vol98iss17

Volume 98, Issue 17

October 30, 2008

McGill THE

DAILY

Who you’re gonna call since 1911

Haunted minds Pro life club gets interim status news 3

Features 8+9

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via email: ads@dailypublications.org phone: 514-398-6790 fax: 514-398-8318

Wednesday, November 5th, 2008, 12:30 - 1:30 pm, reception to follow Redpath Museum Amphitheatre (through the main doors of Redpath Museum)

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Employment Master School of Bartending Bartending and table service courses Student rebate Job reference service • 514-849-2828 www.Bartend.ca (on line registration possible)

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Notices Have you had a “LAZY EYE” since childhood?

McGill Vision Research is looking for study participants.

Please call Dr. Davar Nikneshan at 514 934 1934 ext.

35307 or email mcgillvisionresearch@gmail.com for further information.

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News

The McGill Daily, Thursday, October 30, 2008

SSMU approves pro-life club

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Choose Life’s status to be reviewed in three months Lina Crompton News Writer

S

SMU councillors voted 21 to two in favour of granting a controversial pro-life group on campus club status in a vote at Tuesday’s council meeting.

After an animated debate from councillors, concerned students, and the club’s supporters, Choose Life was granted interim status and will be able to apply for full club status after three months as an interim club, the standard for all new clubs. The club will have to hold three events and satisfy other requirements to demonstrate it is active.

Women’s Studies student Andrew Thorne, watching from the gallery, claimed Choose Life was a structurally violent group and opposed its legitimization through SSMU. “Pro-life is inherently violent against women and against human rights,” he said of the ideological mandate of the group.

When council reached the debate on Choose Life’s club status, ten to 15 students filtered into the room.

Members of the gallery came from various advocacy groups at McGill, including the Quebec Public Interest Research Group and the Union for Gender Empowerment. Signs from the gallery poked up with slogans including “legalize abortion” and “fight gender oppression.”

Choose Life’s mandate, according to its constitution, is to “promote and respect human rights and human life from conception,” which they define in their constitution as “the moment fertilization occurs.”

Choose Life’s director Natalie Fohl defended the group’s legitimacy at the meeting, stressing that SSMU club status will facilitate pro-life discussion at educational events and will ensure that a variety of services and options are available on campus

Guy Lifshitz for The McGill Daily

Max Silverman, last year’s VP External, commented that he had never seen a SSMU Council meeting so well attended. for women and partners faced with decisions about pregnancy.

Fohl felt there was a lack of support on campus for women who decide to carry their pregnancy to term and worried that refusing Choose Life a campus voice would silence pro-life issues.

“The more options there are on campus, the better off [women] will be with making decisions for their own care,” said Choose Life representative Kathryn Sawyer at the meeting.

Councillor José Díaz disagreed with a gallery member who questioned the legal and moral implications of SSMU’s decision to accept a group with a controversial definition

of conception.

“Universities are the best places for this kind of debate. SSMU can’t stop pro-life groups just because of their definitions,” Diaz said.

Based on tactics of outside prolife groups, other gallery members were worried Choose Life members would distribute graphic pamphlets hostile to abortion.

In response to these accusations, Fohl assured council attendees that Choose Life’s activities would be nonincendiary. “[We’re] against using graphic pictures or circulating literature that could be construed as hateful,” Fohl said.

Devin Alfaro, SSMU VP External, assured the room that if Choose Life was to circulate hateful material during its interim period, the society would stop its activities in their tracks. SSMU’s equity committee is prepared to receive student grievances against any club’s actions.

SSMU President Kay Turner echoed Alfaro’s assertions.

“In the SSMU Constitution, if one club demands recourse with another they can take it to the [Judicial] Board if there is behaviour that infringes or endangers another person’s or club’s livelihood,” she said.

Law Students’ Representative Alexandre Shee supported granting

Choose Life interim club status.

“SSMU should not limit freedom, thought, or opinion as defined by the Canadian Constitution,” Shee said.

“All clubs are innocent until proven guilty,” said councillor Hanchu Chen, arguing that Council should respect the group’s right to free speech and assembly.

Other clubs that were swiftly granted interim status at the meeting include the Muggle Quidditch Team, the Thaqalayn Muslim Association, Fetish and Kink Enthusiasts, Dragon Boat Z, Aerospace Medicine Association, and the People’s Liberated Knitting Front.

Migrant farm workers seek collective bargaining rights Seasonal worker status doesn’t guarantee full employee benefits Maria Forti

News Writer

T

he right of migrant agricultural workers to collectively bargain for better contracts is at stake in a case before Quebec’s Labour Relations Commission that began hearings Friday.

Seasonal Mexican workers at a farm in Saint-Augustin de Mirabel, about 40 kilometres north of Montreal, applied in July for accreditation to form a collective bargaining

unit to secure better working conditions.

During the hearing, five workers spoke about the conditions on the farm, including the long hours without breaks, the volatile temper of their boss, their reasons for migrating to Canada for work, and their lack of job security.

“Workers who come here from Mexico deserve respect,” said Ausencio Flores, who has worked for farm owners Johanne L’Écuyer and Pierre Locas for about five years.

“We do not come here so that [the

bosses] can insult us. We come here as people, not as animals.”

Flores added that workers entering Canada are threatened by the Mexican Consulate, saying they are told not to complain about anything at work or they will be considered “in conflict” with their contracts and will not be asked back to Canada for the next season.

The United Food and Commercial Workers Canada (UFCW), which brought the application forward, is supporting the part-time workers’ collective bargaining efforts.

When asked why he signed a union card with the UFCW, Gabriel Sanchez, another worker on the farm, explained that the language barrier made negotiations challenging.

“We needed someone to help solve our problems and every time we called the Consulate, no one answered,” Sanchez said, speaking through a translator like most of the workers. “I don’t speak the language so it is not possible to talk [with my boss].”

A collective bargaining strategy was opposed by the farm owners,

who argued the part-time workers should not receive full employee benefits because the farm is not in operation all year, citing a provision in the Quebec Labour Code that requires at least three employees to work yearround to be eligible for certification.

The UFCW is claiming that the provision in the Code is unconstitutional due to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that guarantees employees the right to collective bargaining, a change from its previous opinion.

Hearings will resume Tuesday and continue into November.

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News

The McGill Daily, Thursday, October 30, 2008

What’s the haps

Subway moves into Arts building Jeff Bishku-Aykul

The McGill Daily

Lacrosse Saturday, November 1, 7 p.m.

Forbes Field, 3883 University The men’s lacrosse team will have its biggest event of the season in a quarterfinals game against Bishop’s University, their rival. All their games against Bishop’s are close and exciting to watch, so show up in droves with your McGill spirit and red tuques, because it’s supposed to around freezing!

F

oot-long sandwiches will be pumped out of Arts basement within a week, as a Subway franchise prepares to take over from the McGill Arts Cafe.

According to Bill Pageau, McGill Food & Dining Services administrator, Subway’s popularity amongst students was the principle reason for inviting in a franchise.

Subway ranked first in a survey conducted last spring, which asked “Which of the following brands would you like to see on the McGill campus?”

With 33 per cent popularity, it was followed by Tim Horton’s, Starbucks, Commensal, and Quizno’s.

Pageau, however, did not indicate what other criteria was considered when selecting Subway, or how the survey was designed.

Pageau explained that a Subway franchise satisfied the 2005 proposals from the Dining-at-McGill Advisory Committee (DMAC) which declared exclusivity of a single food-service provided – such as Chartwells – was undesired.

“On the question of a larger presence of privately-owned operators on campus...it contributes to a greater variety of food choices at McGill,” Pageau wrote in an email to The Daily.

Though the franchise will be located in the Arts Building, Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) VP Finance Kendall Zaluski indicated that the AUS is not responsible for any aspect of the Subway franchise’s operations.

The University will not be involved in the Subway’s management, because the Quebec-based Chahrour Group owns the franchise.

Mahmoud Chahrour, general manager of Chahrour Group, said that the store will open Friday or Monday, depending on the time it takes to get the restaurant up and running.

News Schmooze.

Not everything is a hoax.

Write for news.

Meetings are Monday 4:30 in the Shatner cafeteria news@mcgilldaily.com

Let your Stream of Consciousness Flow Thursday October 30, 12 - 2 p.m.

Y-intersection on lower campus.

Come out to the centre of campus and free-style to raise funds for the McGill student comedy magazine The Red Herring.

LAL live in Montreal Saturday, November 1, 9 p.m.

Club Lambi (4465 St. Laurent) Chill out to Toronto’s own multi-ethnic, down-tempo, soul, electronica artists LAL. Entry is on a sliding scale of $5-$10, with proceeds going to the McGill Anti-Racist Coalition.

Evan Newton for The McGill Daily

HMB statue is a hoax Lendon Ebbels

The McGill Daily

T

wo giant signs outlining a plan to erect a statue of McGill’s current principal tacked to the fence surrounding an on-campus construction site are part of a prank, administrators claim.

Hanging in front of the James Administration building, the signs contained a large computerized image and descriptions in both English and French detailing plans for a statue of principal Heather MunroeBlum. They were weatherproof, supported by two wooden beams, and came complete with McGill and City of Montreal logos at the bottom.

The posters, the administration claimed, are part of an elaborate hoax.

A phony print-up of an online McGill Reporter article spread the Heather Munroe-Blum statue rumour further. Matthew Ward, SSMU Director

of Communications and Publications, found the print-up tacked up on a wall. The article, titled “Working towards a growing Campus,” claimed a publication date of July 24, 2008.

The McGill Reporter does not publish in July. The URL at the bottom of the print-up leads to a “404 Not Found” page, and searching the author’s name yields zero hits in the McGill Reporter search results.

Both the sham McGill Reporter article and the signs that outline plans for the expansion of the green space, tunnel and pipe repair, construction on the Burnside and Leacock buildings, landscaping of the lower field, and “the unveiling of a statue of Principal Heather Munroe-Blum in honour of her remarkable fundraising achievements for McGill.”

The article even quotes Robert Stanley, the Projects Director at Facilities Development, as saying, “Its [sic] thanks in large part to the success of Campaign McGill that we were able to do all these projects...

so its [sic] fitting that we can use this opportunity to honour McGill’s most historic fundraiser.”

Jim Nicell, the coordinator of the Master Plan, McGill’s long-term outline for the physical improvement of campus, said the signs were a complete joke. He had not heard about the phony Reporter article before The Daily interviewed him.

Plans for the area – currently under construction due to actual tunnel repairs – will not be finalized for another four to five months, according to Nicell. The project is not expected to be finished until August.

Though Nicell did not wish to comment on the statue hoax directly, he mentioned that he, the principal, and his staff got a kick out of the signs they found. One currently stands in his office while the other sits in Munroe-Blum’s.

“I had a good laugh out of it,” he said.

Munroe-Blum was unavailable for comment before press time.

Beats from Beirut: Aks’ser Lebanon’s hip-hop ensemble in Montreal with Nomadic Massive Sunday, November 2, 8 p.m.

La Sala Rossa, 4848 St. Laurent Listen to socially conscious hip hop representing struggles for social justice and opposition to colonialism, featuring front-line hip hop music, representing Beirut to Montreal, and Lebanon’s celebrated Aks’ser hip-hop ensemble, including Rayees Bek and Iben Foulen, travelling to Montreal from Lebanon for this special concert. Cost is $17.

Submit to The Vegan Animal Liberties at McGill is calling for submissions for the second edition of The McGill Vegan: a newsletter for anything relating to animal rights and vegan outreach. They welcome submissions of book reviews, news articles, interviews, feature articles, comic strips, recipes, and anything else that comes to mind! This semester’s edition of The McGill Vegan is scheduled to come out in mid-November, so submissions are needed

by November 7. Send your submissions and feedback to themcgillvegan@gmail.com.

Submit listings of your not-for-profit events with “haps” in the subject line to news@mcgilldaily.com.

E R U T L CU K C The Daily’s guide to Culture Shock covers O H S past political discussions and highlights upcoming events challenging the status-quo 8 0 20

The McGill Daily, Thursday, October 30, 2008

News

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Caribbean writer asseses West Indian Revolution

“R

eggae music was revolution music,” explained professor and author Brian Meeks, as he described the history of the Caribbean political revolution’s abysmal failure in the 1960s and 1970s at Culture Shock Tuesday.

His talk marked the 40th anniversary of the 1968 Congress of Black Writers at McGill – an assembly of black liberation activists that drew a crowd of 10,000 students.

Meeks said the Congress was an essential element in the development of Caribbean revolutionary movements.

Recounting his involvement as a high school student in the Jamaican revolution in 1968, Meaks remarked, “The Jamaican revolution wasn’t about mass demonstrations in the streets, but rather about the raising of consciousness.

Popular music defined the times.”

In 1970, Meaks moved to Trinidad in the midst of its revolution – a dangerous time when government officials were hostile to radical organization.

“Within two weeks of arriving in Trinidad, I had been introduced to the anarchist cookbook. People told me there were guns in the hills, and later, I would realize they were serious,” he said, adding that officials issued violent warnings to organizers involved in protests.

After he was fired from his job at the Jamaican Broadcasting Company for partisanship, revolutionaries in Grenada recruited him in 1979 to help disseminate information.

“Salary wasn’t a question, terms of employment weren’t an issue. I arrived not sure if I would be paid or have somewhere to live. I just landed,” he said.

He went on to criticize the

Grenada revolution for subscribing to a mechanical Marxism, that attempted to create a proletariat by opening factories in order to set the necessary pre-conditions for a revolution.

“This Lego approach spread the doom of the nascent revolution,” he noted.

He concluded his talk by discussing the development of popular music in the West Indies in tandem with the revolution – crucial to reconstructing historical perspectives on social change.

Explaining music’s importance in creating a healthy society and economy, he said, “Music is what is at the heart of whatever we can rescue from the period [of revolution]. It isn’t a matter of just song and dance, but it is about a sense of self.”

– Shannon Kiely

Stephen Davis / The McGill Daily

Preview: The Barriere Lake Struggle Continues Arthur Manuel, spokesperson for the Indigenous Network on Economies and Trade (INET), and the onetime chief and tribal chairman of the Shuswap Nation in B.C., will speak at QPIRG’s Culture Shock next week. He will discuss indigenous rights in Canada by interpreting the nation’s policies in an international context.

“People have to realize that this stuff is in your own backyard and it’s affecting you, whether you’re a lawyer, or an archeologist, or whatever you are. You are going to run into indigenous issues. This is an old problem beginning from the time of settlement,” Manuel said in an interview with The Daily.

Manuel protested the WTO and spoke on various UN committees throughout his career as an activist.

Manuel also plans to discuss certain conflicts between First Nations communities and the Canadian government across the country, including the Quebec government’s recent and violent clash with Algonquin demonstrators at Barriere Lake – who were protesting the province’s failure to uphold agreed-upon treaties. He hopes to also touch on the struggles of the Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug to protect their tra-

2

ditional land from mining exploration.

Canada was one of only four nations that opposed the United Nation’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007 – alongside Australia, New Zealand, and the United States.

“Canada has to become a mature country. And by mature I mean that you have to accept indigenous people as having human rights, and you have to start recognizing that in terms of there being three orders of government: federal, provincial, and indigenous,” Manuel said.

Former Daily editor and member of the Barriere Lake Solidarity Collective Martin Lukacs said he looked forward to hearing Manuel speak.

“I’ve always wanted to have him here; but with the situation in Barriere Lake getting more widespread attention, I wanted to get someone prominent who knows the community struggle well,” said Lukacs.

The lecture will take place in the Chancellor Day Hall’s Maxwell Cohen Moot Court at 6:30 p.m.

It will be sponsored by by QPIRG McGill, the McGill Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism, and the Barriere Lake Solidarity Collective.

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4

5

Canada, a Pariah State? Indigenous rights in Domestic and International Law 6.30 p.m., Moot Court, McGill University Faculty of Law, 3644 Peel

Protectors of the Forest: The Barriere Lake Struggle Continues 6 p.m., Moot Court, McGill University Faculty of Law, 3644 Peel

Homonationalisms 6.30 p.m., Leacock 232, 855 Sherbrooke O.

CULTURE SHOCK CALENDAR 30

31

Walking Tour of Chinatown 4.30 p.m., Roddick Gates

6 Get a glimpse of Queer activist Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore’s latest novel 7 p.m., Room S 1/4, Stewart Biology Building, 1205 Docteur Penfield

7 Pièces de la Résistance: art auction fundraiser for the Tyendinaga Support Committee 8 p.m., Ste. Emilie Skillshare, 3942, Ste-Émilie (Metro Place St. Henri)

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Commentary

The McGill Daily, Thursday, October 30, 2008

volume 98 number 17

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

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production & design editors

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Marie Thomas for The McGill Daily

copy editor

Note: this is not the real Islamic Studies Guy – which is fine, because the article is really more about society’s shift toward privacy and isolation in social interactions. Also, would the real Islamic Studies Guy please stand up? (Because Eminem jokes are so hot right now.)

Whitney Mallett cover design

Stephen Davis le délit

Maysa Phares redaction@delitfrancais.com

Breaking the ice with That Islamic Studies Guy

Contributors

Nicolas Boisvert-Novak, Jeff Bishku-Aykul, Stefan Campbell, Angel Chen, Lina Crompton, Lendon Ebbels, Maria Forti, Catriona Kaiser-Derrick, Jason Karmody, Emily Klare, Guy Lifshitz, Ryan Mackellar, Caitlin Manicom, Evan Newton, Suzie Philippot, Sasha Plotnikova, Dominic Popowich, Sana Saeed, Marie Thomas, Joe Watts

Aristotle’s Lackey Sana Saeed The Daily is published on most Mondays and Thursdays by the Daily Publications Society, an autonomous, not-for-profit organization whose membership includes all McGill undergraduates and most graduate students.

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The Daily is proud to be a founding member of the Canadian University Press.

All contents © 2008 Daily Publications Society. All rights reserved. The content of this newspaper is the responsibility of The McGill Daily and does not necessarily represent the views of McGill University. Products or companies advertised in this newspaper are not necessarily endorsed by Daily staff.

Printed by Imprimerie Transcontinental Transmag. Anjou, Quebec.

ISSN 1192-4608.

I

would like to introduce to you That Islamic Studies Guy – a PhD student at the Institute of Islamic Studies. I’ve been seeing him around for the past year, primarily in, you guessed it, the Islamic Studies library. Despite running into one another often, our interactions have been minimal and awkward. Missed “Hello’s,” nods of acknowledgement, quick curious glances, and bright smiles have come to signify our relations. A brief, “Do you mind watching my stuff for a minute?” at the Second Cup at Milton and Parc still remains the pinnacle of our conversation.

It’s probably odd that I’m choosing to write about this guy, perhaps even slightly creepy. But I do believe that our interactions are microcosmic of a greater trend at McGill, and an even greater tendency in our society: to dither in initiating conversations;

to flee cordial encounters; or to shit our pants at the thought of rejection.

We live in a society that has come to embrace the importance of the public and make it an integral part of identity. Yet in the process, we have become extremely private individuals.

From the Internet to iPod headphones, each new addition to our public persona is making us increasingly isolated in our social interactions. The public can be experienced in private, making the old idea of the public irrelevant. I won’t talk to you in person, but I’ll comment on your Facebook note, your status, and that picture of your mom in drag. I’ll sit on a bus for 40 minutes, alone, and instead of talking to the person next to me, I’ll reach for my cell phone and sift through my phonebook until I find someone worth wasting the remaining 39 minutes with. When I

see a girl with toilet paper hanging out of her pants, instead of telling her, I’ll think about how embarrassing it’s going to be for her when she walks into Cybertheque.

Why are we so afraid of rejection?

Being rejected from Law School is a legitimate concern – one I prepare myself for on an hourly basis – but rejection from a stranger or casual acquaintance? There seems to be a growing emphasis on basing our worth now solely on responses from others. A Harvard rejection is a rejection of my sub-par last minute academic sweat and toil – but rejection from the dude down the hall is a rejection of what? It’s understandable when we run from complete strangers, something for which I blame my parents and elementary school teachers. But does it make sense to ignore someone you see on a daily basis, even when you’ve had three classes with them?

One of the most life-changing-cueviolin moments in my life was when a complete stranger approached me, said a few words of observation, and walked away. She’s most likely dead now, but her words made me rethink my personhood. Recently I’ve been thinking about how I interact

in my public, about how private I’ve become amidst being constantly bombarded. No matter how many Fido minutes I add on, or how many people I bump into outside Leacock, I still refrain from embracing the more public aspect of my identity and persona.

The thought of saying hello or initiating conversation with That Islamic Studies Guy or That First Year Political Theory Class Conference Girl is terrifying. Not because of the individuals in and of themselves – but the idea that I’m going to end up making an ass of myself. But then I’m reminded of that elderly woman on the train, ten years ago, who told a young 12-year-old girl, suffering from a bad case of puberty, that past the acne there was beauty.

She had no inhibitions, no fear.

She observed, spoke, and walked away without caring about my reaction.

So here I am, attempting to break the ice with That Islamic Studies Guy. Now it’s his turn.

Sana’s column appears every other Thursday. Seriously, Islamic Studies Guy, get in touch with her at aristotleslackey@mcgilldaily.com.

Commentary

The McGill Daily, Thursday, October 30, 2008

On Sarah Palin’s use of language A note to post-post Baby Boomers Braden Goyette

COMMENT

A

major shift in U.S. political culture took place almost three decades ago, according to McGill Professor Gil Troy, author of Morning in America: How Ronald Reagan Invented the 1980s.

Television had been around for long enough that major changes were taking place in the way politicians were using the medium.

“The average sound bite on television would go from two to three minutes to 17 seconds,” Troy explains – a phenomenon that drove up the importance of putting on a good show. “The more that happened visually, the more it affected the language.”

It’s no accident that this election seems to be a battle of key words and phrases – “hope” and “change” versus “mavericks” and “main-streeters” – even more so than in previous years.

“Obama and Palin are a different generation of leaders, post-babyboomers. They’re children of the seventies – and very much children of Ronald Reagan.” Growing up watching Reagan on television, Troy says, both would have absorbed Reagan’s style, particularly his way of manipulating symbols and iconography.

It was during the Reagan Era that a rift between media image and political substance developed, a theme that Troy returns to throughout his book. Though it was fuelled in large part by developments in the media, Reagan’s way of generating feel-good talk while cutting social programs – sometimes linked to institutions he’d just been praising – aggravated the split.

“Not since Theodore Roosevelt had a president wrapped himself in the American flag so effectively; not since Franklin Roosevelt had a president identified his fate with the American people so convincingly,” Troy writes. “Administration officials and reporters agreed: there was a new language to American politics, one more visual than verbal, more image-oriented than issue-oriented, more stylish than substantive.”

More often than not, when I hear people talk about American political culture, it’s with a sense of fatalism.

The elements that make U.S. politics such a media circus seem so deeply entrenched; it’s surprising to find they’re the product of developments barely older than I am.

This election year, it’s frustrating to hear people laugh dismissively about Sarah Palin’s turns of phrase, given how much power these kinds of sound bites can have. There’s a distinct narrative in the way she positioned her party in her convention speech: mavericks versus Big Government, the mom versus the suits, John McCain versus the forces of evil. Everything speaks to America’s

distrust of Big Government – and considering that Alan Greenspan just admitted that the free market has foundered, what has de-regulation done for us lately?

Accents, word choice, and syntax also broadcast a lot of things implicitly, among them notions of identity. “Al Gore suffered when he ran against George Bush in 2000,” Troy says. “Americans, according to surveys, responded to Bush’s language, thinking ‘he must be honest, he must be like me.’”

With her folksy rhetoric and repeated mantras, Palin taps on emotional nerves: the current of anti-intellectualism that runs deep in American society, on class antagonisms, and antagonism to government as a whole.

More than that, she does it with feel-good charm, in a way that makes it seem innocuous: “She’s playing the divisive politics of red versus blue with such a charming smile, a giddy laugh that it becomes defused, detoxified,” Troy says. “In that way she’s like Reagan.”

While I’m hoping that she won’t make it to the White House this fall, according to The New York Times, many are pointing to Palin as the new face of the conservative movement.

Her catch phrases aren’t a joke, but a sign of the state of the country – probably one we should take seriously, before our generation finds some of its own running for office.

Braden Goyette is a Daily culture editor. And she’s American.

Letters: SACOMSS on life; meat in art and belly writing a biography of a fly without mentioning maggots.

Letters

Mary Tramdack U3 English Literature

Love for dead animals

Seriously, one last word from SACOMSS on Choose Life

Re: “Greater risk with every bite” | Commentary | Oct. 27

Re: “Choose Life and SACOMSS should work together” | Letters | Oct. 27

I would rather add meat to my life than life to my meat. One meal in the steamy brisket-blessed heaven of Schwartz’s is greater than an infinity without.

This will be SACOMSS’ last response regarding the student group Choose Life. Any further queries should be directed to our external coordinators Rebecca Harris and Corey Gulkin at main@SACOMSS.org.

We would like to reiterate that SACOMSS does not take a stand on the abortion issue. Our concern with Choose Life stems from the fact that we are a non-directional service. This means that we do not give advice or judge the decisions that a survivor of sexual assault makes such as whether or not to get an abortion.

While we appreciate Choose Life’s offer to work together, SACOMSS cannot work with a group which pro-

John Danby U2 Mechanical Engineering

Maggots in art Re: “Art in the flesh” | Features | Oct. 27 Whitney Mallett’s failure to include the Czech video artist Jan Švankmajer in her scattered overview of meat art is an omission comparable to that of

motes an agenda that doesn’t necessarily correspond to the best interest of a survivor. Our only agenda is to support survivors and the decisions they make. Although we are unable to collaborate with Choose Life, we still hope that they will include us in their list of resources.

Our final point has been said, but it is clear that it needs to be reiterated. Only SACOMSS representatives can speak on behalf of SACOMSS. We ask that people please refrain from making public statements based on assumptions regarding our stance on political issues, student groups, or anything else.

Rebecca Harris U3 Political Science & Middle East Studies Corey Gulkin BA ‘08 SACOMSS External Coordinators More letters were received for this issue than could be printed, they’ll appear soon. Send your letters to letters@mcgilldaily.com. The Daily does not print letters that are hateful in any way.

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Reviewing access to information When Principal Heather MunroeBlum travels west to Mac campus to answer questions during her twice-yearly Town Hall meeting on November 12, it will be the first time for students to interact with her since the awkward “Meet the Stars” event on September 10. While the Town Hall is geared toward debate – after a brief introduction, Munroe-Blum fields questions from McGill staff and students – the administrators are in control at all times. The administration chooses the forum within which interaction with members of the McGill community will take place, a structure which is indicative of the administration’s poor relationship with students. And by sectioning just a couple hours per semester for debate, Town Halls restrict the volume of voices reaching the administration.

Another recent example of administrative decisions showing the disconnect between values at McGill is Deputy Provost (Student Life & Learning) Morton Mendelson’s new travel directive. The rules will restrict academic and extra-curricular travel to politically sensitive countries, and denies graduate and undergraduate students the ability to make informed adult decisions about where to fly. Mendelson has kept the details of the travel directive tightly under wraps, refusing even to let SSMU executives know what impact it could have on student research in foreign countries.

McGill students deserve access to information about issues that matter to them. Without an appropriate disseminating apparatus in place, the McGill administration creates a hierarchy of information that leaves students in the dark.

One of the most common ways for students and staff to hear from the administration is the campus press. Yet The Daily has had increasing problems getting information, since the administration rarely prioritizes our requests for comments on McGill news. Whether we have questions on union relations or food services on campus, we find ourselves pestering sympathetic secretaries instead of actually reaching our University’s head honchos. When we do get through, we often get canned email responses that skate gracefully around the pressing issues at hand. Sometimes the administration controls information to the point that they restrict their employees from speaking with us. When a new Subway restaurant was set to move into the Arts Basement, Food Services administrator Bill Pageau waited a week and a half before granting his employees leave to speak with our reporter. But Pageau is not the only one, and it seems the administration does not value answering students who make up the University.

Earlier this semester, some McGill administrators came down from their perch in the James Building for 30 minutes of awkward conversation with innocent bystanders near the McLennan library. The poorly advertised event, dubbed “Meet the Stars,” saw administrators adorned in flashy jewel-encrusted sunglasses. Provost Anthony Masi doled out free pizza, while Munroe-Blum bumbled over small-talk about students’ academic choices. Library Director Janine Schmidt even asked students, “Have you spoken to the Principal yet?

She just loves to talk with students!”

One of few outreach activities organized by the administration, “Meet the Stars” disrespected students by failing to provide any real structure for airing opinions or grievances. And considering the amount of pizza ordered, it appears the administration didn’t expect much interest in the event, either.

It’s nice that they try to have a sense of humour – but this is yet another example of the administration structuring their interactions with students to avoid fruitful forums for debate.

The McGill administration needs to take off their cheesy plastic sunglasses and see the student body for what it is. Our campus is made up of intelligent and opinionated adults who deserve to be informed about our University.

Editorial

Errata The Daily incorrectly attributed articles in the Oct. 27 Culture section. “Smoked meat salvation” was written by April Engelberg; “Mind over meat?” was written by Maia Reed.

In the same issue, “Fishy Business on B.C. Fish Farms” (News) The Daily misspelled Clare Backman’s name (and in one instance referred to him as

‘she.’) The Daily also reported that Alexandra Morton works with the Rainforest Alliance Association. In fact, Morton works with the Raincoast Research Society. Further, sea lice are not treated with antibiotics, and dye is added to the feed, not the fish. Stewart also indicated that containerized fish farms could also be floating tanks with impermeable barriers, not only on-shore farms.

The Daily regrets the errors.

8

Features

Haunted minds

Stephen Davis / The McGill Daily

The Daily’s Claire Caldwell uncovers why it’s not so creepy to believe in ghosts

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or a certain number of years in my childhood, I considered myself an avid ghost hunter. Every time my cousins and I got together, we would inevitably end up poking around the house with a number of rather crude, paranormal tracking devices: K’nex divining rods, scrap paper scribbled with “readings” from “radio static,” and Fisher Price stethoscopes held to creaking floorboards and walls. The excitement that came from this kind of play wasn’t so much the hunt as the stories we would tell each other to justify it – elaborate scenarios imagined and built upon in that fluid, animated kind of conversation only kids can have. For a few hours, we would really believe our own stories, briefly forgetting the distinction between our regular lives and the spectral realm we had created together. Obviously, one of the goals of the game was to freak each other out as much as we could and as often as possible. But there was always a deeper sense of unease, even fear, that maybe we weren’t making it all up.

I packed away the ghost-hunting gear years ago, but there is still a part of me that wants to

believe in ghosts. And I’m certainly not alone: the entertainment and tourism industries have capitalized on our attraction to the paranormal with horror films, historic “haunted” tours, and ghost-hunting television shows. Similarly, I have yet to meet someone without a personal ghost story, a creepy Ouija board experience, or an urban legend that they feel compelled to share.

On a more serious level, many people seek out the advice of spiritual mediums, hoping to commune with spirits of deceased loved ones, and there are thriving ghost-tracking communities across North America. Attraction to, or belief in, ghosts is nearly ubiquitous in our culture, but what is it exactly that invites interpretation of the world through paranormal phenomena?

D

r. Amir Raz, head of McGill’s Cognitive Neuroscience lab and a former magician, does not believe in ghosts, but notes that people often opt for paranormal explanations, even when a logical counter-argument is available.

“Magicians are tricksters,” he says. “They’re liars, but licensed liars…. When we perform certain tricks that appear to have mental effects

– mind reading tricks or ‘pick a card any card’ – sometimes people think that we have paranormal abilities or supernatural abilities. The fact that I’d say at the end, ‘this was a trick; I’m a magician’ doesn’t help any. They’d say, ‘well you don’t even realize the power that you have’…

And I’d say, ‘really? That was [your] take-home message from this experience?’” According to Raz, many people are so strongly invested in the paranormal that even easily elucidated phenomena are interpreted as paranormal activity.

“There is a limit to what you can do,” he says.

“You can advocate for a certain position, and the rest is in the eyes of the beholder.”

As a psychologist, Raz has investigated whether there is a correlation between paranormal belief and an individual’s genetic makeup.

His study did not find such a correlation, but he insists that there are psychological benefits to holding such beliefs. “[Paranormal beliefs] can be very soothing, very comforting,” he explains.

“They can give more than just meaning, but a direction, or some kind of explanation, to very difficult-to-answer questions. There are many things that we don’t understand about this

world.... It’s sort of an easy way out to explain it by paranormal things.”

Catherine MacDonald, a spiritualist medium practicing out of Toronto, has similar insights into why many people are drawn to supernatural phenomena, and the spirit world in particular. “People need to know that there’s a connection to the larger universal energy.

But people also want familiarity – they want to know that everything’s going to be okay, that somebody’s looking out for [them,]” she says.

During a typical reading, MacDonald intuits her client’s energy – or aura – and differentiates it from other energy circulating in the room.

This, she says, lets her know that a spirit has arrived. “Sometimes I feel it, sometimes I hear it, sometimes I smell or taste it,” she says. “It’s multi-sensory.”

MacDonald stresses that most “seekers” are hoping to make contact with deceased loved ones. Therefore, the spiritual reading process can be emotionally intense, but it is usually beneficial. “[A spiritual seeker] will get enough information that they’ll feel okay with the reading,” she notes.

The McGill Daily, Thursday, October 30, 2008

“

It’s very unsettling for people to think one day you die and that’s it.... It’s much more interesting to think ‘Oh, well my ghost will linger’ – Dr. Amir Raz, Head of McGill’s Cognitive Neuroscience lab

B

oth psychologist and psychic agree that believing in ghosts and spirits is a source of comfort for many individuals. As a main theory for the larger cultural fascination with the paranormal; however, this explanation falls short. After all, ghosts are pretty scary. Even as an adult, the possibility of waking up to find a spectre hanging out in my bedroom is enough to elicit a shudder or two – whether or not the apparition could be explained through lucid dreaming, hallucination, or other psychological factors.

Raz is skeptical about the extent to which true terror plays into adult paranormal belief.

For kids, he says, there is a real element of fear when, for example, they enter a “haunted” house, but Raz explains that for grown-ups an activity like ghost hunting is mostly tied to pleasure-seeking. “Fear and pleasure are on the same spectrum,” he asserts. “We like experiencing extreme emotion – under control. It can be scary, but so is a roller coaster experience.… It gives us an adrenaline rush, and it serves a purpose – a psychological purpose and a physiological purpose.... We collect these experiences.”

From MacDonald’s perspective, fear of ghosts or spirits is relatively rare, unless, as she says, “you go to an environment where there was an accident or there was something very violent. There is going to be residual energy...

Even if I do a house clearing, it’s usually not anything violent or threatening, just [a ghost] who has attached itself to a specific piece of land or property.” When a family suspects their home is haunted, MacDonald will enter and attempt to draw out the ghost by helping it, as she puts it, “cross over the veil.”

Still, both MacDonald and Raz seem to be ignoring the very real fear that often accompanies belief, even tentative belief, in ghosts.

Maybe it’s fun to be scared, but many people are legitimately horrified by the idea of encountering a paranormal being – whether it is benevolent or malicious. It is understandable that a communion with spirits could offer solace, or a sense of guidance, to certain individuals, but for others the possibility of the dead communicating with the living is deeply disturbing. In the absence of religious doctrine or scientific fact to validate paranormal activity – as is usually the case – ghosts stop accounting for certain phenomena and are relegated to a domain beyond explanation.

I

f ghosts defy explanation, the question remains as to why paranormal belief is so prevalent in our culture. Why believe in something as elusive and as difficult to substantiate as ghosts are, when organized religion and scientific progress are prepared to offer up any number of feasible interpretations of the world?

MacDonald suggests that the taboo surrounding death in contemporary society, as well as an attitude toward spirituality as an individual prerogative, draw people to investigate the paranormal. “Most people in this day and age are much more open than we used to be,” she says. “Spirituality right now is more coming from the individual, not organized religion. People are looking for spiritual connection.” She adds that “at one time, if family members passed away it was a natural part of life…. For many people, when a relative goes, it’s very hard for them to accept that that person is gone.... We don’t have the same attitude about death [as previous societies had]… You go to a hospital, the doctors tell you your relative has passed, and you don’t have any contact with the body. People don’t get to say their goodbyes.”

Interestingly, Raz takes a similar position to MacDonald. “Believing in the paranormal is almost like believing in the rainbow,” he says. “It gives meaning to certain things. The fact that you have ghosts means that perhaps there is something meaningful happening after death. It’s very unsettling for a lot of people to think that one day you die and that’s it, and that’s it, that’s the end of who you are.

It’s much more interesting to think, ‘Oh, but my ghost can linger.’” The idea of one’s spirit remaining in the world of the living is certainly comforting, and takes the edge off of mortality. More importantly, perhaps, this idea is not one that is offered by most institutional belief systems.

Searching for meaning in death beyond mainstream, institutionalized beliefs is certainly a valid reason for an investment in paranormal phenomena; however, I don’t think it quite hits on the popular fascination with ghost stories and other activities relating to the supernatural. Rather, being open to the possibility that ghosts exist points to a willingness to eschew rational explanation. And in a culture where our understanding of the world is often limited by reason, that is truly comforting.

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Students’ spine-tingling ghost stories I’ve had a few ghostly experiences since I was a little girl, almost all of which have been waking up to a stranger in my bedroom. Opening and closing my eyes hasn’t made them go away, but none have ever bothered me much, besides wigging me out – except for one freaky night. I woke up to a young guy with seventies-era hair sitting on the end of my bed, slowly reaching toward me. I could feel the weight of him shift near my feet as he leaned forward, and I screamed. He was gone by the time my mom walked into the room, turning on the lights to ask me what the hell was going on at two in the morning. Maybe it’s just lucid dreaming, or hallucinations, but just for the thrill that goes down my spine, I prefer to consider these experiences real ghostly encounters.

– Suzie Philippot There is this house in my hometown that has been the subject of much folklore in the surrounding neighbourhood. The basement window of this house has been stained black for the past 80 years. Every newcomer to the property has tried to clean or replace this haunted window, but new glass just turns black, and cleaning products are useless. According to the most popular explanation for this phenomenon, a young man once peered through the window and saw something terrible transpire.

Sources differ on whether the horrific event was a brutal murder or a gathering of witches and warlocks. The window was blackened by an evil curse to prevent any future neighbours from peering inside. Perhaps this is a fictional story designed to discourage nosy neighbours, or perhaps it is a hoax, or a scientifically explicable matter. Either way, I still get creeped out whenever I walk past this house. This fear is always coupled with an almost overwhelming desire to go inside.

– Catriona Kaiser-Derrick In high school, I worked at a yacht club that was over a hundred years old. There were pictures on the wall from various events over the club’s history. One particular photo, dated 1899, shows the backs of people as they watch a sailing race. There is a small girl in a white dress in the foreground, holding her father’s hand, and turning violently toward the camera. I remember the first time I saw her ghost.

Often my co-workers and I would stay at the club late into the night to drink and play games. One night, I hid in the dark attic during a game of sardines. Waiting alone for people to find you is hard, but waiting with ghostly footsteps around you is much harder. Other nights we’d climb to the roof to watch the stars. The little girl in the white dress would run around the club beneath us, or better still, she would be pacing the flat roof as we ascended.

– Joe Watts One weekend when we were playing in the garden, my three sisters and I dug up some bones that were far too large to belong to any domestic animal. We knew in an instant whose they were: A man had died falling from the roof of our house, and our attic had a ghost – always had, always would, we thought. Our superstitious nanny would shriek if we so much as touched the doorknob leading up the stairs. Later, adults came into our attic, they put up drywall, lightbulbs, and three fresh coats of golden yellow paint. Our ghost went away, but the bones are still there.

– Alison Withers I went to high school on the grounds of the former Montezuma Hotel, a grand hot springs resort from the late 1800s. The place had been totally refurbished, except for the top floors, which were closed off to students. Rumour had it that back in the hotel’s glory days – when the town was the last stop on the train out West, frequented by the social elite of Boston and New York – an opera singer died in the middle of a recital. The building housed two student dorms, and at night people occasionally thought they heard her ghostly voice wafting through the halls. Once in a while someone would catch a glimpse of a white figure in the windows of the fifth floor tower – even though that floor was sealed off.

– Braden Goyette

Mind&Body

The McGill Daily, Thursday, October 30, 2008

10

Dominic Popowich / The McGill Daily

A new perspective on bone marrow transplant Jennifer Markowitz The McGill Daily

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our months ago, Sabrina Leblond-Murphy didn’t know much about bone marrow transplants; most 27-year-olds don’t.

It was only after she was diagnosed with acute myloid luekemia (AML) in July that Quebec’s system for bone marrow donation became central to her fight for life. In her search for a donor, the stigmas and misconceptions associated with bone marrow donation have became clear to her, and she wants to dispel myths surrounding the process.

“I want people to know about it. I want to tell people that it is so incredibly simple,” she said.

Leblond-Murphy stressed that the act of registering to be a potential donor requires nothing more than giving a blood sample. It is no more complicated or invasive than blood donation or organ registry, yet bone marrow donations remain much less popular. While eight blood drives occur in Quebec every day, and people become organ donors by simply checking a box on the back of one’s

driver’s license, there are no comparable donation drives for bone marrow stem-cell registration in Quebec.

Because members of LeblondMurphy’s immediate family are not adequate matches for her transplant, she must seek a match through Hema-Quebec’s stem cell donation registry, a database that links with other registries across Canada and internationally, allowing patients access to 13-million possible donors.

Health professionals working with stem cell transplants said potential donors hesitate to get tested because the transplant procedure is misunderstood. Most, they said, are inspired to donate only when they know someone who needs a transplant.

“It’s the word – transplant. In itself, it is kind of a scary word,” Leblond-Murphy said. It is usually associated, I think, with organ donations, with going in and doing surgery, with general aesthetics, weeks-long recovery. This is so far from what [a marrow donation] is. It is so much more minor.” But down the line, bone marrow donors do offer more of a commitment than do those who donate blood.

“I can understand why there is more publicity [for blood donations].

They are used so much more often and in so many more contexts, but people are aware of organ donations, too…. It’s probably a question of funding. I think that Hema-Quebec, or any other organization that does this, probably focuses more energy on more immediate problems. They want to have lots of blood donated because it is needed more urgently across the board,” Leblond-Murphy said.

“Blood transfusions have saved my life – on different scale,” she added.

Indications of a problem began with pain in her lower back, LeblondMurphy said. She thought that it was only an athletic injury, and many doctors confirmed this early self-diagnosis, but the pain escalated with curious rapidity, and when Sabrina sought consultation at the Jewish General Hospital on July 8, doctors diagnosed her with AML, the most common form of myloid leukemia in adults.

Without a transplant, LeblondMurphy has a 15 to 25 per cent chance of survival.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 11

What is bone marrow?

A soft material found in the centre of bones that produces stem cells.

Stem cells are parent cells from which all other blood cells – red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets – develop.

It produces red and white blood cells that are essential for immunity and circulation. Anemia, leukemia, and lymphoma cancers compromise the resilience of bone marrow, making bone marrow transplants a growing treatment for such cases.

3%

population who donates blood

50 - 70%

number of people who find bone marrow or core blood matches

25% chance that a patient will find donor within family

34,500 people listed in Quebec’s Stem Cell Donor Registry

21.3% survival rate for AML (1996 - 2004)

What is cord blood?

2,500 potential donors

Blood in umbilical cords that provides stem cells.

in Quebec each year

7 Quebec hospitals that freeze core blood to save stem cells

How to help out

To join the bone marrow donor registry, go to the Héma-Quebec web site (hema-quebec.qc.ca), click on “stem cells,” follow instructions, and fill out the consent form. Héma-Quebec will call the potential donor to set up an appointment to take a blood test to determine the blood type. A potential donor will only be notified if they are compatible with someone who needs a donor. Donors must be between 18 and 50-years-old. There is a particular need for donors belonging to ethnic minorities.

Mind&Body

The McGill Daily, Thursday, October 30, 2008 Continued from page 10

S

iblings are usually the best matches because genetic and racial similarities provide the best basis for a successful transplant. Matching donors to transplant candidates is so sensitive that doctors and Hema-Quebec only test siblings for individual cases, explained Nancy Hutchison, a registered nurse working in the hematology centre at Royal Victoria Hospital.

“Even if you are a second cousin, the chance of you being a match is usually just as good as someone who lives down the street,” Hutchison said.

Testing for individual patients only occurs in cases that require very specific racial matches. Because of their rarity, donors of a racial minority are in highest demand; organizations in the U.S. campaign actively for more.

Hereditary or acquired disorders, such as leukemia, cause abnormal blood cell production. A transplant of healthy bone marrow may correct

these problems, restoring production of white blood cells, red blood cells, and platelets.

Donors receive an injection that increases the production of stem cells in bone marrow, so they can be collected via the bloodstream.

Hutchison pointed out that while curative, not all bone marrow transplants are successful.

“Often times it is the complete opposite. It has hard extremes and there is no guarantee that it will be a cure or that it will be easy for patients.

But sometimes the likelihood is good and it is the only option,” Hutchison said.

The population dominating the registry is older – a problem because donations from young adults are most desirable. Hema-Quebec’s recruiting efforts have mostly turned to targeting young adults because transplants using young stem cells are less risky.

“The transplant is essentially giving your immune system to a patient,”

Hutchison said. “The more exposure it has had to different things, the more likely there will be some complication within [the] patient, and the older you are, there is a greater likelihood that you have been exposed to infectious diseases [that] could be transmitted to the patient.”

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very year, doctors recommend between 85 and 100 Quebec patients for bone marrow transplants, though many of them are never completed. According to Diane Roy, director of Héma-Quebec’s stem cell donor registry, only 70 to 80 per cent of patients find donors.

Roy said that the 2,500 donors Héma-Quebec receives yearly sufficiently serves the medical need for stem cells, adding that any more volunteers would strain the organization’s testing and registration resources.

But the international registry benefits from a high number of donors, though it will need more in the future.

“We’ll need more [donors] down the road because as family sizes shrink, it is less likely that someone will find a match with siblings, and they’ll have to go to unrelated transplant,” Hutchison said.

Despite the desirability of young stem cells, Héma-Quebec does not hold marrow drives at universities and colleges. Roy said that even in the absence of drives, bone marrow donations are adequately publicized.

He maintained that nurses at blood donation clinics on university campuses inform donors about bone marrow transplants.

Such immediate accessibility, Leblond-Murphy said, is key to increasing donation rates.

“People are much more likely to register when they’re directly handed a form and can automatically make a choice,” she said.

L

eblond-Murphy now has several leads on potential donors.

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Doctors have told her that she can expect to receive either a bone marrow or core blood transplant within a few months. But she remains committed to making the registry more accessible and attracting new donors.

“My statistics [for recovery] increase dramatically with a bone marrow transplant, and it’s sort of cliché, but for me, it’s a difference between life and death,” Leblond-Murphy said.

“It’s important to [register] soon.

Someone can join the registry tomorrow and be a more compatible match for me or someone else, and we want that. We’re looking for the highest match,” she added.

In the meantime, Leblond-Murphy is working freelance and undergoing periodic chemotherapy sessions to keep her leukemia in remission.

“I’m not preoccupied by it daily,” she said. “Maybe I should be. It’s definitely present, but it doesn’t stop me from living normally.”

Budweiser puts on a patriot act

Anheuser-Busch overcompensates after merger with Belgian company, InBev

All hopped up Joseph Watts

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ow many Budweiser advertising slogans can you recall? I bet it’s at least three. To name a few, there’s “This Bud’s For You,” “The King of Beers,” the image of Clydesdale horses, and, of course, the three frogs croaking, “Bud,” “Weis” and “Er.” The marketing wizards at Anheuser-Busch, the brewers of Bud, must be proud of the level of pop culture ubiquity that their commercials can claim; they must also be among the highest paid in the industry – and that’s the advertising industry, not just the beer world.

When a company spends so much money on advertising, every decision is made with the calculated precision of branding. In 2009, a 30-second slot during the Super Bowl, arguably Budweiser’s most effective medium, will cost an average of US$3-million. That much money makes even an absurd ad campaign – like two guys on couches yelling “Waazzaaaaaa” into the telephone – a planned investment on the part of Budweiser.

[Note: this particular advertisement has come back to haunt AnheuserBusch in the form of an Obama ’08 support spot. The brewing company, which never bought the full rights for the concept when the original ad ran eight years ago, can do nothing but watch as the popularity of their product is used to endorse a presidential candidate. Google “Wassup Obama” to catch the clip.]

Anheuser-Busch’s has rolled out yet another American campaign for Budweiser, this time heralding it as “The Great American Lager.” Now, I may be wrong, but apart from the value judgment of “great,” this statement is a given. Nothing short of apple pie is more American than an ice-cold, red-white-n-blue can of Bud, preferably drunk while wearing a trucker hat, unironically. With the amount of branding behind the Budweiser behemoth, what would prompt them to such redundancy?

Actually, it’s a good story.

Anheuser-Busch was America’s largest brewing company – it made US$16.7-billion last year. I say was because as of this summer, its owners are no longer Americans. In a dramatic turn of events, BelgianBrazilian beverage mega-corporation InBev bought Anheuser-Busch for almost US$52-billion. InBev, the largest brewing company in the world – owners of Stella Artois, Hoegaarden, Leffe (hence the convenient mix-packs at Provigo!), and 200 other brands including Canada’s own Kokanee and Labatt – can now boast the addition of the American heavyweight to its line-up. To save face, Anheuser-Busch now needs to explain to all those red-blooded, McCain-votin’ Bud drinkers that their beer still loves freedom and hates abortions, no matter how Belgian its brewers are.

That is why Budweiser is now being pushed as “the Great American

Lager,” and it doesn’t stop there. After 132 years of brewing nothing but lager, and its variants, Budweiser brewed an ale. And, surprise, they named it Budweiser American Ale. It hit shelves in the States last month. For the uninitiated, lagers and ales are the flora and fauna of the beer kingdom. Every beer is either one or the other, and they differ in the type of fermentation: lagers ferment cold and generally produce light, crisp beer, while ales ferment warm and are generally heavier and more flavourful.

Earlier this year, the new Budweiser ad campaign, “Lager Lessons,” featured a buxom barmaid or b-list funny man extolling the virtues of the “refreshing lager” over the “heavy import” [read: ale]. Releasing Budweiser American Ale after explaining why a lager is so much better might seem counterintuitive, but I see it as just another marketing strategy. Their target is now another important North American market: the craft beer drinker.

Craft beer drinkers in both America and Canada are largely ale drinkers. This may be due to the reimagining of styles like pale ale and India pale ale in North America, or it may be a revolt against the shit

Ben Peck / The McGill Daily

lagers that dominate the fridges of those who don’t care what they drink, like Molson and, you guessed it, Bud. Anheuser-Busch does have a “craft beer” brand, Michelob, but it’s not their flagship, Budweiser is.

So either Budweiser is diversifying its brand or they lost a bet. But for those who know Budweiser for what it is, it’s hard not to see American Ale as anything but a craft beer knock-off.

But beer geeks are curious, so I tried it. Bud’s proclaimed goal is a “new style of ale…one that is not too heavy or too bitter,” and it’s hard to say if they succeeded. Budweiser American Ale is a dark copper, lightly carbonated beer with very little body and, consequentally, too much hops. It is close enough in approximation to Boréale Rousse to be compared, but it has a hoppy quality that our dive bar favourite lacks. It has a sharp, metallic and medicinal bitterness that lingers long after it is swallowed. This is not a beer that needs to be tried twice to grasp its intentions, but I doubt that will hurt sales.

The lesson here is that AnheuserBusch is a genius when it comes to marketing its product. Perhaps this is

why it was recently named “Large Brewing Company of the Year” at the prestigious Great American Beer Festival. Their American Ale is a double whammy, aimed at both the craft beer drinkers and the I-only-drinkBud-from-the-can drinkers. The bottle lists ingredients and their origins like any craft beer, but insist that their barley is grown in “America’s Heartland,” or, you know, Sarah Palin’s “real America.”

In the end, what the American Ale looks like to me is an attempt by Anheuser-Busch to bridge the gap between those who drink Budweiser religiously and those who’ve moved on and probably haven’t drank it since they stole it from the fridge in their dad’s rumpus room. However, they should have brewed a better beer if they wanted to hold the beer geek’s attention. But then again, after the InBev merger most beer geeks turned their eyes to this piece of good news: with AnheuserBusch’s sale, the largest Americanowned brewery has become the Boston Beer Company, not only the owner of Sam Adams, but a craft brewing pioneer.

All Hopped up appears every other Thursday in the Mind&Body section. Send your “Wazzaaaaaa’s” to Joe at allhoppedup@gmail.com.

Culture

The McGill Daily, Thursday, October 30, 2008

Till dreams do us part Latest Deepa Mehta film presents the cultural imagination as a coping mechanism for abuse Caitlin Manicom

The McGill Daily

W

hen was the last time a film gave adequate voice to the trauma of domestic abuse, or the isolation that often accompanies immigration? Deepa Mehta’s Heaven on Earth elegantly mixes both issues, throwing in a touch of magic realism for good measure.

The film opens with a surprising burst of gaiety. Brightly clad women dance and clap across the screen, enveloping the audience in the jubilant wedding ceremony of a young Punjabi woman. Chand, the enthusiastic bride-to-be – played

by Bollywood darling Preity Zinta – flashes her trademark dimpled smile even as she leaves India behind to meet her new husband.

Having changed into appropriate Indian wedding garb in the cramped airplane washroom, Chand arrives in Brampton, Ontario eager to begin her

new life – until her reticent husband slaps the girlish grin off of her face.

Indian-born Canadian director Deepa Mehta is best known for her feminist filmmaking. Two of her films, Water – about an eight-year-old widow who is sent to live in an ashram – and Fire – which has lesbian themes – caused violent public outcry in India. Mehta, however, is optimistic that the universality of Heaven on Earth will make it better received.

“It’s obvious that it’s not a religious or cultural issue; it’s a social issue. Wife bashing is universal,” says Mehta.

Mehta was inspired to make the film after hearing about Mona Gill, a Punjabi woman who had the courage to leave an abusive husband and joined the police force to combat domestic violence. Since then, Mehta has talked with scores of abused women.

“I met a lot of women – in shelters, through friends…friends would say ‘you know this woman, my hairdresser’s sister – she gets the shit

beaten out of her.’ It was fascinating how many women were willing to talk because they often don’t talk.

That itself is shocking. You know that you get beaten and somehow feel that you deserve it and that you’re responsible,” Mehta laments in her husky, impassioned voice.

Chand’s story and her inability to communicate reflects many of these women’s tales. She arrives in a strange country, and, though she has a university degree, finds herself forced to work at a laundry factory.

All of the wages she earns go directly to her husband, and she accepts the cruelty of her mother-in-law and husband for a lack of other options.

Still, the director is careful not to simplify or sensationalize; Chand’s bruises aren’t the only spectres that haunt the family home.

“People says it’s a film about domestic violence, but that’s being simplistic,” Mehta says. “It’s also about isolation, about how we absolutely, totally, and completely are unaware of our responsibility once we get the immigrants over, what happens to them, what they go through – it’s like, ‘hands off.’”

Just as the victim suffers, the vic-

timizer also undergoes traumatic experiences. In Rocky’s case, having to be the primary breadwinner for seven people – driving an airport limousine for a living – breeds his resentment and aggression.

Repeated cuts from grainy colour scenes to black and white shots jarringly illustrate the isolation that an immigrant like Rocky faces, as he stands at Niagara Falls, faces government bureaucracy, or finds himself with a stranger for a wife. Movement between colour-coded scenes also draws us into a fluctuating reality and the magical world of Chand’s only saving grace: her imagination.

When makeup can no longer conceal Chand’s injuries, her Jamaican coworker Rosa presents her with a magic root that is designed to make Rocky fall in love with her. Here, cultural imaginations collide, and Chand takes solace in the story of Naga Mandala, an Indian play derived from a folk tale in which a snake, in the form of a husband, comforts a miserable wife. When a cobra in Rocky’s form begins to visit Chand, the audience sees an eerily different side of the abusive husband and a Jekylland-Hyde dichotomy emerges.

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Courtesy of Dusty Mancinelli

This imaginative, magical duality is pivotal to Mehta.

The Rocky that Chand invents – the “good Rocky” – embodies what her husband could be, the director said. “It helped me focus on the victimizer being the victim and on the incredible power of imagination,” Mehta explains. “What do we do when we have no recourse? Some people have long conversations with God and nobody questions that – whether it’s an invisible God, or a God in a book or a God on a cross…Chand creates this world to help herself.”

Heaven On Earth ends on an ambiguous note: Chand shuts the door on Rocky, and we’re left wondering if she will survive alone in this hostile country. “Once the door opens and closes on Rocky, it’s finished,” she adds. “If Chand can do this, she can do anything – it would be redundant to show her hailing a cab or saying ‘take me to the airport’ or ‘take me to Rosa’s house.’”

“What is it that we all want more than anything? We want freedom.

Freedom of choice,” explains Mehta.

“I gave her what I think is the most important – I gave my character the ability to walk out.”

Culture

The McGill Daily, Thursday, October 30, 2008

New takes on urban dystopia

PART ONE OF THREE

Three photographers’ nostalgia for Montreal’s red-light district

Nicolas Boisvert-Novak The McGill Daily

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Sasha Plotnikova/ The McGill Daily

Irish or Chinese: does it have to be a choice?

More than the sum of her parts Emily Clare explores her mixed ethnicity

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lease check one of the following options: Caucasian, Asian, Hispanic, African-Canadian, Other. Well, I’m half-Chinese and half-Irish Canadian, so I guess that would make me an “other.” What does this otherness mean? This last weekend, my mother – the source of my Chinese roots – came to visit and we delved into the topic of my ethnic and racial identity.

My ethnicity has always been one of my greatest points of distinction and pride – though, to be perfectly honest, I don’t fully understand what it means to be a person of mixed race, a hapa, a halfie, an “other.” Identity is rather intangible, especially to those who do not explicitly fit into a category. How can we decide who or what we are?

Interestingly, my mother’s personal experience of interracial marriage was not the first in her family.

She grew up hearing a story of her great-uncle’s white mistress, who became pregnant with his child.

Although the facts are not completely clear, the story goes that, while he was away on a business trip, the locals raped and burnt her to death.

This story happened a hundred years ago, and while it may be an extreme example, it illustrates the hate and fear associated with cultural intermingling.

Today, things have changed; it is no longer unusual in Canada to be mixed. But even with this evolution, my mother still feels that race

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has had an effect on my sister’s and my upbringing. Biologically speaking, race may not exist, but the social construct is very real for those who are affected by it.

Although my parents weren’t treated differently, there was an acknowledgment of difference; people often assume that relationships will stick within a racial group. “Of course race matters,” my mother said. “When I walked down the street with your father, people could see the difference.” My grandmother even advised her to “marry a Korean, or a Japanese, but not a white guy. At least you can’t tell the difference.” “It was easier for her to deal with,” my mother said. In this assumption, race is confused with culture.

Nonetheless, my mother wanted to emphasize that it was never a racial difference that led to my parents’ divorce.

“Your father and I differ culturally, religiously, economically, and academically.” They are consistently contrasting individuals, which undeniably led to their divorce but also to my childhood, littered with an eclectic mix of experiences. My mother came from a rich merchant family and my father came from a workingclass Irish-Canadian family. Each class has its respective approach and interpretation to life – in other words, its own culture. My mother would say, “You should never marry a man with a bamboo door if you have a wooden door.”

In many ways, being Chinese was the same as being white for me, in that I never fully thought that I was different from the other kids in my class. I was part of the dominant culture in my mind; my mixed heritage seemed as authentic as my friends’ Ukrainian or German heritage.

There was no conflict in cutting down Christmas trees and receiving red envelopes for Chinese New Year.

Being a halfie was a means to distinguish myself when I was younger.

I saw it as a secret power that would allow me to use chopsticks “authentically” and eat chickens’ feet without qualms.

My mother does feel that I have lost a significant level of Chinese culture. My sister and I do not speak Chinese and, unfortunately, we have limited interaction with our Chinese family. Ironically, though, while I am considered White in Hong Kong, I am seen more Asian by most in Canada.

My identity cannot be reduced to my mixed background. It’s been my parents’ unique perspectives and ideas that have most influenced my development as an individual – and these aren’t always tied to race and ethnicity.

I realized that they never saw me as a halfie. “I just see you as my daughters,” my mother said. “In the end, you have features that are me and you have features that are definitely from your father.”

graph taken with a pinhole camera – subtly captures the essence of the locale, as fortunate details such as the spectres of cop cars fill the monochromatic void. And as gimmicky as these pinhole cameras sound, one can’t deny Glorieux’s adept use of the technique as he pushes the idea of urban dystopia to an uncomfortable extreme.

No surprises, then, that his collaborators’ contributions are comparatively underwhelming. First glances at Szilasi’s slice-of-life photography, for instance, won’t yield much more than recollection of familiar sights.

But impressionism isn’t the point here. Comprised of two colour photographs flanked by three black and whites, his take on the corner is one held together by juxtaposition – the latter photos’ unending blandness contrasting the formers’ serene beauty. It’s a trick Szilasi makes able use of, revealing how our beloved Montreal re-appropriates depravity, turning it into another colourful, jagged piece of its sprawl.

Still, as far as takes on urban dilapidation go, perhaps Szilasi’s comes across as a bit too optimistic.

ommon sense dictates that one not dole out disclaimers in lieu of hooks, but – six-credit class midterms being what they are – I don’t feel I have a choice here. Consider yourself warned: the following article contains no interviews, and was written by a man whose whole understanding of photography was afforded by a Wikisearch for “camera” that slid into snuff pornography within five short minutes.

My apologies.

But please, don’t stop reading – to our mutual benefit, my cluelessness isn’t an obstacle here. The fact is that “Le Coin” – an understated photo exposition of Montreal’s redlight district, on display at Le Monument National Szilasi reveals how until mid-December – is our beloved Montreal less an art gallery than an exercise in public conre-appropriates depravity, sciousness. Meaning: your turning it into another colourful, appreciation of it won’t jagged peice of its sprawl benefit from erudition as much as from a lifetime spent in the city. Really, all that these photos demand of us is a shared, unconditional love for Montreal and its How fortunate, then, that all excessdingy, fragmented ghetto: the es in that direction find themselves brutally offset by Donovan’s ribald Faubourg St-Laurent.

It’s a part of town that the three point-of-view shots of a strip-club’s artists whose work is displayed here interiors.

Both uncomfortably subversive (Gabor Szilasi, Guy Glorieux, and Mia Donovan) are in an apt position and sexual, Donovan’s voyeuristic to expose. As longtime residents of depiction of a depraved peep-show Montreal, they witnessed the city paints women as both delicate beings evolve, its once prominent street and commoditized toys. Taking the corners slowly resigning themselves point of view of a customer making to the effacing motions of gentrifica- his way through those aseptic stairtion. And while each artist uses this ways and halls, these photos afford history to make sense of the decay, us a look into an environment few of their vastly different approaches – us dare step into sober, let alone get one impressionistic, another docu- off in.

Yet bleak as the scenery may be, mentarian, and the last, defiantly feminine – afford us three nuanced Donovan nevertheless manages to views of this shithole we often dis- capture these women in an oddly empowered, dignified state. And miss.

Not that you could tell that from considering the things they’re sharGlorieux’s powerfully abstract land- ing space with – blood-red walls, scape photography. Rather than plasticized caricatures of themselves, simply scraping the dirt off the and intricate sex toys – that’s quite street, “St-Laurent, Ste-Catherine” the achievement.

But all that said, “Le Coin” washes it out in a sea of photonegative blacks and whites, transforming probably won’t make me visit the this sullied neighbourhood into a Faubourg any more often than I ever sprawling piece of post-apocalyptic have – that is, rarely. But if my general aversion to decrepitude lingered geometry.

It’s a wonderfully simple piece, after the exposition, at least there one that exhumes desolation with to complement it was a newfound unusual grace. Accidental by nature, appreciation for Montreal’s more this sténopé –a long-exposure photo- notorious shitholes.

“

14 Culture

The McGill Daily, Thursday, October 30, 2008

Celebrity skinned Deconstructing fame through collage at Mile End gallery

Stefan Campbell Culture Writer

I

t is pouring outside when I arrive at the Celebrity Monster Makeover workshop at articule, a self-declared artist-run centre on Fairmount and Jeanne-Mance. Upon entering, I am enthusiastically greeted by one of articule’s members, who tells me that she didn’t expect anyone to come by on such a terrible day.

Most of the people already in the centre are affiliated with articule, and plan and organize the events held at the gallery. They seemed extremely happy to have someone from outside of their group stop by, and they led me to a table covered with magazines from which I was told to choose a celebrity image to distort. I immediately went for a magazine spread about Scarlett Johansson and chose a couple of images to use as a starting point.

In an age of art collectives and home-grown creativity, articule is a well-established centre for displaying works by up-and-coming artists and encouraging artistic expression in the Montreal community. The members of the art centre put a lot of emphasis on the process of creation, as shown through their dedication to offering workshops and other events that focus on stimulating artistic discussion and creation.

Especially in a neighbourhood as student- and artist-friendly as the Mile End, having a gallery whose mission is to facilitate the creation of art is a great step toward the

democratization of art presentation.

Articule does not look down upon artists with little experience and holds no elitist view of art as something only attained by so-called “masters.”

The workshop this past Saturday was inspired by the art that is currently on exhibition in articule’s gallery space. Emily Bennett Beck’s “in reverie, in sympathy” is a study of transgressing artistic and mental boundaries in celebrity portraiture.

With her grotesque, exaggerated paintings of popular figures such as Hillary Clinton, Beck hopes to push our perception to the point where we see her art as “uncomfortably intense.” The workshop aimed to use the art of photo montage to explore similar themes, by transposing magazine clippings over the original celebrity image in order to distort the image according to the artist’s own view of celebrity.

Back at the workshop, one member presents a slideshow of several different types of photo montage.

There was big focus on the art of Terry Gilliam, a member of Monty Python who famously designed all of the collage-based cartoons between segments in Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Gilliam uses old photographs, along with illustration, to create biting political satire alongside simple bathroom humour.

The duality of articule as a place for presentation of art as well as for facilitation of art creation is the reason that so many members are enthusiastic about the events going on at the centre. Even on a rainy day like

last Saturday, dedicated artists trekked through the rain in order to get involved in this workshop.

Among the participants is one eccentric artist who moved from Vancouver to pursue a career in art, although she explains that she finds other gallery spaces in Montreal as “too elitist” and “stifling” for her art.

Another visitor is a high school art teacher from the neighbourhood who attends many articule events in order to get ideas for her own high school class. She comments on the lack of art education in Montreal schools – which I’m sure we can all sympathize with, as students at McGill. What started as an artistic discussion became a conversation about the politics of “getting art out there.” Luckily, initiatives like articule’s Saturday workshop combat artistic elitism by making creativity Stefan Campbell for The McGill Daily increasingly accessible to all.

Piecing together a pastiche of Scarlett Johansson

Crash and burn The calculated rise and fall of the Germs’ Darby Crash Ryan MacKellar Culture Writer

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arby Crash had a troubled childhood. His mother was a negligent alcoholic, the man he thought was his biological father left the family, and his brother died of a drug overdose. Crash was a fan of nihilist philosophies – especially Nietszche. He dyed his hair blue to separate himself from his peers because he “wanted to experience what it would be like to be the only

black kid at a white school.” That day, he says, he lost all his friends.

What We Do Is Secret, a posthumous biopic directed by Rodger Grossman, depicts the rise of Darby Crash (Shane West) as the frontman for the Germs, a band that emerged out of the late seventies punk rock scene in L.A. It is done in a fauxdocumentary style, with numerous fictional interviews throughout the film in order to give a variety of perspectives on the band and Crash’s mystifying persona. Often, the characters featured in interviews gave little insight, resorting mostly to clichés about the band.

The film follows a typical storyline in many ways, depicting a breakthrough artist’s rise to fame, followed by his descent into heavy drug use and general self-destruction.

However, Crash’s many humourous

antics give the film an often funny and light-hearted tone. At their disastrous first show, he dumps a bag of flour on a group of naysayers. Indeed, West manages to portray Crash’s human side in a way that allows the audience to understand the man inside this hardened, punkrock exterior.

Central to Crash’s vision for the Germs is a “five-year plan” for attaining punkrock infamy. His bizarre idea involves the recruitment of band members who aren’t actually musicians to play gigs, incite riots, fan the hype, and only then learn to play their musical instrument. However, Crash’s strategy is not entirely lacking in seriousness, and his character is made all the more compelling by his musical passion. For a pro-fascist, nihilist punk

rock singer, he is certainly a careerist, announcing in one faux-interview that, “I have a very, very set idea of what I want to get done and how I’m going to do it. And I need people to help me do it.”

His band members are Lorna

“

I have a very, very set idea of what I want to get done and how I’m going to do it – Darby Crash Frontman, the Germs Doon, Pap Smear, and Don Bolle – all names Crash himself chose. Their relationship with him is often tumultuous; they switch roles from bandmates to concerned friends after Crash’s incessant drug use becomes a source of strife. Despite these ten-

sions, he is often affectionate and appreciative of his band members for all their help in fulfilling his musical vision. This general authenticity is well displayed throughout the film and makes Crash genuinely likeable.

Yet despite these warm-hearted moments, the film is unable to get inside Crash’s tortured soul. There is scant attention paid to some of his more troubling characteristics, such as his incessant drug use, self-mutilation, sexual confusion, and his deliberate drug overdose after the band’s final show. His suicide, his desired ending for the five-year plan, perhaps, is overshadowed by the assassination of John Lennon. As Crash lays dying, his band members are watching news coverage of Lennon’s assassination; the final misfortune of Crash’s life – and his chance to become a musical icon – is snatched away by fate.

Culture

Jason Karmody savours urban sprawl at Namur metro

Bursting the bubble

G

rab your metro tickets and pocket your Opus card – it’s time to head to the Namur metro. Poised well outside the McGill bubble, this metro calls for 11 hops, skips, and jumps in the direction of CôteVertu.

If you left your Etch-a-Sketch at home, fear not – there’s plenty to do on the way there. First off, you can try figuring out how to pronounce Namur. Namoor?

How about Namerrr? Narnia?

Maybe not quite, but by the time you’ve switched over from the green line to the orange line at Lionel-Groulx, you might feel like you’ve stepped through a wardrobe.

Arriving at the station, take in the classic red-brown tiling as you make your way to the main attraction: a floating honeycomb of

metal beams forged together as some sort of artistic deathtrap.

Branded ʻLe Systèmeʼ by its sculptor, Montrealer Pierre Granche, this geometric wonder entices you up and out of the station.

Bam! Into the light of day. The streets of Namur offer much to admire. In the distance, the haze of a huge red sphere also catches the eye – what might it be? First and foremost though, food must be found – cheaply, as the student in you demands.

Gravitating toward a Harvey’s, make note of the resto-bar a few feet away. It’s cleverly called Pub Paré, and not-so-cleverly uses its restaurant as a front for a racier operation. Sexe d’Or Danseuses, a large neon sign proclaims overhead.

Namur is centred in a suburban layaway, but looking beyond

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the area’s diner joints offers a glimpse of treasures, like the department-store-sized Fabricville and Ruby Foo’s Hôtel – an upscale, Japanese-inspired block of modern apartment-style rooms.

Here’s where you make a choice: do you take a gamble and venture further into suburbia, or head for the middle-of-the-intersection bonanza? Wandering toward the road brings you closer to the strange red sphere on the horizon, as well as a gigantic McDonald’s play area. Turning right at Ruby Foo’s onto Rue Paré leads you to what looks like an everyday street. But it’s not – and that’s because Pushap is there.

Nestled deep in the suburban wilds of Namur metro territory, Indian vegetarian restaurant Pushap seems like a questionable

eatery at first glance.

Upon entering, though, a colourful display of Indian sweets, an abundance of patrons, and some tasty scents provide ample reason to stay.

Fake flowers stand in semiclean vases and chipped tables are full of a mixed clientele who masticate as cheery Indian music plays on the stereo. Scents of curry, and fried deliciousness, waft by tantalizingly. The service is abominably slow, but the menu presents economically viable options for even the tightest budget. When the food arrives, the portions are good and the taste is even better.

Weaving toward the mysterious red orb once seen from

afar, you find yourself again at an odd crossroads. Sixties music blares from a speaker just in front of the giant red ball that hides an old-fashioned diner within. This restaurant – the Gibeau Orange Julep – serves a unique drink of orange juice and vanilla ice cream. Step the other way, modernity shines brightly in the glass windows of an enormous McDonald’s.

Whether you’re lovin’ it or not, take comfort in knowing that the safe haven of the Namur metro is close at hand.

Ethan Landy for The McGill Daily

Compendium!

The McGill Daily, Thursday, October 30, 2008

Lies, Half-truths, & Penises that look like mushrooms

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Blueprints of fabled HMB statue uncovered Marcus Vitu

The McGill Daily

A

fter a series of tense phone calls and aborted rendezvous, I was finally able to secure this rough sketch detailing the initial vision behind the now fabled Heather Munroe-Blum Freedom Statue.

According to one high-ranked Shatner building security guard, among the design firms approached for the project included the famous Jacques Rockefellier firm, known for their work on the Grand Canyon.

“I heard them mentioning terraforming, and the guy was wearing this black turtle neck and had a really bad french accent,” the security guard said.

Among the themes considered paramount to the statue are “McGillness, wind, hats, and love of money.”

When asked why the statue’s plans were so quickly scrapped, my source exclaimed, “Dude, I really don’t know – it seemed like a great idea! But I think Heather didn’t want to be shat on.” [Ed’s note: see Figure A.] Recent rumours showed that McGill was going to spend $20,000 on the statue, equivalent to about one full-time international students’ tuition and fees – which is apparently the University’s new base currency.

Marcus Vitu / The McGill Daily

The blueprint for the HMB statue, looking eerily like our friend James.

Once upon a time, a rat crossed the road.

It was neither large or small, and resembled a toad.

When it heard this out loud, the rat thought it’d gone mad.

“Rats can’t be towed, only cars can,” the rat said.

Consider that myth debunked.

Angel Chen for The McGill Daily

compendium@mcgilldaily.com Josh Chapman / The McGill Daily

Figure A: Bird shits on statue.

Angel’s illustrations appear every other Thursday. This week, she takes a look at males, mushrooms, and penises. You can ask her why at angelclchen@gmail.com.