniture, but at $18 for a photo frame, many items are beyond a

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student’s budget. On the bright side, the coffee at Gilgamesh is good and cheap – Bélanger claims there is “no good espresso around,” so many people walking by the busy intersection come in just for that aspect. The trip up Parc to Gilgamesh provides one with a rich combination of things to look at and taste, even if the espresso bar seems more of a charity for the coffee-loving owner than the intentional centerpiece of the store.

Cafés are notably lacking in this area of Parc Extension, and the opening of Gilgamesh seems to reflect the northward migration of students and young professionals that are drawn to the area’s businesses. It’s a bit dramatic to be calling Gilgamesh “really out there” in terms of distance – it’s just three blocks away from the hustle and bustle of cafes and in markets lower down on Parc in the Mile End. Still, this shiny new example of gentrification stands out in the homogenous few blocks separating Mile End from Parc Ex, and goes to prove that those few extra steps underneath the overpass will lead to some interesting finds.

21Art Essay

The McGill Daily | Thursday. October 7, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

Luke Thienhaus

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