Vol102Iss15

Volume 102, Issue 15

October 25, 2012 mcgilldaily.com

McGill THE

DAILY Too much information since 1911

Published by The Daily Publications Society, a student society of McGill University.

S S tud ec en re ts ts ’ p7

NEWS

MMPA

The McGill Daily Thursday, October 25, 2012 mcgilldaily.com

2

Ex-engineer testifies at corruption probe

Master of Management & Professional Accounting

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02 NEWS

10 HEALTH&ED

Far-right Greek group “Golden Dawn� opens shop

What is occupational therapy?

Lola Rosa Xpress, Bamboo Bowl, and Bocadillo express grievances

AIDS in Iran

Campus Eye: Why do you need feminism?

05 COMMENTARY Colonizing Quebec Racist Halloween costumes

Laurent Bastien Corbeil The McGill Daily

My trip to a sex club

12 CULTURE Adventures in Montreal’s sewer system Busking: more fun than you’d think

14 COMPENDIUM! Sports editor found dead

Bathrooms and oppression

Photo Hera Chan | The McGill Daily

Quebec’s construction industry colluded to obtain public contracts.

Prose-poetry in Fuck This!

07 FEATURES

15 EDITORIAL

McGill students’ secrets

Journalism on Plan Nord

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he Charbonneau Commission continued to send shockwaves through the Quebec political landscape as former city of Montreal engineer Gilles Surprenant testified yesterday that he had received around $706,000 in bribes from the Quebec construction industry.

According to Surprenant’s testimony, the highest-paying entrepreneurs were Construction Garnier owner Joe Borsellino and Lino Zambito, the former vice president of Infrabec. Zambito allegedly gave Surprenant around $66,000 in bribes.

Zambito said that the engineer earned the nicknamed “Mister TPS� for Tax pour Suprenant – a reference to the federal sales tax of the same name.

The Daily visited the Commission last Thursday for Surprenant’s first testimony. Surprenant said he was paid to overestimate the price

of contracts between the city of Montreal and the construction sector. Most of the money he earned – approximately $250,000 – was subsequently lost at the casino. “I started to go to a casino to spend the money,� he told the Commission in French. “It was my way of giving money back to the state.� “I was very happy to give back the money,� he said. “It felt like a liberation.�

Suprenant claimed that his salary as an engineer was “sufficient,� and that he had no intention of spending the money on anything “extravagant.� “My daughter wanted to be an esthetician, and I remember paying $3,000 for a course,� he said.

Some of the money, however, was used to renovate his house.

Surprenant began receiving bribes in 1991, but his ties to the industry ceased in 2009. On Wednesday, he told the Commission that he was not a “bad guy� and that he was simply “corrupt.� “Everyone noticed a hike in

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the price [of contracts],� he said in French. “It was well-known.

I would even say that the clerk at our office [was aware]. It was not my job as a mere government employee to call the police.�

So far, the Commission has incriminated dozens of construction firms in cases of corruption and collusion. Last month, the Commission revealed that around ten companies share contracts for the city of Montreal, and that the Mayor’s party, Union MontrÊal, earned money by awarding municipal contracts to colluding entrepreneurs.

Laval Mayor Gilles Vaillancourt announced on Wednesday that he was temporarily stepping down from office due to health reasons.

Yesterday morning, officers from l’UnitÊ permanente anticorruption, Quebec’s anti-corruption squad, seized two security lockers belonging to Vaillancourt. The police obtained a search warrant for his home earlier this month.

Surprenant is set to continue his testimony today.

Section meetings Thursdays, 5 p.m.

Daily office: SSMU B:24

news

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The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 25, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

Greek far-right party opens chapter in Montreal Professors discuss link between xenophobia and the economy

Illustration Amina Batyreva | The McGill Daily Karel Asha News Writer

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he far-right Greek nationalist party Golden Dawn, which won 18 seats in the June 2012 Greek legislative elections, has opened a chapter in Montreal.

Golden Dawn Montreal has had a Facebook page since July.

Facho-watch, a Quebec anti-fascism group, told The Daily that Golden Dawn members organized a conference in August with Quebec neofascist groups Faction Nationaliste and La Bannière Noire. Golden Dawn Montreal held a fundraising event on September 15. The event was advertised in the Greek Canadian Tribune (BHMA). Facho-watch participated in a protest against Golden Dawn on the same day.

Golden Dawn stated on September 18 on its official website that they are “already expecting the first shipment of aid from the core of Montreal in the coming days, which gives us hope that Greek nationalists never forget Greece.”

“They are only going to give those benefits, or those charitable boxes, to people who are legally resident in Greece,” Steven Slimovitch, spokesperson for B’nai Brith Canada, a Jewish advocacy group which fights antisemitism, told The Daily.

“We are utterly disgusted,”

Slimovitch said about the creation of a Golden Dawn chapter in Montreal.

“You have a party which is xenophobic to the nth degree, which has built itself on a racist platform and there is no place for a group like that in Canada. They believe that our lax laws against hate speech allow them to open up an office and spew the kind of hate that they’ve been spewing in Greece.”

On May 14, Golden Dawn leader Nikolaos Michaloliakos told Mega TV in Greece that the Holocaust was a “fabricated exaggeration.”

Spiros Macrozonaris, deputy leader of the Golden Dawn Montreal chapter, told the National Post that Golden Dawn has recruited 152 members in the city.

“This is totally false,” Fachowatch told The Daily in an email.

“When they organized the food collect, they were only a dozen of members. On the group pictures we found, there aren’t more than 12 individuals.”

“We will continue to monitor them very closely with [the Canadian Security Intelligence Service] and the federal government and the Sûreté du Québec to […] make sure that a group like this does not establish a foothold in Canada,” said Slimovitch.

“The real lead in all of those should be taken by the Greek community,” he continued.

An online petition created by ‘Kat M,’ a Greek Canadian living in

Greece according to the National Post, asked Stephen Harper to shut down Golden Dawn in Montreal.

The petition had collected 2,450 signatures at press time.

The Hellenic Community of Greater Montreal and the McGill Hellenic Students’ Association could not be reached for comment.

Alexander Kazamias, senior lecturer in Politics at Coventry University, told The Daily that “all Greek parties set up local branches outside Greece, especially in cities with large Greek diaspora communities,” despite the fact that Greek citizens cannot vote from abroad.

McGill Economics professor Ken Matziorinis told The Daily that “since [Golden Dawn is] a legitimate party in Greece, they have the right to voice their opinions, even if their views are dangerous.”

“They have a right to open a chapter anywhere else in the world, unless they involve themselves in terrorist acts.”

Both Kazamias and Matziorinis say that it is important to understand the political and economic context in which this breed of nationalism has developed.

“Golden Dawn is a neofascist party. To some extent it represents a continuation of the military dictatorship that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974,” Kazamias said.

Michaloliakos “was handpicked in 1984 by the leader of

that dictatorship […] to lead the youth organization of a […] quasifascist party which enjoyed some support in the 1970s and 1980s,” Kazamias continued.

“The austerity drive that the northern countries – especially Germany – are advocating is certainly making the situation worse,” Matziorinis said. “[Greece’s Gross Domestic Product] has been contracting for more than five years,” Matziorinis said. “The Greek public is being asked to make sacrifices through tax increases and income salary cuts while unemployment is at 25 per cent.”

This has created “a perception that the social contract has been broken” in Europe, according to Matziorinis.

The situation in Greece is an “exact repeat of what happened with the collapse of the middle class in Germany [in the 1930s], which gave rise to extremist parties,” he continued. “The economic circumstances that Greece is facing are similar to those of a country that has lost a war, that has debts, and that at the same time is forced to make reparations.”

Kazamias, on the other hand, pointed to contrasts between Greece and 1930s Germany.

“Fascism might be a rising force across much of Europe today, but it is still far from becoming a dominant ideology,” he said.

“For a fascist party to rise to

power, it is necessary for the forces of the left to experience successive defeats. In Greece, however, so far the Greek left has seen its position enhanced and its popularity is rising sharply.”

Golden Dawn has been accused of leading attacks against immigrants in Greece. “Golden Dawn is a racist party that hates all non-white immigrants, however, there is a clear class dimension to the racism of Golden Dawn,” said Kazamias.

“Their thugs prefer to attack […] poor manual workers.”

Facho-watch described collusion between Greek police and Golden Dawn members, in which some police units are allowing Golden Dawn to act as law enforcers.

Kazamias believes that “the connections of the Greek police and certain army units with neofascist elements which go back years,” and have contributed to the success of Golden Dawn.

“We do have a solution [for these immigrants] though.

Greece, everybody knows, we have a very strong shipping industry. We’re going to bring them all to Canada. Canada needs immigrants here,” Macrozonaris told the Montreal Gazette.

“When there is too much illegal occupation all of a sudden, in a climate of economic uncertainty and depression, that accentuates these [anti-immigrant] feelings,” he said.

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NEWS

The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 25, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

SSMU second-floor tenants express grievances Concerns include lack of advertising space and state of equipment Esther Lee The McGill Daily

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ast Thursday, SSMU VP Finance & Operations Jean Paul Briggs met with the Shatner Building’s second-floor tenants Lola Rosa Xpress, Bocadillo, and Bamboo Bowl to discuss their concerns.

In his report to Council, Briggs wrote, “The tenants are upset and losing money. Some of them expressed concerns that they wouldn’t return after the duration of the contract at this rate. They expressed disappointment with the state of the equipment, the constant breakdowns, and slow response from McGill to fix anything.”

Earlier this year, the three restaurants replaced Cultures, Tiki Ming, and Franx Supreme for the 2012 academic year under a one-year contract. The renewal of the contracts are still to be determined.

Bocadillo owner Victor Gonzalez pointed to the restaurants’ limited promotional opportunities around the Shatner Building as a central concern.

“Our concerns are we feel that we are not free to promote ourselves. [The tenants] feel that for the type of restaurants that we are… our costs of operations are very high. We need to spread out our time of operation more but since we can’t do that, we need to focus on how we can make ourselves known,” said Gonzalez.

“How is it that even after two months of being here, there are still some [advertisements] for Tiki Ming or Cultures? There are no signs that say that there is a restaurant space on the second floor of SSMU,” he added.

The restaurants’ hours of operation are limited to 11:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 11:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Fridays.

They are not open on weekends.

In an interview with The Daily, SSMU President Josh Redel responded, “[Miscommunication on promotional space] is probably an oversight on SSMU’s behalf… being so used to the University’s environment. For example, we have 21 services and…it’s part of the services to advertise for themselves. So I guess we assumed that this would be considered in their method of operation.”

Redel also explained that each tenant is given three windows, with two-thirds of the surface area available for advertisements.

“We actually talked about this in our executive meetings about lending support for them… in terms of advertising – putting stuff on the listserv, social media, talking to our Communications and Publications Manager so that she can meet with them and talk about doing posters in the building. Outside of the building, we really don’t have much control,” said Redel.

According to Gonzalez, the tenants also feel that their concerns

Tenants believe their cost of operations to be too high. about the equipment have not been adequately addressed.

SSMU regulations prohibit tenants from outsourcing equipment problems to external services for repair.

Redel explained that because a lot of tenants did not know beforehand what the environment was going to be like, there were some surprises regarding the capital investments and the space.

“For them, this is shocking because normally they can fix [the

problems] themselves, or they can call in a plumber who will be there the same day […],” said Redel.

“Another problem was…we said [that they would not] not have to put any capital investments into the place. And theoretically, the space would be good to go when [they] started. It turned out not necessarily to be like this for the [tenants] – some of the equipment didn’t end up working…and there were some hidden costs that they

Photo Hera Chan | The McGill Daily

were not expecting.”

Briggs told The Daily that a listserv would be sent to students to provide feedback to the tenants.

“It’s going to be coming either this week or next week,” said Briggs. “It’s just going to be a survey form for each of the tenants to provide feedback. There’s also going to be one for Gerts and Gertrude’s as well…. So the tenants will know how to better target students’ demands.”

CAMPUS EYE Students share why they need feminism Hera Chan

For Who Needs Feminism?

Week at McGill, students around campus posed for photos completing the phrase “I need feminism because...”.

According to the Facebook group, “all of us are directly impacted by society’s inequalities, and need feminism to help dismantle them.” The photos have been uploaded to wnfmcgill.tumblr.com, and there will be an open discussion in the Shatner Building on October 30 from 2 to 4 p.m.

—Annie Shiel

Commentary

The McGill Daily Thursday, October 25, 2012 mcgilldaily.com

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Still we colonize Building resistance to Plan Nord Jacqueline Brandon The McGill Daily

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All of our rivers are arteries, we live off of these things.”

Pakesso Mukash alludes to the rivers of Northern Quebec seamlessly. He is a Cree musician, from the last remaining Northern settlement that still has a river flowing through it. At Great Whale River, Mukash says, legends are embedded in their land, like the legend of a doorway within a waterfall that leads to another dimension.

But there is an urgently violent element to this story: a history of unrelenting colonialism. And spiritual connections to the land do not mean that indigenous communities exist in some fictional and romanticized nature-utopia. To many of us, in cities and at universities, colonialism is confined to the past – it is anything but relevant to us.

Colonialism seems historical and abstract, a subject whose demise is so far gone we cannot trace it or sense it, let alone feel responsible for it. To others, though, it remains a constant force to push up against or be swallowed by.

In Quebec, the provincial government has devised a strategy by the name of Plan Nord to systematically exploit the resources of the North. Designed to be carried out over a 25-year period with $80 billion in public and private funding, Plan Nord will affect an area of land that is more than twice the size of France by taking advantage of the land through mining, constructing hydroelectric dams, logging, foresting, and building infrastructure to support these activities. Generalizing the detrimental effects and responses by indigenous communities to Plan Nord is impossible – complex policies will affect an untold number of people in ways we cannot understand easily, let alone immediately determine. The indigenous communities whose lands the Plan will colonize – a territory of more than 1.2 million square kilometres – include more than 10,000 Inuit, 16,000 Cree, over 16,000 Innu, and around 1,000 Naskapi.

It is both the most pressing and – in the anglo university world – the least spoken-about issue. It is the Tar Sands of the East: dispossession of indigenous communities and destruction of the environment in one. Remaining unaware and apathetic means learning nothing from the long history of violence, forcible loss of identity, and racism that characterized, and continues to characterize, colonialism.

With Plan Nord, mining companies and a far-off government whose priorities are linked to these same companies are given access to lands that, already occupied, are only shrinking.

Lands like Mukash’s, and the legends that grew from them, are being forever altered – excavated and mined in ways that cannot be undone. Glossing over loss of traditional identity is as shallow as the attempts by mining companies to “restore” by planting trees on top of destroyed land.

Restoration cannot take place when something has been systematically burned. *** The struggles of indigenous communities against Plan Nord are rich and diverse. While Plan Nord has in some ways become a gag order, pockets of vibrant opposition have emerged. Just this week, a group of young Innu maintained a blockade of Route 138 in protest of the Romaine River hydroelectric dam being constructed by Hydro-Québec.

For millennia, the Innu have fished for Romaine River salmon.

The $8-billion construction of the Romaine Complex, the first phase of Plan Nord, includes four large hydroelectric stations, dikes, spillways, canals, and 279 square kilometres of reservoir. Fighting for the same cause earlier this year, 13 women were imprisoned for blockading the route in protest.

Hydro-Québec proceeded with building despite the fact that the community voted down two referenda regarding compensation packages. That around forty Innu women walked more than 900 kilometres to Montreal in protest following these events sheds light on the extreme dedication to resistance.

Similarly, this summer at the 36th Conference of New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers in Burlington, Vermont, an Innu First Nations Delegation traveled down to vocalize their opposition to Hydro-Québec and Plan Nord. On a different note, hundreds from the Algonquin community at Barriere Lake spent this summer resisting the clearcutting of their forests – and destruction of traditional hunting lands – by a Montreal-based company being carried out without their consent. In some cases, the government or corporation consults only the ‘officially elected’ representatives of a community, who some have vocalized are prone to pay-offs, and are not necessarily selected through tra-

ditional means of appointing lead- resources. Some have proers. These are only a handful of posed that Plan Nord is, manifestations of the opposition therefore, only a means of that made their way to the media. colonizing the North so This, of course, is not to as to ensure the land is imply that all indigenous com- firmly Quebecois, should a referendum to secede munities are against the Plan. As Mohawk activist Ellen Gabriel has explained, mired in dire economic circumstances, and sometimes receiving economic incentives from corporations, many communities have (at least in an official political capacity) signed off on Plan Nord. But truly respecting indigenous prosperity does not mean providing jobs whose temporary and hazardous nature may push communities into even more trying conditions. Mining companies may come and go, may attempt to fulfill the insatiable thirst for resources and the resulting destruction, but, in the end, large sums of money cannot compensate for the loss of culture.

Dispossession has been a long time in the making. It seems gold and silver will always be prized without consequences.

Proponents of Plan Nord claim that the development will “create” 20,000 jobs in industries such as construction and engineering, overlookIllustration Jacqueline Brandon with Amina Batyreva | The McGill Daily ing the shortcomings and sexism of this supposed economic growth. These jobs are disproportionately given to men transpire. The irony of a sover- lectual and not lived. I can only – women make up less than 1.2 eigntist political party wholly try to understand the trauma of per cent of the work force in overlooking indigenous sover- colonialism from afar, and recognize that the most I can posconstruction, and less than 14 eignty is endless.

As members of a McGill com- sibly do is work to form solidarity per cent in the mining sector – not to mention the huge income munity, we play an important networks and unassumingly proinequality and higher number of part in this reality. Privatization vide support on indigenous peois a virus, nothing is sacred and ples’ terms. We cannot continue women who drop out of schools. everything is affected. The pub- speaking about the North as lic university has sold itself to the though it is an abstract concept, *** private sector, to those whose pri- open to endless exploitation.

Plan Nord is mired in the mary purpose is the unrestrained Dispossession cannot be undone. same heated nationalist rheto- pursuit of profit. Here, mining It is incumbent on us to see the ric that surrounded the election. companies are great friends – our faces that are standing up to the Some assume that because it was glorious benefactors whose bel- concrete destruction, those who the former Premier Jean Charest ligerent greed is entirely over- are literally putting their bodies who initiated Plan Nord, it is now looked. This happy ignorance has in its way. something of the past. Pauline repercussions in which we are Marois and her PQ government directly implicated. did take issue with Plan Nord, but Jacqueline Brandon is a U2 History *** not because of its blatant disrestudent and a Commentary gard for indigenous sovereignty; editor at The Daily. The opinions My perspectives on indig- expressed here are her own. rather, because it was a bad deal for Quebec. The Plan is often seen enous struggles are necessar- Send comments or questions to as Quebec taking control of its ily those of an outsider – intel- jacqueline.v.brandon@gmail.com.

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The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 25, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

commentary

A haunting disguise indeed!

Think about the Halloween costumes you wear Tiffany Harrington Commentary Writer

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tume of choice at a party. We don’t want to exist as your caricature of a good time. When you think you aren’t doing something problematic by wearing a feather headdress, well, you are appropriating my specific culture – that of the Oglala Lakota Nation. A headdress is a symbol of honour, pride, and power, and that is not something a non-Native – I don’t care the skin color – should be wearing for ‘fun’ or Halloween.”

Here at McGill, the Indigenous Student Alliance has decided to weigh in on the discussion of Native Halloween costumes. I am no Stacy London, and I am not telling you “what not to wear,” but we are encouraging students to think critically about their costumes. More importantly, however, we want to invite you to learn about our various indigenous nations and cultures by attending both academic and artistic (beading, music, moccasin making, et cetera) workshops offered through ISA this year. Here we will be happy to provide an insight into our unique ways of knowing, and our practices. We look forward to meeting you! Have a safe and Happy Halloween!

Illustration Bracha Stettin

t’s that time of year again.

Halloween is amongst us and we have the opportunity to get creative and transform ourselves into anything our hearts desire.

Many girls, from the time they are young, dream of sporting the long black locks of Pocahontas, while boys reminisce about their childhood games of cowboys and Indians. So, when Halloween rolls around and their yearning to express those long lost fantasies resurfaces, the nightly parties of disguise and masquerade offer the perfect setting to do so, no?

Well, before you go out and buy your polyester moccasins and chicken-feathered headdresses, take a moment to listen to the voices of your peers. The Natives you are trying to ‘emulate’ often find great discomfort seeing themselves represented in sexualized and mostly distasteful ways.

A popular Halloween merchandise-selling store said this in their description for the “Sexy Indian Adult Women’s Costume” they were trying to sell: “Hey cowboy – get a look at this Indian!

Stop him in his tracks in this sexy Indian Dream Catcher adult costume and all your dreams will come true. There’s no need for a bow and arrow – just shoot him sexy looks and he’ll make tracks

in your direction – it might get so hot he’ll put out smoke signals!”

This caption in and of itself is riddled with misappropriations of sacred objects and rituals belonging to various nations of Native peoples, let alone the heavily induced sexual undertones used to describe the Native woman. 57 per cent of Native women have been sexually abused, and more than one in three Native women can expect to raped within their lifetime, so you can see why such representations of objectified Native women send shivers down our backs.

At Dartmouth College in the U.S., students are taking part in an anti-racist Halloween workshop. Some costumes, according to outsiders viewing the campaign, seem to be more offensive than others. Below is a response from Dartmouth student Keil Oberlander, who is part of the Oglala Lakota Nation. The comment leading up to this response explained that a black face costume has an historical context of a different order of magnitude to dressing as a Native American. To this Keil responds: “I am a Native American and it does have a history. If you think it doesn’t have a history, then you are greatly misinformed. Colonialism still exists today, and we as Natives have to remind the world every day that we still exist…and we don’t want to exist as your cos-

Tiffany Harrington is the VP of the Indigenous Student Alliance.

If you would like to learn more about the ISA’s upcoming events, you can contact them at indigenousmcgill@gmail.com.

Set us free, let us pee On intersectionality and issues of access Ryan Thom Memoirs of a Gaysian

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he world we live in is full of secret walls. Invisible and unspoken, they dictate the terms of our movement: the places we go, the work we do, the bodies we touch, the people we love.

For some, these walls form a relatively smooth passageway through life, allowing easier access to hard resources such as food, healthcare, and physical space, as well as to intangible things like love and self-worth.

For others, the world of secret

walls is maze-like, and they constantly struggle against barriers that shift and turn to keep them trapped in society’s margins.

Each experience of marginality is unique and individual. Most marginalized individuals struggle alone. This is the nature of intersectional oppression, and, for me, the walls of that oppression are never more visibly manifest than in public washrooms.

The first time I used a public toilet while wearing a dress was a year ago, in the women’s bathroom in Toronto’s Union Station. How can I describe that terror – my wildly beating heart, my paralysis as the ‘real’ women turned to stare at me as I stepped through the doorway,

my anger, my deep shame? How can words do justice to the sudden rush of clarity I experienced then, as hands drifted toward pockets and purses – for cell phones, perhaps, or pepper spray? – as eyes raked over my body and then were quickly averted? I understood then that this was a barrier I would struggle against for a long time – that from now on, the act of peeing would be one more example of the place where the personal and the political are blurred.

As a trans* person, it’s often too easy for me to conceive of the problem of access to public toilets as located solely in cissexism – a social structure that favours normative bodies and gender identities. But it

would be too simple to suggest that all we need to do is rip the signs from washroom doors and declare: Toilets for all! I am thinking of the enormous legacy of violence that women – all kinds of women – have endured at the hands of men, and their right to define spaces as female only in order to be safe. I am thinking of the racial segregation of washrooms and other public spaces that profoundly shaped my grandparents’ lives. I am thinking about how so many people considered disabled by society must search for those rare washrooms that are wheelchair-friendly, where appliances are suitably placed and shaped for the vast diversity of ‘disabled’ bodies. We must look deeper

and harder at the problems of privilege and access.

The public washroom: what a perfect and ridiculous metaphor for the experience of oppression!

A place of shame, taboo, and bad smells; each of us trapped in our own tiny boxes. A place we didn’t choose. But we can choose to reach out, across the silence, to speak the unspoken: Enough. See the barriers. Break the walls. Set us free. Let us pee.

Ryan Thom’s Memoirs of a Gaysian is a column about life, love, and intersectional oppression. Ryan is a writer, performance artist, and lifelong slut. Contact them at memoirsofagaysion@mcgilldaily.com.

The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 25, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

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secrets, secrets are no fun unless they’re shared with everyone McGill students open up

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features

The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 25, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

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HEALTH&ED

The McGill Daily Thursday, October 25, 2012 mcgilldaily.com

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What is Occupational Therapy?

McGill event aims to raise awareness of OT program Peter Shyba The McGill Daily

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o you know what occupational therapy is?

If not, you aren’t alone.

October is Occupational Therapy Month in Canada, which aims to raise awareness of the profession within Canada while highlighting the increasing role of occupational therapists (OTs) in Canadian Society.

Kelly White, the McGill representative to the Canadian Association of Occupational Therapists, describes OT as “a healthcare profession where therapists work with clients in a partnership, helping them in adapting their environment or in getting them back to their work and leisure activities.” Clients of occupational therapists vary, including people with mental disabilities, those who have experienced trauma, the elderly, and more.

The job description of OTs is equally wide, assisting clients

within areas of leisure, work, and self-care. Ultimately the role of this discipline is broad and seeks to assist in all aspects of a client’s life. As White says, “if something is meaningful to you, we’re going to help you try and achieve it.”

The OT program at McGill is relatively inchoate, as is the standardization of the practice in Canada; it only became mandatory in 2008 for occupational therapists to hold a masters of science in order to practice. At McGill, the degree conferred to Occupational Therapy students is a Masters in Rehabilitation Sciences with a major in Occupational Therapy, and there is no required area of undergraduate study.

The nascency of occupational therapy likely contributes to a widespread misunderstanding of what the program is, but White sees this as temporary.

“It’s hard to explain it all the time, but that’s why we’re out here [at the Y-intersection] today, to try and spread the word and define it, because it’s really valuable.”

Photo Peter Shyba | The McGill Daily

McGill community members stopping by the booth set up by McGill’s OT students seemed responsive to the group’s goal of raising awareness. A game using

‘props’ from OT was used to show the role of adaptive technologies, splints, and more, emphasizing the role of ingenuity in the program.

Chloe Grover, a U3 physiology stu-

dent, admitted that she’d “heard the phrase occupational therapy before, but wasn’t that familiar with it.”

“I definitely have a better idea of it now.”

Sex and solitude vs. solidarity Emery Saur All that Naked Business

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e’ve reached that point in the year where, if you’re not in a relationship (or some other type of arrangement), you’re probably not having sex. And if you’re not in a relationship (or some other type of arrangement) and you are having sex, you’re probably behind on readings, papers, laundry, etc. I am in the category, and am unequivocally bitter about it.

So, my friend Costanza* and I got shitfaced drunk and went to a sex club.

From creeping the Facebook group of the club my friend and I chose to visit, I imagined some sort of sweaty orgy of 30 to 40-year-olds. Instead, we found three single men and one couple (30 to 40 still an accurate age range), all standing around, looking tense, in different parts of the long warehouse-like room. There were four-poster beds along one side, and a bar along the other, with barstools and a bored-looking woman behind the counter. The ceiling was low, and the space illu-

minated only by garish pink and purple strobe lights, pulsing slightly, and some lewd lamps. In the back was a co-ed bathroom. And a door covered by a black curtain.

The website had boasted a Jacuzzi, but I didn’t see it. The whole thing was incredibly anti-climactic.

After all that we’d been through (bottle of rum, metro ride, et cetera), I refused to let something as silly as low participation get in the way of my good time, and decided to get naked. But Costanza wasn’t into it, and grabbed my hand and pulled me into the bathroom (complete with a shower, by the way) to discuss our situation. Then, someone started knocking on the door. At this point, we figured we were probably in for a bad time.

But, truthfully, we weren’t.

Yeah, it was remarkably boring, but we encountered more respect than I’ve seen during a more traditional club outing. After we approached two men, we actually had decent, civil discussion. We talked for a while, but there was never any explicit mention of sex. They only mentioned intimacy.

Perplexed by the seeming incogruity of these men’s intentions, we eventually left, and the couple followed Costanza and me out. They recommended another venue to us, but we made excuses

and hailed a cab. We whispered in the back seat, hushed and highpitched, hoping the cabbie wasn’t listening or couldn’t understand our slurring.

At this point, we didn’t know what we thought. The sex club had been exceptionally dull, and even the neon mood lighting couldn’t mask the wan nature of the people there. It would be inappropriate to judge the other patrons’ experiences, but the bar and the beds and the naked lady lamps seemed out of place based on what the men had said to us.

Conceptually, the notion of a club devoted purely to sex is ironic.

If one’s looking only for a pleasurable experience, there’s always masturbation. So what is it about a sexual encounter with a partner that makes it more desirable than simply staying at home and getting the job done yourself? Is it the thrill?

Is it some form of validation? Is it about having a connection, however fleeting, with another person?

We were too drunk to come to any conclusions about this sex/intimacy paradigm, so I asked the cab driver, a middle-aged man called George for some of his thoughts.

Unfortunately, George didn’t speak any English, so I had a bungled conversation in French/ Arabic/English with him.

We dropped her off, and that’s when we found some common ground. George and I agreed that love was “la fin,” and the “end-allbe-all” goal of a lifetime.

I asked him if he had love. He said yes.

I asked him if it was here in Montreal. He said yes.

I asked him how it felt to him having accomplished the one thing he thought worthwhile in his lifetime, how he felt about achieving his “fin” but not being at the “fin” yet.

He said he didn’t know. He asked me if I had love; I said yes.

He asked me if it was here in Montreal; I said no. He asked me how young I’d been when I’d first loved, and if people had respected it. He asked me if I thought I felt love like he felt love.

I told him I’d never thought that anyone had taken my love seriously; I couldn’t possibly have the capacity for it yet, they’d said? And that each time I’d been in love it had been completely different, so it was misplaced to attempt to equate it to someone else’s. We’re not all experiencing the same thing.

The ride ended, and suddenly I was home, stumbling around the living room, eating quinoa and tapping on my computer, drunkenly emphatic that these new and profound

insights would push the frontiers of love into never-before-felt territory. wIt seems dramatic to say that my sex club experience plunged me into a deep pit of despair, but in an odd way it brought some unexpected clarity. Sex without intimacy is a lonely thing, but I didn’t realize that until I started having it.

The last thing George asked me was how it felt being so young and having found my “fin.”

I said I didn’t know, but it didn’t seem fair that there were people in an empty club looking for something, while I had stumbled upon my potential “end-all-be-all” in the hallway my sophomore year of high school.

Later that night I lay in bed postulating which roommate would be less freaked out if I climbed into bed with them and initiated spooning. Knowing neither would be receptive, I fell asleep alone, thinking that there really should be cuddle clubs, not sex clubs, because it was a whole lot easier to solicit sex than cuddling. *Names have not been changed.

Costanza’s amazing.

All that Naked Business is a new column on sex, which will be run every other week. Emery can be reached at allthatnakedbusiness@ mcgilldaily.com.

HEAlTH&ED

11

The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 25, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

Thinking positive in Iran The Alaei brothers fight for AIDS care

Illustration Bracha Stettin Sarah Jameel Health&Education Writer

I

f you have seen Elton John’s tribute to those lost to HIV/ AIDS, “The Last Song,” the lyrics of that melody probably resonate whenever you come across a personal story involving AIDS. Dr. Kamiar Alaei’s public lecture at McGill University a few weeks ago was no exception to that rule.

If medicine and human rights could be merged into a genre of its own, Dr. Alaei’s story would fit into such a category. Kamiar and his brother Dr. Arash Alaei are not merely doctors; their passion for Iranian public health pushed them to establish an HIV/AIDS clinic, and persisted throughout their subsequent arrest and term of solitary imprisonment, allowing them to continue to strive in prison to create an integrated model of care in Iran.

The first case of HIV/AIDS in Iran was diagnosed in 1987 after the blood examination of a hemophilic patient. Policy makers at the time denied its existence and its link to drug use – it was not until 1995 that conservative policy makers took into account the various modes of transmission of HIV. In 1996, a pilot study in three large prisons revealed a high rate of HIVinfected patients (5 to 8 per cent).

The social stigma and the lack of HIV/AIDS knowledge at the time resulted in cases of loss of employment, denial of medical services, forced divorces, and the abandonment of family members.

In 1997, understanding the sensitive nature of the disease within Iranian culture, the brothers began running harm reduction and HIV/AIDS prevention care centres with a focus on intravenous drug users and prisoners. They established the first ‘triangular clinic’ in their hometown of Kermanshah in the west of Iran. These triangular clinics treated three different groups of patients: HIV-positive patients, drug users, and those who suffered from sexually transmitted infections (STIs), offering patients clean needles, condoms, antiretroviral therapy, and other medical services. The two brothers faced opposition from community and religious leaders, who implied that the citizens had failed morally in succumbing to these diseases.

Realizing that their approach needed to be multifaceted in order to create social change for those infected with and at high risk of HIV, they sought the support of NGOs, government organizations and religious leaders. This led to the establishment of unlabelled mobile clinics that tackled

the barriers of stigma associated with patients visiting an HIVspecific clinic. Cultural sensitivity and education, together with the principle of societal inclusion and the prevention of isolation, combined to form a potent method of treating patients.

Eventually, their program grew to a network of clinics in 67 Iranian cities and 57 prisons.

The brothers broadened their horizons by expanding the program to a regional level, including the neighbouring countries of Afghanistan and Tajikistan. They continued their efforts through international health advocacy and global information exchange.

For example, Kamiar’s “Health Diplomacy” project, an exchange program for American medical students, brought U.S. medical students to Iran to work with their Iranian counterparts and continue post-visit collaboration via the Internet.

In 2008, their relationship with American institutions led these doctors to prison. The pair were suddenly arrested and kept in isolation from each other for eight months, and on December 31, 2008, the doctors were tried before Tehran’s Revolutionary Court. They were charged with “communications with an enemy government” and a number of secret charges, leading to an

incarceration in Iran’s notorious Evin prison.

Dr. Alaei’s narrative of his experience in prison was reminiscent of the strife of great political prisoners, including Jawaharlal Nehru, Nelson Mandela, and more recently Aung Sang Suu Kyi; individuals whose dedication to their causes didn’t stop at the boundaries of their cells. As unfathomable as it sounds, these two brothers were delighted about one thing: they had landed in their exact target population – past drug users and sex workers.

By expanding the prison library – thus expanding the knowledge of these prisoners – these two medical practitioners made the best of their situation.

Their story resonated beyond the walls of the prisons, and the world started to care. Before long, there was an outcry for their release via a collective coalition of scientists, human rights activists, and medical practitioners.

Kamiar and Arash were released in December 2010 and August 2011, respectively.

Together, the doctors coauthored “Iran’s National and International Strategic Plans for the Control of HIV/IDU/TB,” and they helped develop Iran’s proposal to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS/TB/Malaria, which was awarded $16 million USD. The tri-

angular clinic concept designed by the Alaeis was recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO) as the best-practice model for the Middle East and North Africa. The brothers have been celebrated on many occasions for their outstanding contribution to the field of medicine in the presence of their dire circumstances, and were most recently awarded the WHO’s first Human Rights Award in 2011.

To quote Kamiar on the path of their journey he said, “We learn from nature. No river goes straight.

The river changes its directions but not its goal.” They have proven that NGOs, government organizations, medical practitioners, and community and religious leaders have a collective responsibility to work together to create a social-cocktail of preventive care which will serve as the first lines of defence in the face of this health pandemic. It is only then that we even have a shot at facing the real enemy in the situation: the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV).

These two brothers have paved the way of social medicine to impersonate the lyrics of that Elton John song, and have touched the lives of those both inside and outside prison, and with and without HIV. They have made these words come alive in people’s lives.

CULTURE

The McGill Daily Thursday, October 25, 2012 mcgilldaily.com

Anqi Zhang interviews Montreal’s sewer spelunker Anqi Zhang The McGill Daily

L

ook at your city – look now, out your window – what do you see? Sky, ground, and buildings that mold the horizon into a somehow recognizable form. But there is more to our little corners of the world – things we do not see, either because we do not look, or because they were designed to be hidden. There are the abandoned warehouses and modestly-covered sewer systems that are as much a part of our cities, and as much a clue to our pasts, as the skyscrapers and multi-story shopping centres and residential brownstones we see on our walks home from school. There are tunnels, connecting subway and train stations, which can act as places of refuge. These are among the elements that urban explorers seek to find, see, and illuminate.

Toronto-born graphic designer Andrew Emond is such an urban explorer, and for six years, his goal was exactly that: to illuminate the rich history of Montreal and its citizens based on below-ground evidence. His now-dormant blog, Under Montreal, documented through photos and stories the time he spent exploring and learning about the city upon moving here. A photographer, Emond told The Daily in an interview that, driven as he was by curiosity and a desire to explore, he probably wouldn’t have gone underground if it weren’t for the camera.

He views photography as integral to his goal of finding history and illuminating architecture hidden underground, the telling imprints of the past that he felt he had limited access to aboveground. “Part of the process of being underground is being able to document and relay my experiences,” he stressed.

Underground is where Emond spends most of his time exploring. He concedes on his website that “most wouldn’t consider being inside something like a sewer to be their idea of a good time,” and when asked, stated that “we take it for granted.” A large part of this, he thinks, has to do with simply not being able to see what is underground. Labelling structures such as sewers as off-limits or dangerous ultimately inhibits people from wanting to know more about them, reducing them to simply a utility that facilitates our lifestyles; Emond wants to show the public that this can be challenged. “I like the idea that the city is open ended in how it gets used; certain areas are designated for recreational or pedestrian use, and I’d like to show that those divisions can be elastic,” he stated, seeing uses for elements of the city that the planners did not intend.

Culture HAPS

Notes from the underground

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Shag Shop Sperm Race October 26 Roddick Gates 3:00 p.m.

Free With a promotional tagline like “The only way to find out is to come,” how could you not be intrigued?

The Shag Shop is hosting Sperm Run, an event where participants dress up as sperm and race to the entrance of the shop, decorated, quite fittingly, as a giant vagina. The sperm costume is provided, so you have no excuse not to enjoy the madness.

Super Spooky Halloween Chilling October 26 A’Shop 3081 Ontario 10:00 p.m. $5

Photo courtesy of Andrew Emond

Emond finds the research that follows his exploration of these tunnels to be equally, if not more eyeopening: “It’s easy to go down there and think that ‘I’m the first one.’ You think, ‘well I’m in this magical world and discovering something for the first time.’ But there’s a long history of people down there.”

Though it originated as a photo blog, Under Montreal quickly grew to include maps, archival photos, and of course, stories. Emond noted that “a lot of urban exploration websites write in a way that other urban explorers would understand,” but attempted instead to remain conscious of people who did not have a basic understanding of the system.

The necessity of remaining accessible is perhaps tied to Emond’s overall desire to illuminate what is perpetually dark, and often ignored by society at large.

Interested in researching the history of Montreal and its systems as much as in photography, he noted that the sewers, though unsurprising in themselves and their construction, give clues to the evolution of the city above.

“You look at how [the sewer] was built, when it was built, what was happening aboveground at the time,” said Emond. Through blog posts like “Underground People,” “Pipe Dreams,” and “A History of Problems,” Emond exposes the intricacies, problems, and historical background of the sewer systems he explores. To see his photos and read his prose is to challenge preconceived notions about the foulness of sewers. The stark beauty of the sewers shines through the flashlight-illuminated images, which Emond sometimes sets in

parallel with archival photos of the same sewer bend, or the same tunnel section when it was initially constructed and inspected. Historical anecdotes and images of people who have worked in the sewers or passed through them help to humanize the tunnels that pass below our feet. Under Montreal succeeds at uncovering both the physical and historical layers of Montreal’s substructure.

But exploring the city’s underbelly and using sewers for a purpose that is unheard of by much of the population can lead to confusion and alarm. On Easter weekend in 2010, Emond and a friend – a fellow explorer of Toronto’s underground – were arrested for trespassing after entering a sewer system in one of Toronto’s residential areas. The case brought a considerable amount of media attention to the urban exploration culture. Though they were released and the charges were ultimately dropped – largely, it seems, because it was clear from their cameras and blogs that they were exploring, rather than something more ill-intentioned – Emond alluded to the general difficulty of getting into sewers in the first place. Given that manholes are often in the middle of the street, or in busy areas where their activities might be noticed and misinterpreted, Emond is looking for other sources of information as well. Residing in Toronto, he is now far enough away from Montreal that he feels comfortable reaching back to people from Municipal Works for more information on the city’s systems. When asked about the culture of urban exploration and its future, Emond sounds cynical, seeing a shift toward a mentality of

“thrill-seeking” from urban explorers. “Eight years ago,” said Emond, “it had a lot to do with gaining a better understanding of your own city. Nowadays it’s synonymous with going to abandoned buildings and taking some photos.” Though photography was what initially brought Emond to the activity, he seems adamant that this should not be the ultimate goal – or the only goal – of urban exploration. There are, he noted, fewer and fewer people making blogs and writing; instead, sites such as Flickr and Tumblr encourage people to post photos and do nothing more. Indeed, a search for “Montreal urban exploration” leads to a Flickr group filled with beautifully constructed but barely contextualized photographs.

For Emond, his project feels unfinished. While he still explores in Toronto, he tells me about the sewers he couldn’t get into during his years in Montreal. Though he says he has no end goal in mind, and has not updated the site in over two years, Emond hopes to continue sharing his stories and experiences, and present different angles of the city. Moving away from an online medium, though leaving Under Montreal as a valuable resource for those interested, Emond has looked to public speaking and events such as Nuit Blanche 2011, TEDx, and an upcoming documentary, Lost Rivers, which is to be screened in Montreal this coming spring. Whatever the medium, one hopes that the urban exploration culture and community will continue the attempt to bring to light the world we were not meant to see.

To see more of Andrew Emond’s work, go to www.undermontreal.com.

Local loafers Mook Life are hosting a bash near the underpass that separates the Plateau from Hochelaga.

The night will be enlivened by dark, bass-heavy music from Vincent Pryce and Sagewondah. The venue, A’Shop, hosts an artists’ collective focused on graffiti and “urban aesthetics” that has produced some of the city’s best murals.

A Night to Dismember October 27 Darling Foundry Loft 745 Ottawa $20 in advance, $30 at the door

Cirque de Boudoir, a Montreal production company that specializes in fetish-f lavoured circus events, is putting on the biggest party of their year in Griffintown. Though it’s a little pricey, the event includes multiple DJs as well as circus performers.

However, the crowd is perhaps the strongest draw, as it’s renowned for its spectacular commitment to Halloween spirit and welcoming atmosphere.

Rocky Horror Picture Show

October 26, 27, 31 Imperial Cinema 1430 Bleury 8:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. $17.95 in advance, $19.95 at the door The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a Halloween institution. Experience this cult movie in its wildest, most intense and out-of-thisworld form. Plastik Patrik hosts, guiding you through shouting, toast throwing, and a costume contest. Are you a Brad, Janet, or Dr. Frank-N-Furter?

culture

13

The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 25, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

Music from the streets McGill student gathers coins, phone numbers in Sherbrooke metro Maija Kappler Culture Writer

I

f you’re looking for a summer job that pays the bills, connects you with local culture, and allows you to meet all kinds of different people, then U2 Cognitive Science student Henri Rabalais would like to suggest you try busking.

Rabalais started playing music in metro stations last year, after a friend who had experience busking in Vancouver convinced him to try it in Montreal. They performed together for a few months until he started playing on his own last spring, and over the summer he made it his full-time job. He sings and plays guitar and the harmonica when he busks, and also plays keyboards and is learning banjo and mandolin in his spare time. In an

interview with The Daily, Rabalais emphasized, “Once you’ve had a good experience with an instrument, it can be kind of contagious.”

There are hundreds of buskers in Montreal, with a massive variety of instruments and styles. On any given day, there’s a distinct possibility that you might come across one of the saxophone players at Guy-Concordia, the infamous spoon man who’s been playing outside of Ogilvy’s since the midnineties, or some other talented musician looking for exposure.

And it’s open to anyone: anglophones, francophones, students, travelers, people who have been busking as a career for decades. All you need is an instrument and the courage to play in public.

Still, it’s a daunting concept, and the process of getting started can seem complicated to the uninitiat-

Art Essay - Vivian Gu

ed – Rabalais may never have done it if not for his friend and her knowledge of the system. Musicians need a license to play on the street, and getting one can be costly and timeconsuming. Playing in the metro is easier: all you need to do is locate a station that has a blue sign with a harp on the wall, which indicates a busking area, and then sign up to play a specific time slot. The whole process is organized by the city’s busker community.

Rabalais prefers playing in metro stations, especially at Sherbrooke, where the long hallways allow for sound to travel and where the crowds tend to be friendly. He said he feels more vulnerable busking, where the barriers between a performer and their audience are broken down, than playing at a coffee house or open mic night. “When you’re playing at a bar, you’re play-

ing to a crowd,” he explained.

“When you’re busking, you’re a part of the crowd.”

The immediacy of that kind of a performance can sometimes be unsettling, but most of his experiences have been good. He’s met a number of people through busking: many of them have stopped to talk to him during their commutes, and he tends to speak to the buskers who play before and after he does.

Once Rabalais played a set with a fellow busker whom he met on the job; another lent him her mandolin.

Commuters are sometimes indifferent and occasionally hostile, but many have been generous. While busking over the summer, in addition to meeting his goal of making a living, Rabalais was offered beer, cigarettes, pastries, a rare coin from 1912, and two girls’ phone numbers.

The exposure to different peo-

ple is a large part of why Rabalais thinks other musicians at McGill should make the effort to try busking. It helped him get more of a sense of Montreal as a city, and it’s an effective way to break out of the insular McGill bubble. He still tries to busk, and manages to do it once a week or so during the school year.

He also plans to record an album at some point in the future.

Regardless of what’s next, the experience of having made a living for himself through busking provides him with a “deep comfort” about the future – another reason he recommends it to anyone he can. “Even if everything in the world goes wrong,” Rabalais said, “I can sustain myself off of this thing that I love.”

For anyone who aspires to a performance-based career, the experience and confidence busking can provide is invaluable.

compendium!

The McGill Daily Thursday, October 25, 2012 mcgilldaily.com

lies, half-truths, and half-truths, and lies

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Sports editor found dead Cause of death thought to be “complete irrelevance” Huckleberry Cleveland The Twice-a-Weekly

A

fter months of continued irrelevance and increasingly erratic behavior, The Twice-a-Weekly’s sports editor, Heaven Sent, was found dead yesterday in the office darkroom.

Autopsy reports have yet to be filed, but most suspect a lack of relevance caused his demise.

There are unconfirmed reports that Sent was in the midst of a bizarre medieval ritual in an attempt to get more contributors.

Found clutched in his cold, dead hands were three issues of Sports Illustrated from the 1980s.

Nearby were several copies of the McGill Blabune Sports section, wet with what appeared to be tears, and ripped to shreds. A nearby laptop was discovered to be his, and the recent internet history included the following links: nomination forms for the Canadian University Journalism awards, which Sent had filled out in an attempt to nominate his own pieces; an email inbox with a category for contributors, with no new messages since 2010; and a recent visit to the analytics section of the Twice-a-Weekly website, where it was revealed that no pieces from the Sports section had received more than 15 views, or ten if you don’t count Sent’s mother and her friends. Police would not confirm reports that a pentagram of goat blood was drawn around Sent’s prostrate body.

Sent started his career at The

I

Twice-a-Weekly with what was described as “ruddy, fresh-faced optimism.” As the months went on, though, he began to realize that he was writing every week to fill his section – writing into what his personal diary described as “an empty pit of apathy.”

Sent’s ultimate demise was not surprising to those who worked with him. His appearance had become haggard, and he began to spend all his time in the office, begging other editors to write for his section. During other section’s meetings, he would sit on the periphery, almost inaudibly whispering “write for sports, write for sports.” As the meetings continued, Sent would get louder, and by the end of the meeting Sent would be weeping on the floor, screaming at other section’s contributors, and kissing their feet.

According to The Twicea-Weekly’s design editor, Pterodactyl Jones, Sent had made “multiple requests for house ads which depicted [Sent] in a postapocalyptic wasteland, Mad Max style, or depicting [Sent] on a deserted island, sending a message in a bottle for more contributors, with a painted volleyball friend next to him.”

The weekly listservs sent out

by Sent, pitching stories, became increasingly desperate, and then deranged, as Sent promised sexual favors in exchange for stories, and then threatened his pathetically small contributor base that “there would be trouble” if, for the third week in a row, no one

Photo Hieronymus Chanski | The McGill Daily

offered to write a story. Sent’s contributions to his section, too, became more and more strange.

“On the online version of his articles, he started inserting controversial statements into the columns to see if anyone would notice,” reported Coordinating editor Squeege Larcen Oh Mattel.

Dent’s last piece before his

untimely death featured an 800word diatribe against the state of Israel, misogyny within Frosh, the proposed two-state solution in Israel, the argument between Jacob and Edward in Twilight and its anti-feminist overtones, education as a concept, departmental GAs, and the choice of Daniel Craig as the new James Bond in

2006. The comments section of this piece, and all his others, remained empty.

When reached for comment, most of the student body said: “The Twice-a-Weekly has a sports section?”

Huckleberry Cleveland is no one if not anything. And he is that. If nothing else.

FUCK THIS Prose Poem Special: On truth in print

t takes the truth for you to see yourself, but it scares you.

There in front of you. The sick fuck of your own soul appearing naked before your own eyes. In your eyes. Everywhere. You can’t see anything else. Your own soul – that thing corrupted by industry’s twisted metallurgy and misogynist sick fuck patriarchy which slams down on everything that doesn’t swing the right way.

Then, fuck! You see it. Bare and in front of you. No! But in fact yes! But you hate it. It is everything you don’t want to see: rotten, decaying, putrid. It is the thousand things you left unsaid.

It is the truth that if you do nothing, you are doing so much of what you hate. That you are what

disgusts you. You are what you never want to see.

Fuck, you think. Fuck, I am the sick fuck society. Because it’s true, you are it. You embody it.

You can’t extract yourself from it.

You can’t say, well this part, this rational thinking part, is fine, it’s doing alright, it’s separate from the rest, because it is not. You are the sick fuck society. The best you can do is try and arrest your decline, to slow your descent, wipe some of the shit away onto a towel and run miles away. No warm bath for you.

And you can’t shit it out. You go to the toilet. But it won’t come out. Fuck. Everything you are.

Your clothes your life your liberty, your ideas – the shit you think

is yours alone and yours to cherish – are the complete, the total, the disgusting rotten soul that is revealed as you when you read the mirror of truth.

But you cannot face the truth.

So you tighten society’s wool around yourself. The wool of standards, and rhetoric, and logical fallacies, and accepted grammar and this before that but not before him because they said it’s that. You pull society’s woollen shawl around yourself. But the same wool is knitted inside you, matted in your own excrement.

Still, you pull the wool tighter and tighter around yourself when you see the truth because the truth makes you cold. The shivers. The shivers as your skin recedes from

your nails, pulling back with it the toothpaste whiteness that covers the decrepit muscles that are rank with the stench of your own death.

Underneath is the world of death you want to be part of. Climbing.

Climbing. Look at your certificates on the wall. Look at them hanging.

Look at your numbers everywhere.

Your truths that they said are true and so must be true. You will be respected. You will be someone.

But every step up you take you have to tighten the wool of shit around you because the shivers are too much. But the wool of shit – your shit, remember, nothing else – keeps you safe. It keeps you clothed and in the world of what-they-say-is-true.

Over time, the moments

become less frequent. It takes something, it takes something like a mirror of truth for you to see yourself as you are: a rotten soul subsumed and consumed by society’s wool of shit. You have immersed yourself in the cacophonous growl of society’s shit just to try and climb above it. You reached out your hand for the rim of the toilet seat and the bowl and wool collapsed around you.

The truth tears away the skin and shows you your own rotten carcass beneath your skin; you see what lies beneath the wool you pull tighter around yourself.

The truth violently proves that you are what you fear.

This poem is dedicated to Dambudzo Marechera.

EDITORIAL

volume 102 number 15

15

(Mis-)Reporting on Plan Nord

editorial board 3480 McTavish St., Rm. B-24 Montreal, QC H3A 1X9 phone 514.398.6784 fax 514.398.8318 mcgilldaily.com coordinating editor

Queen Arsem-O’Malley

coordinating@mcgilldaily.com

coordinating news editor

Juan Camilo Velásquez news editors

Laurent Bastien Corbeil Lola Duffort Annie Shiel commentary&compendium! editors

Jacqueline Brandon Steve Eldon Kerr culture editors

Kaj Huddart Victoria Lessard features editor

Christina Colizza science+technology editor

Anqi Zhang

health&education editor

Peter Shyba sports editor

Evan Dent

multimedia editor

Kate McGillivray photo editor

Hera Chan illustrations editor

Amina Batyreva design&production editors

Edna Chan Rebecca Katzman

copy editor

Nicole Leonard web editor

Tom Acker

In a country as geographically expansive as Canada, the media has a difficult task: how can organizations generally based within the sociological, cultural, and political milieu of large cities purport to bear witness to events in rural areas? The Quebec government’s Plan Nord, envisioned by the Liberal Party of Jean Charest, aims to develop 1.2 million square kilometres of land in Quebec’s north by building hydroelectric dams and mining, among other exploitative activities.

According to the provincial government, the plan is to be carried out over 25 years, cover 72 per cent of the province’s land mass, and generate $80 billion in public and private investments. Pauline Marois’ Parti Québécois government plans to continue with Plan Nord.

The anglophone reporting on Plan Nord has been complicit in overlooking the important issues. Mainstream Canadian news pontificates a truncated reality, resulting in a form of geographic tokenization that skews public opinion. For most, “the North” remains merely an idea, and its inhabitants – who face severe consequences in the face of Plan Nord – are not occupying a main role in the discussion around such a sweeping development plan.

Given the reality that much of Canada’s economy exists in remote locales – the tar sands in Alberta, forestry and fishing industries in British Columbia, and the vast terrain north of the 49th parallel covered by Plan Nord – much of what we know as urbanites depends on the news we receive from far away. The harsh polarization inherent in the rural-urban divide is brought into even stronger focus by the fact that Canadian economic policy (almost exclusively based on natural resources) is determined in capitals, executed in the periphery, and reported on by urbanites.

How do we know how the communities affected by Plan Nord feel about the plan for development in this community? Have we entirely missed out on learning about the resistance to Plan Nord by indigenous activists and their allies? The consequences to indigenous peoples are often sidelined, if not completely absent from updates on the economic plan. As campus community media, this is admittedly very difficult; unless we can interview a wide range of people and avoid generalizations based on preconceived ideas of the place in question, we cannot give the issue due credit.

Mainstream Canadian media cannot claim this same dearth of resources. National news outlets have failed miserably at reporting on the nuance of this development. The geographical distance between areas of exploitation and centres of economic and political power, combined with the injustices inherent in Plan Nord, mean that the onus should be even more heavily on the media.

Good reporting comes from bearing witness, and, thus far, Canadian media has missed the mark.

le délit

Nicolas Quiazua

rec@delitfrancais.com

cover design Amina Batyreva contributors Karel Asha, Andrew Emond, Vivian Gu, Tiffany Harrington, Sarah Jameel, Maija Kappler, Esther Lee, Emery Saur, Bracha Stettin, Ryan Thom

Errata In the article “Robots, music, emotion, oh my!” (Sci+Tech, October 22, page 10), The Daily mistakenly listed Erin Gee’s place of work to be the Marx Institute at University of Western Australia.

In fact, Gee’s place of work is the MARCS Institute at University of Western Sydney. The Daily also referred to Winters’ field of research as effective display instead of affective display.

The Daily regrets the errors.

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