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The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 14, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
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Anti-QPIRG motion thrown out Motion will not be on SSMU Council agenda tonight Henry Gass The McGill Daily
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motion that sought to abolish QPIRG’s funding, and would have put its opt-outable to a referendum, was declared out of order by the SSMU speakers yesterday, and is no longer on the agenda for today’s SSMU council session. The motion was initially approved Tuesday, but then declared out-of-order after it became apparent that SSMU has no jurisdiction over the fees administered by a independent student group. “The question couldn’t happen,” said Raymond Xing, Speaker of Council. “SSMU doesn’t have any authority to do anything about the QPIRG fee.” Since both SSMU and QPIRG are independent organizations on campus with their own individual Memorandums of Agreement (MoAs) with the University, they can’t control each other’s fees. SSMU Councillors Spencer Burger, Lauren Hudak, Matt Reid, and Eli Freedman were signatories to the motion. SSMU President Zach Newburgh conferred with Deputy Provost (Student Life & Learning) Morton Mendelson yesterday to assess the legality of the proposed referendum question. In an email correspondence between Newburgh and Mendelson obtained by The Daily, Newburgh cites Article 1.6 of the QPIRG-McGill MoA as an indicator of the potential illegality of the referendum question, describing how only the University has the
authority to approve any adjustment in QPIRG’s fees. The MoA states that “no adjustment to the QPIRG’s fees shall be applied or collected by the University unless the Dean of Students has confirmed in writing that the formalities required by the QPIRG’s constitution for fee adjustments and applicable law have been followed.” “In the same way that QPIRG could not launch a referendum question to alter the fees that are payed to the SSMU, the SSMU cannot launch a referendum question regarding a change of fees for QPIRG,” said Newburgh. Mendelson insisted that he was not involved in the decision to strike the motion from the council agenda. “My view is that SSMU does not have the authority to ask such a question,” Mendelson wrote in the email to Newburgh. “Perhaps one confusion is that groups not affiliated with SSMU use Elections McGill to conduct their referenda, which may lead some people to believe, incorrectly, that the referenda are SSMU referenda.” Burger wrote in an email to the Daily that he authored the motion to “have an open and civil debate about QPIRG’s role on campus, what its role should be, and whether it should function according to the same rules that apply to other explicitly political groups.” According to Speaker Cathal Rooney-Cespedes, council speakers were first informed of the illegality of the referendum question in an email on Tuesday from Sebastian Ronderos-Morgan, a member of QPIRG’s Board of
Directors and former SSMU VP External. The question itself was only able to make it onto the agenda in the first place because the SSMU Council Steering Committee elected to extend the deadline for motions for today’s council from 5 p.m. Monday to Tuesday morning. “People were late with motions,” said Rooney-Cespedes. “It wasn’t arbitrary. We decided to grant everyone further extensions.” According to Freedman, the motion was first submitted on Monday by Reid, but was found unconstitutional by the speakers of council. “The main issue was that there were far too many statements of opinions within ‘whereas’ clauses,” said Rooney-Cespedes. The motion was amended and resubmitted by Burger on Tuesday. Motions to council require the signatures of four councillors. Freedman was quick to clarify his own role in the submission of the motion. “My involvement was limited to signing the document. I lended [sic] my signature to the fact that [the motion] was constitutionally acceptable,” he said, adding “some statements were unconstitutional. They made accusations – which in their opinion were true – that were never made clear by the SSMU body.” The revised motion described various “alienating” characteristics of QPIRG, as well as the recent confrontation between QPIRG members and members of the optout campaign in the McConnell Engineering Building. The incident led to the EUS council banning QPIRG from renting space in the
building for the year. The motion further described QPIRG as funding “goals and groups that deeply disturb members of the SSMU.” The question at the end of the motion reads: “Do you agree, That the $3.75 student fee (per semester) of every SSMU member to fund QPIRG McGill be annulled effective immediately?”
which the motion authors could pursue their aims. “I gave [Burger] a list of things SSMU was capable of,” he said. “I recommended to him that he make a symbolic gesture.” Such gestures included going to plebiscite – essentially a survey of student opinion on an issue that has to go to Council the same way a
“The question couldn’t happen. SSMU doesn’t have any authority to do anything about the QPIRG fee.” Raymond Xing Speaker of Council
Rooney-Cespedes affirmed that, had it not been for the illegality of the motion, the question could have got a lot of support among the SSMU council. “Not until QPIRG brought this [illegality] to our attention did anybody object,” he said. He pointed out that while SSMU makes its by-laws and constitution public, QPIRG keeps its documents private. “QPIRG should do a lot better in terms of making themselves more transparent,” he said. “They don’t do anything to make themselves accessible. We should be able to know what their by-laws, how they govern themselves.” With the motion removed from today’s council agenda, Rooney-Cespedes also recommended other avenues through
referendum question would – and having SSMU take a stance on the anullment of QPIRG fees. “SSMU has alternative avenues he can take. None of them actually do anything,” said RooneyCespedes. “He knows he can’t go [to referendum].” Burger, or any other councillor, would have to pass a two-thirds vote to amend the agenda for today’s session in order to achieve any of those objectives before next session, but Xing firmly dismissed any possibility of the revised motion making it onto today’s agenda. “No suspension of rules could possibly make it in order. There are fundamental legislative issues with the question,” said Xing. “It’s not going to happen.”
Food services cut student shifts at BMH Ability to trade hours will also be curbed Mari Galloway The McGill Daily
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alled into a meeting last Thursday, student employees at Bishop Mountain Hall were notified that starting this week the majority of student employees would be experiencing reduced hours and less flexibility in terms of switching shift. According to Director of McGill Food and Dining Service (MFDS) Mathieu Laperle, the cutbacks are a result of McGill’s contract with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and the administration’s hands are tied when it comes to cutting students’ shifts. “We have a union contract agreement, so we have to respect
“We aren’t creating jobs just to create jobs.” Mathieu Laperle Director of McGill Food and Dining Services the contract agreement. We have a union agreement [that] we have to go by seniority... It is a normal process,” said Laperle. Laperle added, “What we did was to renew our needs. There are more and more people who have started to use [Royal Victoria College] instead of BMH, and we’ve seen some changes in terms of the patterns and the habits of the people. So it’s a normal process. This is something we do
every year because at the start of the year we don’t know the habits of the people. If there is a need [for employees] there is no problem, but if there is no need there is no need. We aren’t creating jobs just to create jobs.” However, some student workers are less concerned about shift cutbacks than a new policy that limits the number of times a person can switch their shifts to five times a semester. For one student, who spoke on
the condition of anonymity, the cuts in shifts are bringing his work in to conflict with his academics. “The problem is that they aren’t outright firing us. What they are doing is they are giving us shifts that are impossible or really difficult to do,” he said. “They aren’t considering availability, which is an issue because ultimately I’m here to go to university, and if I were to do their shifts I would have to seriously sacrifice that.” The limited shifts will also affect his work permit. “I am an international student and so we’re only allowed to work on campus,” he said. “To be able to work on campus you need to get a social insurance number from the Canadian government, and when they give it to you, it’s on the basis that you are going to be in an employment in a place for a certain amount of time.
Also they are not just going to reissue you one if you lose your job quickly.” Currently there are just under seventy students on schedule at BMH. This number is up from previous years when the average number of employees was around 40 or 50, according to Susan Campbell, Associate Director of Food and Hospitality Services. Some students are wondering why MFDS would inflate the number of hires just to downsize two months into the school year. “Basically everyone has lost shifts,” said Steve Eldon Kerr, a U2 Arts student and Daily writer employed at BMH. “They hired too many people, so they had to cut down. They have said that if you really need the money they will give you more shifts, but I just really don’t know how they are going to do that.”
4 News
The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 14, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
Nine Moroccan stowaways detained after week at sea Thought they were going to Europe, but plan on staying in Canada Misha Schwartz The McGill Daily
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hen nine people emerged from a shipping container on board the M.S. Lugano, which docked at Montreal’s port last Thursday, their biggest surprise was that they had arrived in Canada. The stowaways had secretly boarded the ship in Casablanca, Morocco earlier that week, thinking they were bound for Europe. The Canadian Border Service Agency (CBSA) took the individuals into custody, after which they were taken to an immigration detention centre in Laval, where they are currently being held until the Immigration Review and Board (IRB) can verify their identities. “The officers were on board the boat at 1:56 a.m.,” said Jacqueline Roby, a CBSA spokesperson. The officers were able to determine that all nine “were in good health...and appeared well fed.” Last Friday, seven of the nine detainees told their stories to the IRB. The stowaways claimed that they had hid in a shipping container
on the ship’s with the expectation of landing either in Italy or Portugal, the Lugano’s two stops before heading to Canada. The nine were discovered onboard the ship October 4, while the Lugano was en route to Montreal. At that point they claimed to be Iraqi refugees. A later fax sent by the Canadian Maritime Agency determined that they were in fact Moroccan. When the Lugano docked at the port of Montreal on October 7 the stowaways were taken into custody. The Montreal Gazette reported that they used asthma inhalers to combat bad air quality and that one of the stowaways reported not having slept for seven days. Roby withheld further details regarding conditions aboard the ship. According to Robert Gervais, an IRB spokesperson, the refugees had “no identification whatsoever...and must be detained until their identities are established.” Gervais said that the detention review conducted for seven detainees last Friday was filmed, which usually only happens in the case of a refugee claim or if the detainee
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is a minor. He could not specify whether the seven detainees were claiming refugee status. According to the CBC, seven of the nine refugees are applying for refugee status. The other two have not, but also want to stay in Canada. The 1967 Protocol from the U.N. Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees defines a refugee as “a person who, owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted...is unwilling to return to [their home country].” However, the detainees did not express any fear of returning to Morocco. Seven of the stowaways will appear again before the review board this Friday, and the other two will appear on Monday. Once their identities are established they will be released from custody unless they are considered a flight risk. Ever since the arrival of the M.V. Sun Sea and close to 500 Tamil refugees in the port of Victoria this past August, the federal government has been pushing for tighter legislation regarding illegal immigration, especially human trafficking. The Gazette reported that one of
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
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The stowaways were taken into CBSA custody upon arrival in Montreal. the detainees told investigators that they had planned the entire exploit by themselves without any outside
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
aid. However, it is still being determined whether this case did in fact involve human trafficking.
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
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The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 14, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
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UdeM crosses the tracks Erin Hudson on the university’s expansion into Parc Ex
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n the afternoon of October 2 in Parc Athéna, the Comité d’Action de Parc Extension (CAPE) served 660 ears of corn to hundreds of Parc Ex residents, and informed neighbours about an upcoming development project that will alter the face of their community.
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ccording to the last census taken by the City of Montreal, 2,000 families were spending over fifty per cent of their income on rent and 1,000 families were waiting for social housing in the neighbourhood. For all his ambivalence about the project, Trepanier said that he hoped the “pressure” of the new campus would spur investment in the neighbourhood and provide employment for Parc Ex residents. Langlois explained UdeM’s priorities in this regard: “The university itself has unions, so we have to see about that when we hire people to follow the rules.” Langlois maintains that while UdeM is the space’s new landlord, residents will still have to address their concerns to the City. “It’s the City of Montreal that will develop roads and infrastructures, sewers…lighting and all of that. And the residential part of it will be the responsibility of the City,” she said.
Years in the making and set to break ground next year, the expansion of the Université de Montréal campus into the Outremont rail yards will feature enough new buildings to hold 2,000 students and professors as well as 1,300 new housing units – some of them private – to be built over the next ten years. UdeM’s new campus is being publicly funded to the tune of $120 million, to be split between the city and provincial governments, and will occupy the abandoned rail yard that separates Parc-Extension from Outremont to the south. The development is projected to draw 11,000 new students into the area according to CAPE community organizer André Trepanier. Critics say the new students could drive rents up, and current residents out. The densely-packed neighbourhood is home to over 35,000 residents, and is the centre of Montreal’s Greek and South Asian communities. Neighbourhood organizers like Trepanier are hoping to use the visibility of the new development to get more attention for other issues facing the neighbourhood, like affordable social housing. “Less than five per cent of apartment here that are social housing,” Trepanier continued. “So that means that more than 95 per cent of the apartments here are private apartments.” “On the one hand we need [more kinds of social housing] and on the other hand we need an action plan to solve the problem of the sanitation of the apartments,” he said. “We’re not against the campus. We won’t stop the new campus, but we want to stop the gentrification which can occur from [it].”
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aphaël Fischler, a professor in the McGill School of Urban Planning, explained, “There are really two consitutencies here. The first is Outremont, and the second is Parc Ex. The people in Outremont have accepted this campus development,” Fischler said. “Gentrification is not an issue for Outremont. Not really. But it is for Parc Ex.” Fischler notes that the process of gentrification in Parc Ex, though not very strong yet, has already begun. “Look at all these older neighbourhoods that are not far from downtown, that have good access to the metro and...a public market and things like that – they are gentrifying,” he said. “They have an influx of students and professionals. They have growth of condominium buildings and so on. It’s much less in Parc Ex than in other places but it’s starting.” Fischler argued, however, that
Blair Elliott for The McGill Daily
The site of UdeM’s future campus gentrification might have some positive effects. “There can be aesthetic, functional, and economic improvements in the neighbourhood,” he said. “It depends sometimes [on] the good will and the enlightenment of the developers in the hospital or in the university,” he added. “The outcomes are far from clear but you can try and push in the right direction.” UdeM, for its part, sees itself as a saviour for the neighbourhood. “The campus itself is a starting
point for redeveloping this no man’s land,” said Sophie Langlois, director of media relations at UdeM. “[It] is an opportunity for the City to revitalize the entire area.” Trepanier sees the university’s role differently. “[The new campus] would be a signal for investors to build condos or for landlords to kick out their tenants and to do some renovation and [charge] higher rent to newcomers richer than the people of Parc Ex,” he said. “What is affordable for one is not necessarily affordable for another,”
Fischler pointed out. “Affordable units in a condominium building are still totally out of reach for the tenants who are there [currently],” he said. Langlois dismissed these concerns, saying they were not in UdeM’s purview. “These issues are really the City’s responsibility in their planning around the campus,” she argued, pointing out that the city mandates 15 per cent of new residential development be devoted to “affordable” housing, and a further 15 per cent to “social” housing.
he latest design for UdeM’s development is excellent, Fischler said, and received an award in 2005 from L’institut canadien des urbanistes. “It was done by thoughtful people who do their best obviously to meet various interests and requirements that always come into a complex urban design,” he said. Fischler explained that there is a trend among communities facing similar pressures toward creating “community benefits agreements” between the potential developer and the community. McGill’s purchase of Solin Hall in St. Henri saw the creation of this kind of agreement. “There was…very strong protest on the part of the local population. What McGill did was actually sign a ‘community benefits agreement’ with the local community,” Fischler said. “Our students [from the McGill School of Urban Planning]…were involved in doing the right thing in St. Henri,” he said. In urban planning, the expansions of university campuses into surrounding poorer areas has traditionally followed one of two paths, according to Fischler. “In some cases [there are] very interesting community benefits agreements and joint partnerships. But in other cases [the result is] the removal of poor people to make way for rich kids and their professors,” he said. The difference, Fischler says, lies in the amount of pressure within the institution to do the “right thing.” “I think that is where students can play a role and tell their administration… ‘We want a sustainable campus….We want social sustainability as well and we don’t want our campus to be the source of problems for poor people,’” he said.
6 News
The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 14, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
McGill grad student runs for city council Taking on mayor’s party in by-election Eric Andrew-Gee The McGill Daily
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ryce Durafourt, in the last year of his Masters program in Neuroscience at McGill, is Projet Montréal’s newest candidate for city councillor in St. Laurent’s Côte-de-Liesse district. With the deadline for declaring candidacy set for October 22, his only opponent thus far in the by-election is Francesco Miele, from Gerard Tremblay’s Union Montréal party. The campaign began last Friday, and election day is November 21. Durafourt is running for a position that had been held by Laval Demers, who died on September 16 of a brain aneurysm. He was 57 years old. The 23-year-old Durafourt is a veteran in municipal politics, having contested his first election in the St. Laurent borough when he was 18. This will be his fourth campaign for municipal office – he ran twice for councillor and once for school board representative. Durafourt, who received his Bachelor’s in Microbiology and Immunology from McGill in 2009, thinks his chances of winning are “very good.” “It’s always tough,” he told The
Daily. “Tremblay’s party has had five councillors elected in the borough.” There are five seats on the St. Laurent council. Durafourt, who has deferred his acceptance to McGill medical school until next year so he can finish his Master’s degree, thinks the St. Laurent council could use a breath of fresh air. “Since council is made up by five people from the same team it’s important to have some opposition…so that new ideas can be brought in,” he said. “They’re pretty excited to see someone young,” he said of the constituents he met going door-to -door getting signatures in support of his candidacy. Durafourt’s past campaigns have not garnered as much enthusiasm. In every one of his previous races he lacked serious political endorsement, and ran as an independent. In 2005, in an election for councillor, he received just over one per cent of the vote. “It was a tough campaign,” he said. “But I used the lessons I learned then when I ran again in 2009. I ran a much bigger campaign. I used full-sized signs.” In 2009, he received about six per cent of the vote. Durafourt found that “it’s very difficult to get elected without the financial and organizational backing of a party,”
as the Gazette put it in a profile of the young politician in 2007. Durafourt has cleared that hurdle this time around. Projet Montréal approached Durafourt about running this year, and is throwing its full weight behind him. He shares many of Projet’s policy goals, like expanded public transit, reduced car traffic, and air-conditioning in the metro. Although hesitant to criticize the mayor’s election platform, Durafourt pointed to continued “collusion in city contracts” as a failure of Tremblay’s tenure as mayor, which began in 2001. Durafourt felt that the problem “maybe didn’t originate from Tremblay and his team,” but that it “certainly hadn’t been well addressed in [Tremblay’s] first two terms.” Durafourt’s research work at McGill, meanwhile, seems unimpeachable. He is part of a team looking into the effects of a new drug to combat Multiple Sclerosis, which “was on clinical trials and…was just approved in the U.S.” He chose MS research because MS is “an issue that’s close to me for family reasons…that’s meaningful to me.” Next year Durafourt will be attending medical school at McGill, but he is confident he will be able to balance his academic and political life. “It’s not quite a full-time job,” he
Courtesy of Projet Montréal
Bryce Durafourt is in the last year of his neuroscience degree said of being a councillor. “I would be obligated to go to St. Laurent council meeting, which is once a month, and Montreal council meeting, which is once a month as well. The rest of the work is meeting with
citizens and then performing whatever tasks need to be done.” “You’re elected to work for the City of Montreal,” he continued, “but you’re working for the people, you’re working for the citizens.”
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Residence vending machines to be removed Machines removed to comply with summer food service audit Queen Arsem-O'Malley The McGill Daily
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n accordance with a review completed over the summer, revenue from vending machines in McGill Residences will no longer help support residence Hall Councils, and some machines have been removed from residences entirely. Hall Councils are responsible for planning events, fundraisers, and other residence activities for students. The Councils formerly received bimonthly checks from vending machine revenue. The money “wasn’t a lot, but was certainly helpful,” said Clara Lu, former VP Finance of Royal Victoria College. She estimated that last year’s RVC Hall Council, which had a budget of about $4,000 to work with, received a few hundred dollars from vending machines. Lu also noted that in the last months of the 2009-2010 academic year, the RVC Council received two revenue checks issued to McGill University rather than to the council itself. “Food Services did not question the changing of the recipient,” she added. Mathieu Laperle, Director of
Machines like this one will disappear in accordance with the Aramark contract. McGill Food and Dining Services (MFDS), said that in a review of services after the start of Aramark’s contract on June 1, MFDS was “surprised to discover that there were some vending machines
being operated on campus and in Residences without any official authorization or contract with the University.” Locations such as Thomson House, the Faculty Club, and the
Locked-out journalists reject offer Deal would have left eighty per cent of the workers jobless Rana Encol The McGill Daily
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lmost ninety per cent of 253 unionized journalists voted Tuesday to reject Journal de Montréal’s latest contract offer in a labor dispute unresolved since January 2009. The Journal’s offer would have let 48 people return to work, leaving eighty per cent of the workers without a job. Journalists who produce content – such as reporters and photographers – would not have been able to work for a competitor for a period of six months if they wanted severance pay. The publications considered competitors are La Presse, Cyberpresse, and Rue Frontenac. Rue Frontenac is the union’s online news publication, which is scheduled to hit newsstands by the end of the month as a free weekly tabloid. Quebecor, Journal’s parent company, called for Rue Frontenac to be shut down at the meeting between management and the union Tuesday. The company further demanded a six-
month moratorium on the publication of any new strike papers or websites with the additional condition that the iconic name not be reused. Reynald Leblanc, the Journal’s union leader, told the Gazette that these demands were the deal-breaker. Alain Bisson, financial reporter for Rue Frontenac, said the union had no substantial demands of their own during the negotiations. “We were willing to do our share. We understand that Journal wanted – not needed – to lower costs, but we wanted to see if we could do our part of the effort,” he said. Bisson explained that the Journal prepared for the lockout well in advance to avoid hiring scabs. A year prior to the lockout, the newspaper hired new management and placed them in the Sports section. Twenty of the paper’s original sports writers are now on the picket line. All of the other sections were supplanted by Quebec Media Inc., a wire agency created two weeks before the lockout that enables the Journal to use content produced by employees at other Quebecor subsidiaries. These tactics prompted the union
to challenge Quebec’s Labour Code on the basis of trying to redefine what qualifies as “scab labour,” but the employees lost the case in court. Bisson said he believes that Rue Frontenac has a lot of leverage in the labour dispute and explained that, with advertising revenue, the website is making a profit. “It’s another question to know whether Rue Frontenac could sustain so many journalists if it were a real business that paid salaries – I think it would be possible and viable,” he said. Bisson and his colleagues still receive 75 per cent of their net salary, but many have been doing freelance work to support themselves. “The lockout was one of the reasons that I sold my house two months before [the lock-out] happened,” he said. “There is no financial justification to Journal de Montréal [demands] – they make several millions a year, probably tens of millions in profit. We’re not talking about a company that has financial difficulties,” said Bisson. “There is no justification of stealing jobs from roughly 200 people.”
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Shatner building are not included in the contract with Aramark, but other than these exemptions, “student associations are not permitted to operate vending machines or food services,” Laperle wrote in
an email to The Daily. In agreement with MFDS’s contract with Aramark, the unauthorized vending machines, which included some of those in McGill residences, were removed. Machines in Gardner Hall were removed, though there are still machines present in RVC, and there has been no mention of their removal, according to RVC President Caelestia Hu. Hu also said that RVC’s Hall Council is looking for a way to make up for the loss. Laperle stressed that MFDS must be financially sustainable without receiving funds from the University, though later stated that MFDS has “never been involved with where the money [from vending machines] goes.” However, Lu said the RVC council was able to cash the vending machine cheques, received from a company called Distribution Triso, through MFDS this spring. Aramark now owns the operation of the majority of vending machines on campus, with the exception of a few that are run by other companies, such as CocaCola. —With files from Andra Cernavskis
New mental health fee for post-graduates Steve Eldon Kerr News Writer
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ast Wednesday, the PostGraduate Student Society of McGill University (PGSS) Council approved a referendum question that will that will ask postgrads to accept a McGill Mental Health Service fee increase to postgrads. The referendum question will ask postgraduate students whether they wish to accept fee increases of $7.50 per semester for full-time students and $4.25 per semester for part-time students, to take effect in January 2011. The increases will give postgraduate students equal access to mental health services and allow additional doctors to be hired to address students’ mental health needs. PGSS Health Commissioner Jonathan Mooney proposed the question because graduate students currently have access to fewer doctors at mental health services than undergraduates. The difference arose in 2008 when McGill undergraduates voted in favour of increasing the Student Service fee, which funds mental health services, but graduate students rejected the proposed increase. Mooney proposed the question in response to complaints raised by PGSS representatives to the Mental Health Services Advisory Board (MHSAB). The complaints specifically
addressed the fact that there are two doctors at Mental Health Services for the exclusive use of undergraduates. Mooney claims the result has been “longer wait times and less access to clinicians for graduate students,” so that “some students have to resort to seeing private doctors off-campus for mental health issues, which is often very costly.” “I decided to ask the question because it is my responsibility as Health Commissioner to address problems that affect the health of my constituents,” stated Mooney. “I’m not convinced graduate students were aware of the consequences of rejecting the fee increase in 2008.” The new question should clarify the issue to the postgraduate community, who currently make greater use of mental health services than undergraduates. The fee increase would have no effect on Student Health Services, just Mental Health Services, and Mooney wants to make it clear that if the referendum question were to pass, it would not adversely affect undergraduates. “The goal and expected effect is to increase the quality of care at Mental Health Services for all students and to ensure that there is no service differential between graduate students and undergraduates,” he said. The date for the referendum has not yet been set but Mooney expects it be sometime in early November.
Commentary
The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 14, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
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I’m sick of this bullshit The way we’re treated on campus All we want, baby, is everything Sam Neylon sam.neylon@mcgilldaily.com
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o I decided to go to sleep early and wake up early instead of pulling an all-nighter. It never really works out, but when I eventually get on to campus, it would be nice to have a cup of coffee at Arch Café. Oops, but this isn’t really about Arch Café. It’s about the fact that our roots are being pulled out, and how that’s supposed to be a positive thing. The administration seems to think it is a burden to give students access to University space. They think that it’s an outrage they should have to hand over student fees to student clubs without being able to control those clubs. Or if you’re like QPIRG, that being a student group should mean focusing all your time on campus to saving yourself. They are just so annoyed that they should have to figure out how to let the McGill community use bikes on campus. And undergrads should be happy that the admin were so nice to you during the tour, because you’re definitely not getting any funding or attention now that you’re here. And if you’re a grad student who’s supposed to be the centre of this research-centred university, you’d better have your nose to the grindstone – but we really don’t care
Olivia Messer | The McGill Daily
The admin wants you to keep quiet and keep working! about the quality of your research, just that it’s being churned out. If you’re a Muslim person at McGill, you have to file a complaint with the Quebec Human Rights Commission, and the admin still won’t give you prayer space on campus. If you’re in a union on campus (or trying to organize one) – don’t
expect the University to be some sort of sanctuary – while the students are learning about social inequality, you’d better get your ass back to work. The list goes on and on (we don’t have to listen very hard to hear these groups speak out for themselves) – and that’s the point, it’s not about specific policies,
compartmentalizing us into interest groups, but rather about a total way of doing things – of calculating value and making priorities. This column will explore how ways of thinking connect all the grievances above – not through some diabolical web of money and influence, but rather through series of compromises, processes with
perverse trajectories, decisions that went through, rather than being fought out. Maybe we should see that we’re not just at school, we’re also neckdeep in the machinery that makes the world turn, and maybe we should wriggle around a bit. I work with Mobilization McGill (MM), a collective founded on the idea that these issues stem from a central source – so we need to work together and protest together. The strength of MM comes from the fact that everyone brings their own perspective and energy to the group. I bring my own perspective to the group and to this column. Starting next Monday, we will be rolling out the boycott of McGill food services. It will end with another big, noisy rally during Senate next Wednesday at 2 p.m. in front of Leacock. This isn’t just about food, this isn’t just about Arch Café: let’s show the admin that we can do more than choose from their “high quality and nutritious food selection,” let’s show them that we can fight back, that we can build something – build something that isn’t just for ourselves. A bunch of us have decided to wear white ribbons. White so you can put whatever is bothering you on it, but also so that we can, in solidarity, protest the way the administration (for starters) interacts with the McGill community and people in general. Thank you. o
Let us eat cake! Arch Café mobilization will help us get more back than just food Carol Fraser Hyde Park
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ince when is filling your belly a want, rather than a need? Food is not only necessary to humans for survival, but is also essential for higher brain functions. McGill students, as both humans and people using those upper-level functions, need food. The contractor Aramark’s near-monopoly on campus food is a threat to the needs of McGill students. All of us. Exclusivity, or monopoly, allows the food providers to lower food quality while raising prices: this threatens not only students’ wallets but their bodies and minds. The issue of the Architecture Café closure is therefore not an issue of desire for luxurious brownies and coffee, but of a real need for an autonomous service offering afford-
able and nutritious food. Daniel Meltzer wrote to The Daily last week (“Should we eat cake?” Commentary, October 6) that there is “a world of taste for under $10...within walking distance of any class.” First, there are not that many options close enough to McGill for students to pass by them quickly between classes, and the ones that do exist are mostly corporately-run. But, second, why shouldn’t our campus be a reflection of its students, rather than dictated from the top down? Why go somewhere else when we could have an amazing and student-affirming option right here? Why take the lazy way out? Food should be community, not commodity. The story goes that when Marie Antoinette was told that the people were starving for their daily bread she responded, “Let them eat
cake!” We echo this call because by choosing overpriced and nutritionally-poor Aramark food over the sustainable and democratic Architecture Café, Deputy Provost Morton Mendelson might as well be saying the same phrase to us. Tuition going up? Students want a more democratic say on what they eat on campus? Then let them eat overpriced, mass-produced “cake” from Aramark, a multi-national company that supports the elite, while feeding the military and encouraging large-scale agriculture using pesticide! Let the administration take that food and try to stomach it. We want our own food – our daily life and “bread” – back. Yet, wouldn’t students have held protests earlier if this issue were really so important? They already have. In 2000 and in 2007, there were student protests regarding exclusivity contracts with Coca-
Cola and the first Arch Café closure, respectively. Student turnover combined with apathy and busyness left students with little time to think about the slow, but steady, corporatization of campus life. The Architecture Café rally and its aftermath is a great starting point for rekindling the student movement at McGill. It addresses the gradual closure of student food places on campus, as well as the non-existent budgetary reasons for doing so. If the Café – financially sustainable for over ten years – were really losing so much money, why did the administration take it over in the the first place? Student groups like the ASA in conjunction with EUS have submitted business proposals to reopen the Café, but the administration is unwilling to even discuss the matter. The issue is more ideological than financial, and the September 22 rally served
to open the discussion on the nature of student input in campus affairs in general, including tuition increases. Though the protest was slightly disorganized and last minute, it had enthusiasm – something rarely seen on campus these days. Students have been mobilizing ever since in an ad hoc group called Mobilization McGill, and, with support from SSMU, have organized a boycott of Aramark food providers from Monday, October 18 through Wednesday, October 20. Mobilization McGill meets Mondays at 7 p.m. in the Shatner Cafeteria. All are welcome and invited! Carol Fraser is a U3 German and East Asian Studies student. She’s also a member of Midnight Kitchen and Mobilization McGill. You can write to her at carol.e.fraser@ gmail.com.
Commentary
The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 14, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
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This is my beef A response, partly in dramatic form Sam Baker Hyde Park
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Alex McKenzie | The McGill Daily
Why has Arch Café mobilized so many more students at McGill than tuition?
My Café, my memories Matthew Kassel Hyde Park
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was sitting in front of the Redpath Library between classes, listening in on a conversation between two indignant girls, when a man – looking to be in his thirties – walked into my sun. “Excuse me,” he said, “do you know how to pay tuition?” I thought about this for a moment. The question seemed simple, so I gave him a simple answer. “I believe you pay online,” I said. “Where online?” he asked. The man spoke curtly, seemed hurried, a bit tense. “I believe you pay on Minerva,” I guessed. He looked relieved when I said this, but I felt dishonest. So I told him what I was ashamed to say in the beginning. I stood up, took a step toward him and spoke softly so the girls to my side would not overhear me: “Well, actually, my parents pay my tuition,” I said. “So I’m not really sure where you pay, or how.” I directed him to the McGill Service Point where, I hoped, he could work out what seemed to be something urgent. That was the last I saw of him. But I haven’t stopped thinking about the encounter, about
why I felt embarrassed because of it. I’m not blaming myself for not knowing. But it made me consider how little I understand money and obligations and transactions and bureaucracy. I’m sure there are other students who would not have been able to answer that man’s question. Sure, there are students who admirably pay their own tuition. But when I read that the Arts Undergraduate Society is, for whatever reasons, $30,000 or so in debt, it makes me realize that we really are students, learning from our mistakes, trying to make sense of life and complicated things. Learning through hardship often serves you well. But sometimes you might learn the wrong thing. When I went to the Architecture Café rally, I really didn’t feel for the cause. I hoped that the Café would reopen because I loved going there. But as the crowd cheered against the administration, against corporatism, against McGill food services, I only felt more dissociated. To me, the issue was not about the injustices of corporatism or the plight of student-run organizations – issues I don’t often think about. The issue was about the Café. Of course, it’s all related, but the efficacy of a rally hinges on empathy. If I only know that my dad pays my
tuition, should I really know why corporatism is considered bad? I’m no philistine – maybe I’m feigning a bit of ignorance. But when I think about losing the Café, I think about losing good muffins, cheap coffee, that out-of-tune piano, a concentration of cute girls, dusty couches. I didn’t love the Architecture Café because students ran it; I loved it because there was no other place on campus like it. I hope the Architecture Café reopens. I hope this is not a eulogy. The Café doesn’t need to be a study space – it already was one. During the time I spent there, I ate countless muffins, drank too much coffee, read hundreds of pages, played some blues on the piano, flirted with girls whom I never saw again. Those were all formative experiences I would fight to relive, experiences I hold fondly in my memory. If the rally had rekindled more fond memories, perhaps I would have felt more involved. I don’t think I’m alone in my thoughts. In a similar way of thinking, perhaps the reason I haven’t attended any rallies against tuition hikes is because I don’t pay my tuition. Matthew Kassel is a U3 Political Science student. Write him at matthew.kassel@mail.mcgill.ca.
October 14, 2010 Dear Reader, Keep up the good work. Keep writing. Love always, letters@mcgilldaily.com P.S.: Write Hyde Parks, too.
ife,” a bad play by an incompetent writer: Kim: OMG Cassie! You are like so totally cool! Cassie: OMG Kim! I am so totally cool! Kim, you have to, like, vote for me in the student council elections! All the girls are voting for me! We have to beat the guy candidate! And my policies are totally awesome! Kim: Your policies are like so totally awesome! [Pause.] What are they? Cassie: Dunno, like more funding for cheer leading, duh Kim, you’re such a dung-head! Kim: You’re so right, Cassie! I so totally am! Cassie: If you think for yourself, you’ll realize that my policies are the best. Like, thinking for yourself is so undervalued in our society! Kim: Yeah, I totally agree! OMG you’re so smart, Cassie! Cassie: I know. [Exeunt. Enter family men Tim and Harry.] Tim: Dude, Harry! You’re so totally cool, dude! Harry: Dude, Tim! I am totally cool! Tim, vote Republican in the election! The whole neighbourhood’s doing it! Their policies are über-sweet! Tim: Totally! [Pause.] What are their policies? Harry: Like tax breaks for random companies and financing doomed wars, duh Tim, you’re such a dunghead! Try thinking for yourself! Like, thinking for yourself is so undervalued in our society! Tim: Yeah, I totally agree! [Exeunt. Scene: University. Enter X and Y.] X: Hey, Y! You’re so awesome! Y: Hey, X! I so totally am! X, you totally have to shout abuse at Morton Mendelson and protest against the Arch Café closure!
Y
ou see where I’m going. Obviously the above was to lighten the mood, not to mock. I was asked in a letter in the last Daily (“Where’s the beef, Sam Baker?,” Letters, October 7) to explain a point I’d made about Architecture
Café, so here goes. First, clarification: my letter criticized methodology – not substance. People were coming to conclusions without appropriate justification; I was simply advising caution. As for finances: no, the admin didn’t give us a financial report; yes, it’s fishy. Mendelson testified to the Senate that the Café lost over $15,000 last year. But do you really think he’s going to lie in his official capacity? That’s a big accusation. Even if the figure were inexact, that wouldn’t mean Mendelson invented a whole trend. I mean, he has a reputation to keep; if you were a senior official of an internationally-renowned university, would you risk your professional credibility for the sake of a café? And is it really unimaginable that a venture with food that was both cheaply priced and fair-trade (inherent contradiction, methinks) should have made a loss? But if I’m wrong, I’ll happily admit it. I was wrong when I implied the financial details had been released; I may be wrong again. Admin, give them us, so we can know. Right, little pet peeve: As I tried to show in my little sketch, people are often tempted to adopt the views of a group they belong to. Transcend these stupid party lines, don’t just scream wildly. This applies outside politics, too, and was my major objection to the responses I read to the Café’s closure. There was a lot of mindless complaining but little thought. As for substantive arguments, we’re told: 1. The Café was unique (good point, but at what cost?), and 2. This is a big war against the admin. Is it? If that’s so, make it clear to everyone that if we keep the Café, we’ll be subsidizing your ideological skirmish, not a café. I know, I’m throwing about the term “subsidizing.” Because it’s crucial, the one thing that makes this not a no-brainer. The extra space argument is stupid. So admin, release the budget. Otherwise we’ll write bad play scripts mocking you too. Sam Baker is a U1 Math and Economics (Joint Honours) student. Write him at symb2005@gmail. com.
Errata In the story “Quebec pushes back against shale gas” (News, October 7), Kim Cornelissen was incorrectly identified as a spokesperson for Jour de la Terre. In fact, she is vice-president of the Assocation québécoise de luttre contre la pollution atmosphérique (AQPLA). We misspelled the name of the author of “Sex and the secular” (Culture, October 7). His name is Ed Dodson. We also misspelled the name of the author of “Selling Out” (Culture, October 7). Her name is Kristene Quan. Due to an editorial error, the article “Small loans (to the poor), big results (for the rich)” (Commentary, October 7) stated that Vandana Shiva is Bangladeshi. She is in fact Indian. Due to an editorial error, we failed to list that Russell Sitrit-Leibovich, the author of “Revisionism hurts” (Commentary, October 7), is a senior fellow with Hasbara. The Daily regrets the errors.
10 Features
Buzz me into my technoburban beehive Condos have side effects, writes Gavin Thompson
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can’t believe you actually live in this place! You have no yard, no property, no driveway. You never speak to your neighbours, even though you have over thirty of them. No one talks in the elevator. No one talks in the lobby. The main floor smells like a vacuum cleaner and you can’t avoid being stared at by the man at the front desk. What happened to your house? Where is your garden? Where is your grass? When my grandparents moved away, over a decade ago, from their quiet house in Toronto to a high-rise by the Islington subway station, I couldn’t understand their decision. Why would they want to move from a big house with a bird feeder in the backyard to a big ugly building with no place to play? How was that acceptable? It had to have been a mean joke. No one really wants to live in these things, right? I spent last summer living in a condo complex in Wakefield, Quebec. It was made of quadplexes that were either beige or pale blue, and the only marks of originality were small gardens and lawn chairs. Otherwise all the houses were the same. There is a short story by American writer Stacey Richter called “The Minimalist”. It is about a painter who sits in an empty room for weeks and imagines only blue. The condos were the architectural equivalent to her musings. If this is minimalistic living, I would think, looking out my window, then I don’t like it. Nowadays, no city has more condos than Toronto. More than 17,000 condos were sold in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) in 2005 (compared to 7,500 in runner-up Miami), and the rate is increasing. Broadly speaking, the growth of condos marks the end of the low-density, low-rise suburban homes that were popular from about the 1950s to the 1980s, and the beginning of a new movement toward the centre of the city – a movement that fulfills postindustrial efforts to revitalize urban spaces and, in effect, compete for global capital. With condos, people can live comfortably and affordably in the midst of the economic crux of the country – the city. Toronto’s ultimate goal, according to the 2002 City of Toronto Official Plan, is to establish a competitive and successful city that retains high living standards. To do this, city planners aim to revitalize urban spaces through property redevelopment, beautification, and branding strategies that largely target the middle class. Urban corridors will be reorganized, the waterfront redeveloped, new spaces and attractions built, employment districts opened, and residence will be intensified. “Smart growth” is a term used in popular urban planning discourse to refer to highdensity residential development. It carries a new kind of logic that opposes the kind that preceded it; whereas old city planners thought it best to spread the population outwards to low-density suburban areas, like spreading a puddle of paint across a page, new city planners prefer to squish people in the middle. I am sitting inside my friend Ari Resnikoff ’s two-bedroom condo. The living room and kitchen are cramped together on one side,
and the bedrooms and bathroom mirror them on the other. The living room wall is covered with posters, bookshelves, and pieces of art from the street, and the middle is crowded with used couches. There is no place to lie flat on the floor. “We live in this place,” Ari says, referring to himself and his roommate. “It’s in a building, a big ugly brick building, and everyone’s pretty crazy. It’s not what you’d consider an ideal place to live.” At the base of the building, there is a dark cement awning and a small grass yard. In the lobby, there is a tree encased in glass. All the ceilings are low. The elevator doesn’t always do what it’s told. “But it’s fairly cheap,” Ari says, “and they provide a lot of different venues like a pool and a sauna.” Moments ago, two cops knocked on Ari’s door on behalf of a noise complaint. They asked Ari if he was having a party. He pointed at the only other person inside (me), and then his tiny speakers, the kind that you buy at the grocery store. The cops left him with a warning. “You got to consider that the walls are paper thin,” one of them said. If it weren’t for the view from the balcony, Ari’s place would be lousy. With it, though, it feels spacious, connected to the city yet detached from it too. “Being high up and seeing the city from above gives you the sense of being high above the city, like some kind of retreat.” “I don’t know what it is exactly,” he continues, “and I even feel a little bit anxious talking about a tall building, because I feel like I should be down in the city. But, the truth is, there is something about views that have a strange, meditative effect on my life.” In grade 12, my history teacher discussed a science fiction novel called Middle Kingdom. It’s set in the future. The population is so large that humans are forced to live in extremely tall, beehive-shaped buildings in order to make enough room for agricultural fields beneath them. My teacher told us to imagine looking out our windows at a world where there are only two things: fields and fields of agriculture, and skyscrapers taller than the ones we know now. It seems as though today’s cities are halfway there. “We have become a nation living in concrete boxes, thrust into the sky,” a reporter for the Toronto Star wrote in 2006. He was referring to condos. In Sex and the Revitalized City, Leslie Kern, an assistant professor of Women’s Studies at Mount Allison University, argues that the logic of smart growth emerges from a set of “various discourses,” including “1) the city’s need to improve its financial circumstances by increasing its property tax base; 2) the desire to maintain employment levels in the central city; 3) the need to increase transit use and make use of other existing physical infrastructure; and 4) the desire to attract knowledge workers for the post-industrial economy.” City planners defend smart growth by citing its environmental implications in addition to its economic ones. In 2005, for example, Toronto passed the Greenbelt Act with the intention of consolidating residences in order to prevent the kind of suburban sprawl that could infringe on or destroy the natural environments surrounding the GTA. Shortly
The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 14, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
thereafter, The Ontario Places to Grow Act was legislated in order to accomplish a similar thing provincially. Behind both acts is the argument that consolidation is a safer alternative to low-density development. Kern argues that, on the political level, smart growth “can be read as part of the neoliberalization of governance, wherein the state enacts various policy prescriptions designed to open up particular markets to increased penetration by capital.” The state can conserve or appear to conserve the natural environment, she says, and free up space for “massive redevelopment” at the same time. Urban scholars argue that smart growth represents a new logic of gentrification, which values capital most, which seeks to find new ways to revitalize urban landscapes, and which tries to do so in a way that appeals to investors, builders, financiers, landowners, developers and the middle to upper classes. I talked to Peter Webb about the aesthetic appeal of living in the heart of downtown. Webb teaches an English class at McGill called “Writing Urban Canada” and in the past he has done research on urban planning. In addition to Montreal, he’s lived in Ottawa, Toronto, and London, England, as well as two small towns. In Montreal, he lived in a high-rise at Guy and Maisonneuve. From above the twentieth floor he could see the Champlain Bridge, Nun’s Island, the flour mill, and the vistas and city below. He liked the view. He liked sitting on the balcony and watching the city. The view was one of the apartment’s best features. But he soon lost it: another building of the same size was built opposite his. Then, without any visual space left, Webb noticed how cluttered his physical space was. “All of a sudden,” Webb said, “you felt more claustrophobic. You tended to spend less time on the balcony. You felt a lot more that you were being kind of enclosed in architectural space.” That building is now Concordia’s John Molson Centre, the home of the university school of business. It is an attractive structure. Its entire body is covered in bright bluish-silver windows, and its roof looks like it’s hovering in the air. Nonetheless, the fact that it was simply there disturbed Webb’s living environment. “The more that cities become compressed, [and] dominated by high-rises,” he said, “the more alienated you become.” For residents, the effect of smart growth is simple. Industrial sites are growing ugly and polluted, suburban areas are growing duller and more monotonous, but one can now live in the heart of a buzzing metropolis for a reasonable price. In Toronto, at least, this has become the trendy way to live. Advertisements for condos show pictures of young, serious, happy, and beautiful people living gentrified, neoliberal lives. Handsome men drink coffee by the big front window. Couples swim in the pool or play tennis by the river. Smartly-dressed women read in minimalistic living rooms and do yoga in the gym. Unlike ads for the suburbs, condo ads cater to a young and single crowd. “This is the new way to live,” they seem to say. Condos appeal to more conservative tastes
too, by advertising themselves as safe and sanitary communities. The hallways are like neighbourhood streets where you will only ever meet your neighbours or their guests. You can watch the playground from your window and avoid the neighbours by taking the stairs. If there is any threat you can call security, and if you like your privacy, then, well, there are a lot of locked doors. Most of all, though, condos have the neoliberal appeal of being communities that do not entail communal responsibilities. Indeed, a condo is a stable and shared space, with a targeted demographic whose values are reflected inside it. It is a place with a specific set of relationships, interests, and traits, and it offers a social infrastructure and concrete services, like transit and water. But condos lack three important communal ingredients. There is very little space to share, besides hallways, certain facilities, and outside properties; residents often have little do to with one another, save belonging to a certain class and age; and a condo’s outdoor property is very limited.
transportation and monotony inherent to low-rise, suburban life. He thought this would make urban existence more pleasurable and free. Residents would have more time to play, think, and act rationally. Transportation would be easy, and the ground would be a beautiful green. In practice, though, his ideas were adopted into the development of urban spaces that were more akin to oppressive Sovietstyle architecture – or the architecture in Scarborough, Ontario. Skyscrapers were built, but green spaces weren’t, and in the end there was a lot of concrete and commercialized space. Echoes of Le Corbusier’s “Radiant City” exist, of course, in what condos do with their land now. Unlike other and older forms of gentrified living – like the suburbs or middle-class urban neighbourhoods – condo property is small and often unused. There are no trees to climb or trails to follow, but tidy hedges and tailored public gardens. And a room with a view, as in Webb’s case, often means a view of another view.
In the 1920s, a French architect named Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, known by the pen name Le Corbusier, presented a plan to the Paris city council: bulldoze parts of Paris and erect gleaming skyscrapers in their place, build “anatural” beaches and gardens on the rooftops, and cover the ground with sports areas, grass and pathways. Le Corbusier called the city he wanted to build the “Radiant City.” His idea was that, by building upward instead of outward, he could create convenience and harmony in urban life, and eradicate the problems of
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Re: “Revisionism hurts” | Commentary | October 7
I’m a strong advocate of hearing all 76 sides of the story and its mother, but if there’s one thing that doesn’t belong in an independent publication, it’s state propaganda. Sana Saeed M.A. II Islamic Studies, DPS Board of Directors
Just cause some ol’ whiteys say it’s so, don’t make it so Re: “Revisionism hurts” | Commentary | October 7 Russell Sitrit-Leibovich is right: the names we use for geographic regions have a tremendous influence on political realities. All that we need to do is take a cursory glance at relations between Greece and the Republic of Macedonia and we will see just how true this is. SitritLeibovich raises important questions in his recent piece on the names of the West Bank by investigating the genealogies of the multitude of names we have for places in Palestine. However, what he forgot to do was to ask from where the name “Judea and Samaria” originated and, historically, who used it. Sitrit-Leibovich provides an extremely telling portrayal of just who knew the region we know now as the West Bank as Judea and Samaria. He lists eminent travellers and intellectuals such as H. B. Tristram, Mark Twain, A. P. Stanley, and Felix Bovet. There is an important commonality between all these thinkers: not a one of them was Arab. While Westerners were using the term “Judea and Samaria,” the majority of that region’s inhabitants were calling it “al-Ard ul-Muqaddasah.” It is as preposterous to assert that the historical exonym for the West Bank is its correct appellation as it would be to tell Germans that they are wrong to call their country “Deutschland” and not “Germany.” The term “Judea and Samaria” may have a long history among foreigners to the region. But when the Palestinian people reject the names given to their lands by their occupiers, they are not the ones engaging in massive revisionism. True, the term “the West Bank” may be much younger than “Judea and Samaria.” However, “the West Bank” has the considerable advantage of being the term that the majority of its inhabitants prefer. Joseph Shapell U1 Sociology
The return of Sana Saeed Re: “Revisionism hurts” | Commentary | October 7 If there’s anything I love more than irony, it’s self-induced deluded irony, completely smothered in bitterly delicious Hasbara icing. Is Russell Sitrit-Leibovich for real? Like, for real real? He’s talking about Palestinian love for revisionism of Jewish history while completely forgetting the Israeli intellectual tradition of revisionism, not only of Israeli and Jewish history, but also of Palestinian history? Or even... Palestinian existence? What about the complete whitewashing of history he’s provided in 650 words? Additionally, what’s up with The McGill Daily now publishing straight up Hasbara propaganda? I’m a strong advocate of hearing all 76 sides of the story and its mother, but if there’s one thing that doesn’t belong in an independent journalistic publication, it’s state propaganda. There’s a lot I can say to SitritLeibovich, but I’m going to leave it to my man Ghassan Kanafani, who wrote in his short story “Returning to Haifa”: “When are you going to stop considering that the weakness and mistakes of others are endorsed over to the account of your own prerogatives? These old catchwords are worn out, these mathematical equations are full of cheating. First you say that our mistakes justify your mistakes, then you say that one wrong doesn’t absolve another. You use the first logic to justify your presence here and the second to avoid the punishment your presence here deserves... I am decreeing that in the final analysis you’re a human being... You must come to understand things as they should be understood. I know that one day you’ll realize these things and that you’ll realize that the greatest crime any human being can commit, whoever he [sic] may be, is to believe for one moment that the weakness and mistakes of others give him [sic] the right to exist at their expense and justify his [sic] own mistakes and crimes.” Sana Saeed M.A. II Islamic Studies DPS Board of Directors
Please be our readers’ advocate, Sean. No one else wants to Re: “Coffee and credenzas” | Culture | October 7 I live across the street from this new store, Gilgamesh. I am bothered by Sophia LePage’s characterization of my neighbourhood as “homogenous,” “derelict,” and “desolate” and my apartment building as “rundown,” when our building is better maintained than many in the McGill Ghetto, and there is no shortage of pedestrian traffic on our block at any hour. I’m not sure on what basis these judgments of the area were made, aside possibly from the fact that it is located near an underpass below train tracks (referred to in the article as a “highway overpass”). More frustrating than these judgments is the article’s ambivalent treatment of the gentrification of Parc-Extension as an inevitable force of which Gilgamesh is a sure indicator. For one thing, the store is not by any measure located in Parc-Extension, as the article itself contradictorily acknowledges in the last paragraph. I realize that it is the opinion of the interviewee, Tobin Bélanger, not the author, that the construction of a new Université de Montréal medical campus on Parc will certainly cause many more highend retail outlets like Gilgamesh to appear further north along the avenue and into Parc-Ex. However, I am frustrated that no critical counterpoint to this assertion was offered, and believe the fact that high-end boutiques like Gilgamesh may continue to displace apparently undesirable services such as “cheap produce stands” may not be best characterized as a “shining example of gentrification.” Sean McBride U3 Geography P.S. The one time I ordered coffee there, the barista put sugar in it despite asking me twice if I wanted sugar and me saying no both times. Just saying.
It wasn’t a mistake
Norman Cornett: The Undead
Re: “Don’t make me wash your [expletive deleted] mouth out with soap!” | Letters | October 7
Re: “Will we ever see Norman Cornett at McGill again?” | Commentary | September 27
I was so pleased to read Raphael Dumas’s letter. There’s nothing wrong with swearing when it’s funny or adds information. The problem is that (student) writers tend to use it inanely. The same issue in which Dumas’s letter appeared presented a perfect example. Let’s look at a few sentences from Adam Banks’ article (“Haunted by Techno,” Commentary): “The end result resembles a fucking zombie apocalypse.” We may say this colloquially, but our writing ought to outperform our lazy speech. Is there any fucking of zombies going on here? No. “Zombie apocalypse” is already an emphatic statement and an obvious exaggeration. No further accentuation is needed. “I miss the days of getting shitty 90s music stuck in my head…” In this sentence “shitty” is meant to emphasize just how bad that 90s music was. Other words, less disagreeable to other readers, accomplish the same: “awful 90s music,” “heinous 90s music,” et cetera, work fine. I particularly like the latter. There is a legitimate reason why older readers (and I’m not one) are more perturbed by such language. When you work full-time and have children, you censor yourself. Thus, for them expletives stand out in the mind’s ear more than they do for us students. If they add no new information, aren’t necessary, and aren’t at least somewhat funny, they sound amateurish. The Daily, right under Dumas’s letter, made a similar mistake. “The Daily does not print hateful shit…” Presumably The Daily does not print hateful anything. Something can be both “hateful” and not “shit.” In relation to a piece of writing, “shit” means poor in quality of composition. “His essay was shit” does not necessarily mean its point was wrong, but it does imply that it was written shittily. I imagine The Daily would reject hateful material even if it was well-written. Let’s keep this shit out of our paper.
We will see Norman Cornett at McGill again when we reclaim our academic freedoms. Slawomir Poplawski’s article raises a couple of valid questions. First, we learn of the “undue haste” in the “decision to fire Cornett” – “he was given only a half day’s notice to clear his office.” As correctly noted by Poplawski, the haste reminds of “wartime executions...carried out for treasonous behaviour.” One might ask, Who was the enemy Cornett had teamed up with? It is true that Cornett’s “growing popularity among students” might have made some administrators nervous. It is also true that the calibre of Cornett’s guests might have triggered undue resentment to the spotlight he shared with no one. But, as valid as they seem, these reasons could not have provoked the tacit claim that made McGill an “exclusion zone” for Cornett. The “exclusion order” – to use the term commonly associated with the internment of Japanese-Canadians or JapaneseAmericans following imperial Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor – is an indication of a much larger obstruction that aims at restraining independent thought in academia. While Cornett’s hasty dismissal is the symptom of this obstruction, it also became the best proof of the current practice of curtailing open-minded dialogue in educational institutions. McGill might take pride in the latest results of QS World University Rankings – it occupies the 19th spot, down from the 18th last year. But curbing academic freedoms, witnessed by Cornett’s hasty dismissal, will have adverse effects in the long run. Institutions of higher learning should be at the forefront of all new ideas, experiments, investigations, discoveries. True creativity flourishes in an atmosphere of total freedom; and open discussion, currently under attack in academia, should provide the foundation for all inspired learning.
Tyler Cohen U3 East Asian Studies & Philosophy
Anait Keuchguerian U3 Theology B. Mus. Theory (Honours) M. A. Music Theory
The Daily wants to publish more letters, all the time. Send your letters to letters@mcgilldaily.com from your McGill email address, and keep them to 300 words or less. The Daily does not print letters that are racist or otherwise shitty and hateful.
Health&Education
The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 14, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
13
The cost of forgetting Researchers race to find a solution to an impending Alzheimer’s epidemic Melanie Kim Health & Education Writer
P
eople often say that forgetting with age is normal, but in fact, it can be much more serious. Not being able to remember where you put your keys in the house is fine. However, not remembering what car keys are used for is a different matter. Such cognitive malfunction is a symptom of Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia. It is a progressive, degenerative, and fatal brain disease that causes memory loss, cognitive disabilities, and eventually even removes the ability to carry out simple tasks. Currently, there is no cure.
According to the Alzheimer’s Society of Canada, approximately 500,000 Canadians have dementia today. It is the most significant cause of disability among Canadians over the age of 65. Health care costs come to about $15 billion a year, including direct health costs, unpaid caregiver opportunity costs, and indirect costs according to the Fédération québécoise des sociétés Alzheimer. Alarmingly, forecasts show that within twenty years, worldwide prevalence will increase two-fold. This increase is due to the “baby boomer” generation born after the end of World War II, who are now reaching the age of sixty to 65 – the age range of Alzheimer’s onset. With the wave of an increasingly older population, the number of patients is estimated to rise almost exponentially in the next fifty years, carrying with it tremendous expenses. In fact, the total economic burden is expected to reach $872 billion in thirty years (in 2008 dollars). While many new medications are being developed for mental illness, no drug has been approved for Alzheimer’s in the past seven years. It is more a question of methodology than a lack of investment in the area. Alzheimer’s is not found in dogs, mice, rats, cats, or even monkeys. Without animal models to study the disease – without subjects to recreate aspects of the disease and test cures – it’s much more difficult to generate new drugs. The only way is to work with humans and try
Write about
to understand the physiology of the brains of those who have died from the disease. However, this is insufficient for identifying the its causes, since Alzheimer’s can only show at its end, not its progression. Currently, many researchers at the McGill Centre for Studies in Aging (MCSA) are working on this neurodegenerative disease. In 1993, Judes Poirier, Professor of Medicine and Psychiatry at McGill and Senior Scientist of the Canadian Institute for Aging Research, identified the protein Apolipoprotein E (APOE), a significant indicator of Alzheimer’s, found in fifty to sixty per cent of all Alzheimer’s patients. Transgenic APOE animals (animals into which the human gene was inserted) show typical features of the disease, such as memory deficit, deoxidation of brain cells and disconnection of the synapses. Poirier and colleagues are attempting to use the protein as a target for treatment. “We know that if we are capable of pushing the onset of the disease by five years, in one generation – fifty years – there’s going to be fifty per cent less people with Alzheimer’s disease,” said Poirier. “Just by pushing it by five years, half of those people will die of old age, not Alzheimer’s disease. If we push the disease by ten years, then it’s 95 per cent of Alzheimer’s disease that will disappear. So we actually don’t have to cure the disease. We simply have to push it in the future by five to ten years. And by ten years, we have almost eliminated the disease,” Poirier said.
At McGill’s own Douglas Hospital Research Centre (DHRC), the first Canadian centre for the prevention of Alzheimer’s disease will be established. “We’re now going to start to work, not when the disease is there, but years before where there are actually symptoms. And we’re trying to understand the biology just before the arrival of the disease.” A study at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm has helped determine the respective effects of genetics and environment in the development of Alzheimer’s. Based on a sample of 11,000 identical twins, findings show that 75 per cent of twins with a brother or sister with the disease will eventually also develop Alzheimer’s. Accordingly,
the genetic component in determining an onset is 75 per cent. Environmental factors compose the remaining 25 per cent. The environment component consists of several factors. First, anti-inflammatory drugs appear to reduce the risk of having Alzheimer’s, particularly in an older population sample that has no memory deficit or other symptoms to begin with. Diet and nutrition is also an
important aspect. Diets rich in omega-3, consisting heavily of fruits and vegetables – the diet also believed to lower heart disease – have now been shown in Alzheimer’s prevention studies to have an impact on the onset of the disease. Exercise, again important for prevention of heart disease, is the third factor. As hypertension, cholesterol levels, and blood sugar levels are controlled, the risk for Alzheimer’s falls, along with the risk of heart disease. What’s good for the heart is also good for the brain. In 2004, the Canadian government conducted a study on Alzheimer’s disease across the country. They discovered that of all Alzheimer’s cases, only 19 per cent were diagnosed and treated with the existing medications. Eleven per cent of Alzheimer’s patients were diagnosed, but not treated. According to Poirier, some doctors
didn’t – and still don’t – believe the drugs were effective enough and did not prescribe any medication. The remaining seventy per cent were not diagnosed, nor treated. As there is no cure, these medications only decrease the speed of memory loss. These drugs aid memory reten-
cate our doctors to recognize it and do something about it. We also have to sensitize the families to be more active, to react, and not assume it’s just old age.” The Quebec government in particular has been active in helping Alzheimer’s patients as well as
Illustrations by Alexander McKenzie with Olivia Messer | The McGill Daily
Alzheimer’s rates are expected to increase exponentially. tion for only one to two years. The earlier the disease is recognized however, the better and longer the medication will work. “There are currently four drugs out in the market that will help memory in Alzheimer’s patients,” explained Poirier, referring to the medications Ebixa, Aricept, Exelon, and Reminyl. “Now we believe we’ve gone from seventy per cent [of cases] not diagnosed nor treated to about forty to 45 per cent. There are still some doctors who don’t want to bother with the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. They don’t believe in the science or they find it too complicated, annoying, or they just don’t care. We still have to edu-
THE RAVAGES OF THE BODY, among other things
caregivers. The province pays for the first medication taken, and also sends nurses to aid patients. Local Alzheimer’s societies also exist throughout Quebec. However, the care infrastructure is not yet perfect. “We’re still short of long-term care facilities,” Poirier pointed out. “There’s a point where the caregivers can do something but there’s also a point where it’s so exhausting for them. And then [the government] has to start treating the caregiver. So when it gets that difficult, we need specialized institutions, like a long-term caregiver home. And there are so few of them that we just can’t match what’s needed.”
healthandeducation @mcgilldaily.com
14Health&Education
The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 14, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
Not such fishy business Peter Shyba makes the case for new genetically-engineered salmon
T
he fervour of the genetically engineered (GE) animals debate was reignited by the American Federal Drug Administration’s (FDA) hearings on September 20. These hearings decided whether or not Massachusetts-based AquaBounty Technologies should be allowed to sell its GE Salmon, which it calls “AquAdvantage Salmon.” Salmon, which normally only grow in the summer, have had a “promoter sequence” attached to their DNA that allows them to grow through the winter months, bringing them to market size in nearly half normal the time. The fish, which would be sterile and bred in tanks on land, would have little risk of escape or interbreeding with wild fish populations. As Elliot Entis, co-founder of AquaBounty, explains simply, “It’s like improving the mileage in your car.” While the FDA has already approved the use of cloned animals in agriculture, this would be the first approval of a GE animal in American history. In an avalanche of rhetoric, wealthy activists and liberal college students alike have vocally declared
that approval of AquaBounties Salmon would be opening Pandora’s box: plans for a less-polluting pig (dubbed “enviropigs” by University of Guelph researchers) are already in the works. The idea of this salmon being the only product firmly keeping Pandora’s box shut is interesting, as fish have indeed become a hot topic amongst food commentators in the United States and Canada. It would seem recent, apocalyptical reports of the world running out of fish by 2050 have been the impetus for their commentary. At last fall’s General Assembly, Greenpeace McGill brought forth a resolution to ban “red-list” fish from being sold in the Shatner building. The “red list,” organized by SeaChoice, is a detailed list of fish separated into three categories: “Best-choice, some concerns, and avoid.” Interestingly, SeaChoice, a Canadian sustainable seafood organization, lists wild Pacific salmon under the “some concerns” category, specifically labelling Fraser River sockeye salmon under “worse alternatives.” In reality, the Fraser River had near record levels of Sockeye
salmon in 2010, even prompting British Columbia fish population researcher Barry Rosenberg to say, “Eat some, catch some, or buy some – it’s a great opportunity.” It doesn’t sound like there is much need for “some concern” there. The international fishing and aquaculture industry is now conservatively estimated to be worth almost $250 billion worldwide, and in many areas is the only viable industry. Knowing this sheds some light onto how contentious of an issue genetically-modified salmon has become. Ruth Salmon, of the Canadian Aquaculture Industry Alliance said in a recent interview with the Vancouver Sun, “Our industry does not support producing GMO salmon for human consumption...we are not interested in it at all.” As one of the most profitable industries in B.C. (the world’s fourth largest producer of salmon), a product which can effectively grow in half the time to a higher gross weight and likely at lower cost is understandably threatening. Along with the economic threat, B.C. interest groups like the First Nations Fishery Council
have good reason to be against GE salmon. The first nations in that area have survived off of wild salmon for thousands of years. The difference between then and now, however, is an in increase in population of about 3,500 per cent and a globalized economy demanding their product. Whether activists realize it or not, GE food has become an integral part of our diet and an undeniable method of both increasing crop size and decreasing crop disease. Up to 75 per cent of the processed foods we eat in North America already contain genetically modified ingredients, and genetically engineered products are now as being used by the Gates Foundation as a method to increase crop yield for foodscarce African nations. We have two facts to face. The first is to accept that the world’s food supply is going to have to become more flexible to accommodate a rising population and embrace genetically engineered foods. The second and more difficult is to come to terms with is the fact that the age of plenty is over and reduce global food intake, especially in developing
nations like China who are eating more meat as they become wealthier. With that being said, there is a glaring problem with the approval process. Genetically-engineered foods are not obligated to be labeled as such, effectively leaving consumers in the dark. I would argue that if the product was extraordinary enough to need approval by the FDA, there would certainly be need for an accurate GE label. Should the consumers then decide that it’s not for them, that is their prerogative. Consumer hesitation to purchase an item labeled as “genetically engineered” might just be the victory which those against the AquAdvantage salmon have been fishing for. So let’s forget about a Pandora’s box of genetic modification; it has been open for a long time and will remain that way. If used properly and safely, GE foods could bring some balance to food instability. If you don’t want to eat it, then don’t; if you are merely against technology for technology’s sake, well then write me an opinion letter from Walden.
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Culture
The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 14, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
15
My big fat Greek exodus One family’s experience of cultural transformations in Parc Ex Christina Colizza Culture Writer
N
o one was all too surprised when my cousin AnnMarie married a Greek. Although predominantly Irish, my mother’s side of the family all grew up in the Parc Extension neighbourhood of Montreal. In their opinion, Parc Ex was a fantastic place to grow up in the late 70s and early 80s. As my cousin Tommy notes, “Every alley had a hockey team!” Yet few remnants survive of the largely Greek, family friendly neighbourhood. Greeks used to own most of the commercial property on JeanTalon between Acadie and Parc, though only a few Greek businesses exist there today. Most of my family members have moved out of the area, and only cousins’ weddings and their children’s baptisms have brought us back to Koimisis Tis Theotokou Orthodox church on St. Roch. Parc Ex lives on in laughter, or, “Hey, bro, remember that,” times, but never in PX itself (local lingo). My experience of the Greek lifestyle in Parc Ex, in a few words, is free shots of Sambuca, tzatziki, and that confusing circular dance to what I am certain is the same song playing over and over. Picture My Big Fat Greek Wedding, but with an urban attitude… and cigarettes. Needless to say, growing up in the same neighbourhood, my family naturally made Greek friends whom they have kept today. Yet why the exodus? Where did they go? I called my newly-Greek cousin, Ann-Marie Georgousis (née Holmes) to find out. “Well the Greeks weren’t smart. They wanted to be better than where they were,” she opined. “They couldn’t afford TMR [Town of Mount Royal], they couldn’t afford Côte Saint-Luc, and the housing in Laval and Chomedey was cheap.” Laval promised a home rather than an apartment, which the Greeks prided themselves on owning. By 1985, most had bought single-dwelling bungalows. As with many European ethnic groups in Montreal, when one went, so did all the others. Housing obviously played a significant role, considering Parc Ex has always been a lower-income area for new immigrants. The Greeks were not by any means the first immigrant population to fully inhabit Parc Ex. During the first half of the 20th century, Parc Ex was made up of Italians, Greeks, Jews, Poles, and Germans, immigrating to Montreal with little
money. By the 1950s, the neighbourhood was a thriving, predominantly Jewish community, but eventually this demographic also dwindled. One can still find a Jewish mortuary and a kosher bakery, but little else. The Greeks moved in to take their place, but, like the Jews, have also moved on. Interestingly enough, the significantly Jewish Outremont neighbourhood seems to be on the same track. Yet why did the Jews leave Parc Ex? Tension between the Jewish and Greek communities had something to do with it. My cousin’s husband John told me that many Greeks felt the Jews resented their presence in the neighbourhood. It seems as if this neighborhood is founded on periods of racial tension and consequential geographical shifts rather than ethnic harmony, despite being so emblematic of the “Canadian mosaic.” As for the Greeks, “there is no polite way to say it. The Haitians and Pakistanis moved in, and Greek racism took to Laval,” says Ann-Marie. Previously, Parc Ex was one homogenous neighbourhood where “everybody knew everybody. Each section had its own bakery, its own dep…the guy at the store knew who you were and knew what you wanted,” she continued. John said that the majority of Greek women stayed at home to care for the kids and thus the neighborhood was kept safe. Simply stated, “you didn’t have to worry.” Yet despite having faced anti-Greek sentiment in the 1950s, the Greeks themselves were suspicious of incoming migrants. As soon as the properties were paid off, housing was sold to poorer immigrants and by the 90s the Greek community had started to leave. The current Greek population is comprised of the older generations who continue to enjoy the cheaper housing and central location of Parc Ex. “With such accessibility to the metro, major highways, and the Jean-Talon market, the location is golden,” John remarked. A few markets do remain, and for the older populations the quick walk to the store or to church holds great significance. Also typical to many European immigrant families, children who don’t marry don’t necessarily move from their parents’ homes. Greece lives on in the bakeries and churches that still line St. Roch and Ogilvy, but uneasily so for those who remain. As I walked around and spoke with some elderly people (assuring them first that of course I was a Parc Ex-er myself ), I honestly expected some angered racial slurs but was met more with a nostalgia for what
Timothy Lem-Smith | The McGill Daily
Most businesses in Parc Ex were Greek-owned in the 70s, while now only a handful remain. once was. They feel abandoned by those who left and pretty pissed off. Language barriers made for some difficulty but the Greek “Moutza” hand gestures said it all – gesticulating with both hands with palms down clearly conveying insult. Yet this exodus may have been inevitable. A huge influx of Greeks appeared in Montreal post-World War II, but immigraton levels have dwindled since then. Essentially, no
more Greeks are coming – instead, Middle Eastern and African populations are growing rapidly. This is why my cousin John believes that from now on, “the neighbourhood won’t change.” With so many cultures represented within only a few blocks, the area will never again be so homogeneously populated by one nationality. Migration northward is now a growing trend among students and artists seeking cheaper rents and
alternative architecture. Parc Ex now reflects not only a multiplicity of nationalities, but also of social and economic strata. Who can tell what the future will bring for neighborhoods like Parc Ex, with Montreal’s very transient population and simultaneous influx of immigrants? The new demographic is in danger of pushing rent prices up, especially in such a desirable location. From what I can tell, Souvlaki is soon to be hip.
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16 Culture BEGGAR’S BANQUET
Divine de Ville Family burger chain sells gourmet for less Ian Sandler The McGill Daily
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The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 14, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
I
ts entrance needs no warning. Silence surrounds me as if the most beautiful girl I know had just walked into the room. Thoughts of running flood my mind. Can I make it to the door in the next ten seconds? Will I live to see my parents just one more time? No, no, it’s already too late. I’m caught in its mouth-watering snare. This is a tremendous burger. Burger de Ville, on St. Laurent in Mile End, is not for the faint of heart. Boasting a restaurant-like feel, with soothing jazz and buffed tiled floors, the establishment gives the illusion of grandeur without breaking your wallet. Although the restaurant is impressive in its classy decor, I came for a burger, and a burger I did receive. Being the daring explorer that I am, I chose the most exotic thing on the menu, which in this case was simply the most French. Blue cheese and caramelized onions, lettuce, and tomato, gently packed inside a poppy seed roll, the “Noir et Bleu” stood six inches tall in all its splendor. For $6.50, my fears of a paralyzing meal were confirmed, but I certainly wasn’t scared anymore. I sat in a daze, cemented to my seat in a food-inspired stupour. Plate cleaned of all edible morsels, my eyes were free to roam the surroundings. The menu, neatly inscribed in French on the nearest wall, caught my lazy gaze. Offering sirloin steaks, various poutines, and multitudes of
burgers, Burger de Ville’s shallow disguise wears thin. In an era of fast food domination, the flimsy McDonalds burger impresses no one. Content to satiate our hunger for less than two dollars, we sacrifice taste for the protection of our wallets. Reda Wahba, the owner of Burger de Ville, thinks there’s no need for this surrender of culinary values. “From my experience, burgers aren’t treated properly,” said Wahba, “and at ten dollars per person, you’re in business no matter what.” As the restaurant’s motto, “Toujours frais, jamais congelé!” can attest, there is no higher calling then freshness. Everything is made from scratch, even the jalapeño peppers. One may believe it impossible to achieve such savory food for such a minimal price, but the answer lies slightly west of the McGill bubble many of us call home. Barely three weeks old, the Burger de Ville on St. Laurent is drastically different from its predecessor in Montreal-West. While the old one reveled in its community vibe, with narrow walkways and limited seating, the new Burger de Ville spares no expense. Situated in hip Mile End, it hopes to attract a new breed of customer, while maintaining its original cuisine. Wahba said that, “My vision was high-end and my father’s was fast food; we each had to put a little water in our wine.” With a fast-food feel to the entrée and an elegant atmosphere, the consumer gets the best of both worlds. In true small-business fashion, Burger de Ville prides itself on its
Olivia Messer | The McGill Daily
Classifieds
family mentality. As a partnership between Wahba and his father, Mohammad, the restaurant has taken on the personalities of both. After numerous requests to develop it into a franchise, the younger Wahba’s response remains the same: “This is a family business, and we don’t want to change that.” Hoping to expand slowly, Burger de Ville can say no to drive-throughs without hesitation, confident in its delicious product. With a hint of grandiosity and an excess of flavor, Burger de Ville reinvents itself with every dish it creates.
Quite the squibbler Self-published author serves up an enjoyable, if eccentric read Susannah Feinstein The McGill Daily
“I
n the year 3026 Hunter Swanson found a time capsule dated 2026. One of the articles that he found inside was a poem written on digital vellum. The poem contained ancient spiritual knowledge but the manuscript was distorted and impossible to read. Being a Dream Traveler, he decided to contact the author of this book (also a Dream Traveler) by sending a photocopy of the manuscript using his time fax machine. The rest won’t be history for another thousand years!” This whimsical excerpt is from Dreams, Squibbles and Poetry, Jorge K’s self-published compilation of over twenty years’ worth of poetry, doodles, life philosophies, and detailed accounts of images from the author’s subconscious. Just who is this mysterious artist? Perhaps his website describes his unusual character best – a man “…with his fingers in many pies.” During the day, K works as an accountant, but in his free time, he dabbles in various forms of art: acting, poetry, creative writing, sketching, and playing music in his band The Jack of Hearts. Although some might fail to see the romance in
number-crunching, K emphasized in our conversation the inherent “spirituality” of math. “A lot of people think two plus two is four, but it really all depends. What would two pairs really be?” At this point, confused by the sporadic nature of K’s comments, I feebly attempted to answer his question. “By two pairs do you mean pairs or pears like the fruit?” “Exactly!” K enthusiastically replied. He then elaborated on the mystical powers of math: “Have you ever divided one by seven?…No? Then let me explain something to you…If you divide one by seven, you get a decimal – 0.14285. You can use that number to plan anything in the world.” He took out a pen and a piece of paper and physically drew out the point he was trying to make. It looked like a hybrid of a clock and one of those “tribal” tattoos. Moving on to discuss his book, K claimed that his work, dedicated to “lucid dreamers with a sense of humour,” was primarily written for those “seeking to raise their consciousness.” “I was really going for that ‘wow’ factor,” he explained, in reference to the reaction he hopes to receive from readers. “My wife said it’s a waste of time, but I got a call from
an old classmate who read it and said it was amazing.” The book is divided into three sections: the first, a recorded recollection of his dreams between 1969 and 1986; the second, a variety of poems whose major topics include both time travel and observations of daily life; and the third, a collection of over 40 “squibbles.” A squibble, according to K, “looks like a doodle and has a small caption underneath it. The doodle takes on character when one or two dots are strategically placed to make it look like it has eyes.” K pointed to an example of a squibble in his book – a thick black squiggly line with four eyes. Underneath the picture, it reads, “Two heads are better than one, but one looks better.” Whether you view Dreams, Squibbles and Poetry as a work of art or just amateur poetry, it’s almost impossible to deny its entertainment value. Nearly every time I opened the book in public, it became a topic of conversation. People were intrigued by the book’s bizarre title, and instantly started investigating its uniquely crafted pages. At the very least, the book is a fascinating, if eccentric, experiment worth checking out for its novelty alone.
Culture
The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 14, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
17
Tales of trauma How films and the media portray October 1970 Jane Gatensby Culture Writer
T
his month marks the 40th anniversary of the October Crisis, the infamous two weeks in 1970 when members of the Front du liberation du Québec (FLQ), a radical separatist group responsible for a string of bombings in Montreal, kidnapped two prominent politicians: British Trade Commissioner James Cross and Quebec Labour Minister Pierre Laporte. Laporte was found strangled to death one week later, while Cross was released after sixty days of negotiations. The October Crisis was a terrifying and pivotal moment in Canada’s history. Laporte’s murder marked a gruesome end to a twoweek period of fear, suspicion, and federalist reactionism, including Pierre Trudeau’s enactment of the War Measures Act – a decree that gave the government sweeping control over its citizens. In addition to deploying Canadian troops throughout Quebec, the act facilitated the arrest of nearly 500 Québécois nationalists, most of whom had only loose ties to the FLQ and were held without charges. The event marked a loss of innocence for the Québécois nationalist movement and collectively traumatized all those Montrealers who witnessed it take place. But the way the crisis is remembered forty years later varies greatly between anglophone and francophone commentators. As part of a three-part series earlier in the month on various aspects of October 1970, Le Devoir called the crisis “our 9/11.” Like the
September 11 attacks, Le Devoir noted that the political interpretations of the October crisis often run counter to the official version of events. Whether or not the FLQ should be classified as a terrorist organization, for instance, is heavily debated. Louis Fournier, whose article was featured in the series, was not afraid to brand the FLQ as a terrorist organization. Fournier was himself a victim of the October 7 arrests, detained for having read some of the FLQ’s manifesto during a news broadcast on CKAC radio. He explained that the FLQ’s actions were a social and political phenomenon that can be explained by the severe oppression of francophone Quebeckers at the time, but not excused. He adds that although the conditions that inspired the FLQ’s desperate attacks have improved in the last forty years, there is still a lot more to do to ensure that they will not happen again: in his view, the only way to prevent future terrorist acts is to give Quebec its independence. While Le Devoir put this anniversary series on its front page for three days in a row this October, the Gazette has thus far resigned the issue to a handful of editorials. Although these commentaries sometimes acknowledge the complexity of the crisis, they are universally federalist, and heavily rework certain facts to support their arguments. One editorial focuses on “busting myths” about the crisis, and states that, “all people unjustly incarcerated during the October Crisis (103 individuals of the total 497 apprehended) …received compensation up to $30,000 in 1971
Yasmine Boluk for The McGill Daily
The events of October 1970 are still felt and remembered today. dollars from the Quebec government.” But the article fails to mention that only 62 of the remaining 394 were ever charged with any crime. Another piece by William Johnson, the former president of the Quebec Alliance anglophone lobby group, states that FLQ-style terrorism is inevitable unless Quebec “renounces the decolonization model and embraces the constitutional order.” This state-
ment is a prime example of the differences between the two communities. For anglophones, federalism is the only answer to separatist extremism. For francophones, separation is. This month, the Bibliothèque nationale has compiled a special bibliography of works and documents related to the anniversary. It includes a list of films about the crisis, which provide insight into
how the events of October 1970 have influenced the arts. As in this week’s papers, francophone recollections in film differ greatly from anglophone ones. In a world where truth is increasingly subjective, all of these accounts, as well as countless other literary and creative works that have been inspired by the crisis, provide important insight into what this event meant for Quebec and Canada.
Highlights of the collection Les 20 ans de la crise Octobre (1994) Action: The October Crisis Les Ordres (1974) d’octobre (1990) of 1970 (1973) The next director to tackle Directed by the revered Michel Brault, Les Action was the first documentary made about the crisis, and its intensely serious, even panicked, narration conveys the fear that still hung over Montreal in its wake. Although released by the National Film Board of Canada, it tries to stay ideologically neutral by giving an exclusively factual narrative. The film lists every bombing and every death that occurred leading up to the kidnappings, as well as every negotiation and every political development that took place afterwards. This extensively detailed account makes Montreal look like a city under siege, which is how it seemed for many at the time.
Ordres is a well-known masterpiece in Québécois cinema, and the winner of the 1974 Cannes director’s prize. The script is based on the testimony of fifty people who were arrested in Montreal under the War Measures Act, and tells the story of their treatment and detention. Brault uses an affective combination of documentary and new wave style to tell a intensely personal yet political story. Shot primarily in an empty prison in Sorel, this film presents the view that the crisis posed a threat mainly to politicians, who acted in fear and haste, and whose “orders” left hundreds of people caught in the crossfire. The film is a striking reminder of the limits of personal liberty, even in Canada’s democratic society.
On the twentieth anniversary of the October Crisis, Radio-Canada aired a TV documentary that examined the role of the media in the crisis. Among other things, the documentary discussed how the media was manipulated by the FLQ, how it participated in the social drama surrounding the event, and how it influenced public opinion at the time. Enough time having passed to allow for the film’s participants to critically deconstruct the historical event, this documentary zeroes in on press reactions to conclude that the Canadian press had never encountered anything like October 1970 before it occurred, and that press coverage of such events was forever changed thereafter.
the story of October 1970 was Pierre Falardeau, a hard-line separatist and activist-director. Octobre is a gritty thriller that tells the story of the October Crisis from the kidnappers’ perspective. It’s nowhere near as technically sophisticated as Les Ordres, but it is important because of the controversy that accompanied its release. Falardeau was accused of humanizing criminals and rewriting history by critics. But while Octobre certainly does provide a very different view of the crisis – it captures the events that played out in the house where Pierre Laporte was kept and killed – it is nonetheless an important interpretation of the conflict.
These four films are a sample of the Bibliothèque nationale’s selection of resources on the October Crisis. Browse the full collection of articles, books, and microfilm – as well as film screenings – unti November 27 at the library’s reading room, 475, Maisonneuve E. Open Tuesday-Thursday 10 a.m. – 10 p.m., SaturdaySunday 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.
Compendium!
The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 14, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
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Lies, half-truths, and cinderdicks
Chilean miners liberated!!!!
PLUS 200
Anti-QPIRG motion thrown out!
PLUS 100
Canada loses bid for Security Council position Conservatives cry like babies and blame opposition Bikuta Tangaman | The McGill Daily
OMG someone’s biking on campus with impunity!
Student workers at BMH see their shifts cut
EXCLUSIVE DAILY éXPOSé:
Three-day boycott extravaganza next week!
BIKING ON CAMPUS CONTINUES WHEN SECURITY ISN’T LOOKING Télésphore Sansouci The McGill Daily
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n exhaustive investigation led this reporter has revealed that the campus bike ban – which formally interdicts two-wheeled travel on these hallowed educational grounds, save when the mechanical steers are piloted by Meather Bunroe-Hlum’s private army of conscripted security agents – is being routinely flouted, not simply under cover of darkness after sunfall, but indeed whenever MBH’s cinderdicks are not to be seen!!!
That’s right, ladies and gentlemen and others: the campus bike ban is totally ineffective if there are not security guards watching! The Daily interviewed a student who was caught in flagrante delic-
“When the fuzz ain’t there, I ain’t following their rules.” MBH is reportedly furious. Her lap dog, Mortono Fendelson, has been seen stalking campus and purring with rage. However, it
“I don’t fuckin’ care. I do what I want.” Jarmy Moses U3 Southern Italian Textile Manufacturing History to swishing through campus like a tiger through a hoop. “I don’t fuckin’ care. I do what I want,” said U3 Southern Italian Textile Manufacturing History student Jarmy Moses.
should be noted that if you pet him behind the ears and steal a studentrun café without any substantive justification whatsoever for him, he’ll be placated. And some text for balance.
PLUS 10 MINUS 10 MINUS 10 PLUS 50 EVEN
Struggling to think of things to put in Métromètre Midterms and papers blow for everyone
MINUS 10
TOTAL
PLUS 339
LAST WEEK’S TOTAL
PLUS 321
Métromètre is a weekly quality-of-life index based on totally arbitrary numbers. Tell us what’s affecting your quality of life: compendium@ mcgilldaily.com.
What do you think of Compendium! this year? MINUS 1 Let us know: compendium@mcgilldaily.com
Sugar dick daze Shit or get off the pot
Are you asleep on the toilet or something? Can you not hear me tapping my foot in peptic impatience? I’m not hearing constipated grunts, or the sound of unravelling toilet paper, nor am I hearing the plop. I’m pretty sure the plop has already occurred and you’re just sitting there like a moron with your anus covered in feces. Are you expecting me to do it in the sink or something? Do you like sitting on the toilet? You suck.
Fuck This! is an occasional therapeutic rant column for people. Nothing hateful. Also we have Fuck Yeahs, which are the opposite, like raves or something. Send them to fuckthis@mcgilldaily.com.
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