vol98iss4

Volume 98, Issue 4

September 11, 2008

McGill THE

DAILY

In it for the food since 1911

Reclaim your campus sticks it to the admin NEWS 3 COMMENT 13

Cowboys and Indians STORY 11 Pirates of the Lachine Canal CULTURE 15

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News

The McGill Daily, Thursday, September 11, 2008

Students unite to take back campus

3

Bike protestors flow against traffic in support of prioritizing cyclists’ right to ride

Olga Redko

The McGill Daily

A

ttempting to highlight the McGill administration’s encroachment on student autonomy, the Reclaim Your Campus campaign kicked off with an energized protest at both the Roddick and Milton Gates yesterday.

The campaign launch, orchestrated by SSMU in coordination with several other student groups, was intended to highlight what SSMU hopes will be a year-long campaign to reverse students’ continual loss of rights.

According to SSMU VP External Devin Alfaro, there are numerous groups on campus that are concerned about the administration’s stance on reducing student space and independence.

“It’s time to unite as many people as possible in a unified voice,” Alfaro said. “This event aims to speak for lots of people.”

Other issues raised included the need for a democratically elected Board of Governors, compensation for the Teaching Assistants (TA), a contract for MUNACA – the union representing non-academic workers at McGill – and a prioritization of student needs in general.

In reference to the TA strike last semester, Richard Hink, president of the Association of

Graduate Students Employed at McGill (AGSEM), noted that while the union is currently fighting to receive withheld wages from the spring, it also wished to address the broader problem of student marginalization at McGill.

“We are...fighting alongside other campus groups to reaffirm McGill as a community instead of the corporation it is becoming,” Hink said in a press release.

Disgruntled students set out on foot from Roddick Gates toward the James Administration building as Critical Mass, a Montreal bike organization, which pushes for bikers’ rights in the city, gathered about 15 cyclists at the Milton Gates to join the main protestors.

The bike protest was supported

by McGill’s Quebec Public Interest Research Group whose external coordinator, Indu Vashist, said that the demonstration was meant to draw attention to a recent undervaluing of bike culture at the University. “[The administration’s] line was that they are interested in student safety, and while I completely agree that students should be safe on campus...cars have been given priority on the road rather than students,” Vashist said.

Critical Mass deliberately chose to ride past the security guards against the McGill-approved one-way flow of traffic by the Macdonald Engineering

Shu Jiang for The McGill Daily

Students carried protest banners to the James Administration building, drawing attention to their demands.

Nadya Wilkinson, SSMU VP University Affairs, noted that several people have been seriously injured by bike riders on campus, and added that it is incredibly dangerous for cyclists coming from Montreal’s Milton bike path to speed through campus.

Wilkinson acknowledged that although there has been talk of putting a bike lane through campus,

building. Students involved pointed to the administration’s misplaced importance to cars, the lack of a bike lane through campus, and an inadequate amount of bike parking available to students.

There has been concern expressed that permitting bikers to move against the traffic pattern particularly during campus construction is dangerous to students and cyclists alike.

such a scenario is unlikely because it would require the removal of parking spaces. Parking fees were recently increased by 30 per cent in order to provide more funding for McGill’s Office of Sustainability, which would lose funding if spaces were removed.

“It would just be safest to separate cars, bikes, and people,” Wilkinson said.

The Cooperstock controversy: professor’s allegations cast doubt on academic integrity Matthias Lalisse News Writer

A

McGill professor’s broadcast last week of the University’s questionable exoneration of two students who he charged with plagiarism has ignited skepticism about McGill’s investment in academic integrity.

Jeremy Cooperstock, associate professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, accused two students in his 2007 Artificial Intelligence course of collaborating on two independent computer programming assignments, which violates departmental and University policies on academic integrity. Cooperstock failed both students for the assignments and the course and forwarded the matter to a disciplinary officer – as per University policy. Each student met individually with the disciplinary officer, who reversed Cooperstock’s assessment and awarded the students passing marks.

Outraged by the decision, Cooperstock accused McGill’s system for academic discipline as being

a bureaucratic organization that excludes professors from the disciplinary process.

“The malevolence and incompetence of our administration [caused them]...to usurp what should be the professor’s role in the University,” Cooperstock said.

But according to Morton Mendelson, Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning), professorial involvement in discipline cases is problematic, and McGill’s disciplinary structures shield both students and professors from what can become a highly adversarial process.

“The professor is not a prosecutor,” Mendelson said. “The instructor or the professor has no recourse, because that’s where the matter ends,” he added.

According to the University’s academic discipline system, a disciplinary officer will cease to interact with the professor upon receiving their report, provided there are no follow-up questions. The officer considers the context and mitigating factors, meets with the student and allows them to present his or her side of the story.

In rare instances, the issue is referred to a disciplinary committee, where the professor may be called to participate. According to a Senate report, over 99 per cent of academic offences in 2006-2007 were resolved by a sole disciplinary officer.

Cooperstock – threatened with legal action by one of the accused students, who has since graduated – said that he finds small comfort in the protective measures that remove the professor from the process. He argued that bureaucratic roadblocks actually exacerbate adversarial situations.

“The professor and the student can no longer have a one-on-one discussion, as I’ve done in the past,” Cooperstock said.

On a CBC radio broadcast last Thursday, Mendelson defended the University’s policy, upholding the disciplinary officer’s decision to pass the students.

“Someone is given the authority to make a decision, the decision is made, and that’s the end of it,” Mendelson said.

He refused to comment specifically on Cooperstock’s case.

According to Cooperstock, McGill’s behaviour with plagiarism cases is a chronic problem that may have grave effects on the University’s reputation.

On his web site Degrading McGill that he launched this year, Cooperstock chronicles a history of what he deems unfairly handled cases of academic integrity at the University. Citing two cases in 1997 and 2004 when the University too lightly handled cases

“

The only real solution to fix this is to go revolution style.

– Jeremy Cooperstock Associate McGill Engineering Professor of academic integrity, Cooperstock questioned how lenient repercussions for academic offenses will influence McGill’s reputation as a leading Canadian university.

In each case, Cooperstock claimed that the administration was too lenient with students, and undercut its professors’ decisions.

“What the administration has done is develop this large infrastructure of rules and regulations that create a system that is more than a court,” said Cooperstock. “Yet here, the accuser is shutout of the process so that I do not know whether my assessment of plagiarism is being upheld by the administration.”

Cooperstock said that he has received overwhelming support for his critique of the disciplinary system from other faculty members and is moving forward with proposals to overhaul the process, despite a hostile administration that has repeatedly brushed him off.

“I think openness and transparency are mandatory in order to restore some credibility and faith in the system. These things, if not addressed soon, are going to result in McGill losing its prestigious reputation as a top university,” Cooperstock said.

“I agree with my colleagues who say that the only real solution to fix this is to go revolution-style. Not necessarily Louis XIV days with the guillotine, but certain people should be pushed out the door.”

News

The McGill Daily, Thursday, September 11, 2008

5

Political group intrudes on private Villanueva vigil James Albaugh

The McGill Daily

A

private vigil planned by friends and family Tuesday to honour slain teenager Freddy Villanueva was disrupted by demonstrators who learned of the event through a press release from Mères et Grand-mères pour la Vie et la Justice.

The Villaneuva family rejected the presence of the press and demonstrators at the vigil.

Demonstrators attempted to join the 50 friends and family members gathered by the Villaneuvas at HenriBourassa Park in Montreal North where the teenager was killed on August 9.

In their press release, Mères et Grand-mères pour la Vie et la Justice, a collective formed in the wake of Villanueva’s death, claimed “We are all Freddy’s mother.”

During the vigil, the family issued a statement through their press agent Victor Henriquez, denying affiliation with the Mères et Grand-mères pour la Vie et la Justice or any group attempting to politicize their son’s death.

“The family is not supporting any group, they are waiting for the investigation to take further steps,” Henriquez said.

Community groups like Montreal North Republik have organized around Villanueva’s death to push for a public inquiry into his shooting, the resignation of the mayor of the bor-

ough, and the end of police brutality in the area. Groups under the banner Defendons Montreal North are planning to stage a demonstration on October 11 denouncing police brutality in their neighborhood.

Culture X Choir, a Montreal North community choir, performed hiphop song “When Men Will Live from Love” at the vigil.

“We practice in the community centre right here, so when we heard about this [the vigil] we decided to come out and show our support,” said Don Harley, co-director of the choir.

After the performance, friends and family silently lit candles at the base of a tree, a memorial for Villanueva covered with garlands and photos was created by members of the community in the wake of his death.

The intimate vigil contrasts Montreal North riots triggered by the shooting. A prolonged public debate over whether unresolved issues of class and race in the area caused the tragedy has also developed recently.

“When you hear about poverty, and racism, people always point to Montreal North. But it’s a universal problem,” Harley said.

The vigil was held one month to the day after the 18-year old Montreal North resident – known to peers as Pipo – was killed by Montreal police.

Mères et Grand-mères pour la Vie et la Justice was unavailable for comment.

– With files from Josh Chapman

Josh Chapman / The McGill Daily

Villanueva’s mother (centre) huddles with Montreal North activist in front of a memorial for her slain son.

ELECTION 2008

Students tepid about new loan system Alison Withers

The McGill Daily

T

he Canadian government’s overhaul of the federal student loan and bursary program is not adequately addressing student ability to repay their loans, some student groups say.

The reform will not make education affordable to young Canadians, said Julian Benedict, co-founder of the Coalition for Student Loan Fairness, a Vancouver-based organization that pushes for student loan program reform.

“If we continue to have an extension [for repayment] without interest [rate] cuts, students will end up paying much more interest in the long term,” Benedict said.

Stressing the importance of decreasing interest rates, he added, “It’s admirable that they’re trying to reform, but they forgot the most important part.”

The Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP), aims to help students success-

fully repay their loans by allowing a five year grace period – during which students can apply for an exemption from loan payments. In the plan, announced in this spring’s federal budget and slated for introduction next August, the government pledges to pay the balance on student loans remaining 15 years after graduation.

The plan also caps payments to 20 per cent of income and exempts those earning less than $20,000 from loan payments all together.

According to government figures, the RAP – that replaces the 25-yearold Interest Relief and ten-year-old Debt Reduction programs – will greatly reduce the monthly amounts students having difficulty making payments on time owe the government.

Zach Churchill, National Director of Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (CASA), was pleased that the program took strides toward improving repayment, but said that it was not the answer to student debt in the country.

“Interest rates will actually double students’ debt over the course of

ten years,” he claimed. “It’s an insurmountable amount of debt.... The government needs to hammer down those rates.”

The interest rate on federal loans issued under the RAP greatly exceeds that of provincial loans. Federal loans have an interest rate of 2.5 per cent above prime – the rates the banks charge their best customers – while Ontario charges prime plus one per cent and Quebec charges prime plus 0.5 per cent. Over the maximum 15-year repayment plan, this would increase the total interest paid on a $20,000 federal loan by $5,000.

Complicating repayment further, applications for loans and bursaries in Canada stretch over provincial and federal systems. In some provinces, students apply for an integrated federal-provincial loan; in others, they apply for two loans – one federal and one provincial; and in Quebec, the federal government contributes indirectly to provincial loans through transfer payments to the Quebec government.

Benedict said he was disappointed that the program did not establish

an ombudsperson for students to turn to in repayment crisis. “[Students] just face a huge bureaucracy that is ultimately indifferent,” he said.

In addition to the federal government’s reform of repayment structures, it also recently modified its student grants programs.

Along with RAP’s announcement in this spring’s budget, the Conservatives decided not to renew the expiring Millenium Scholarship Foundation, a grant program introduced in 1998 by Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chrétien that awarded 95 per cent of its student bursaries based on merit. It said the program was not demonstrably increasing enrollment or providing a stable source of funding. In its stead, the government introduced the Canada Student Grants, which gives grants to those with low and medium incomes.

Churchill was glad the government had committed to keep directing money to student grants, but would have preferred that student

financial aid be based on need. “[The programs] are not looking at those with higher needs,” he said.

“There’s been a fundamental shift on how loans are distributed; it doesn’t answer the problem.”

Churchill added that high interest rates on student loan repayment and appropriate student grant distribution were key election points for students.

Katherine Giroux-Bougart, the National Chairperson for Canadian Federation of Students, saw the grant program as more accountable.

“Since the grants program is administered by Canada Student Loans, it will be accountable to the government,” she said.

Giroux-Bougart said that there was still more the program could be addressing.

“Ideally, every student who has needs or qualifies would get a full amount in grant money,” she said.

The government department that administers the federal loan, grant, and repayment systems, declined comment due to the federal election.

MCGILLDAILY.COM MCGILLDAILY.COM MCGILLDAILY.COM

News

The McGill Daily, Thursday, September 11, 2008

Festival remembers Griffintown, a neighbourhood on the brink

7

Ming Lin / The McGill Daily

Erin Hale

The McGill Daily

M

ontrealers this weekend will celebrate the history and culture of Griffintown – a neighbourhood awaiting demolition slated for next year.

“Remember Griffintown,” a three University Television (CUTV day festival organized by Concordia), will include a walking tour, a scavenger hunt, film screenings, art, and live music.

Paul Alfalo, a coordinator of the event, insisted that “Remember

Griffintown” was conceived as a cultural, rather than political, event.

“Most Montrealers have heard of Griffintown but 90 per cent of them don’t know where it is,” he said. “[There’s] so much talk...but you shouldn’t pass judgement before you know about it.”

A century ago, Griffintown – located in Southwest Montreal – was a working-class Irish neighbourhood, but it fell into decline when the city rezoned the area as industrial during the 1960s. The neighbourhood was revived recently when cheap rent attracted artists and musicians.

But with massive redevelopment

planned by a private company with ties to City Hall, the name Griffintown has become synonymous with aggressive gentrification. In town meetings since the proposal was presented, residents and activists predicted that the urban renewal project will permanently change the face of their neighbourhood.

Risa Dickens, a founder of the cultural blog Indyish, one of the sponsors of “Remember Griffintown,” shared residents’ concerns.

“The plan will reduce space for independent stores and bring in big chain stores. Already you see prices going up in Atwater market and new

gentry boutiques,” said Dickens. “It doesn’t make sense when 80 per cent [of Griffintown residents] live below the poverty line – $20,000 or less.”

If Devimco, the company that plans to redevelop the area, acquires 60 per cent of the land within Griffintown, it will have the legal right to break ground. It intends to invest $1.8-billion to raze Griffintown and replace it with a massive complex of condos, townhouses, a lifestyle center, and two mega-malls. No trace of the neighbourhood will remain, except for 12 heritage buildings protected by municipal bylaws.

Dickens was optimistic, however,

that the event would be a positive showcase of the area’s history.

“It’s a show about bringing as much art as possible and getting the community involved,” she said.

“CUTV wanted us to step outside the politics and celebrate, to give an idea of what’s at stake.”

Montreal mayor Gérald Tremblay, and representatives from Devimco have been invited to the festival.

Both CUTV and Richard Burman, the documentary filmmaker who directed Ghosts of Griffintown, will be filming the event.

For detailed listings of festival events, visit remembergriffintown.org.

CURE seeks to pull students out of ivory-tower doldrums Online database links community organizations with university students Kartiga Thiyagarajah News Writer

A

new initiative instituted by Montreal university students is trying to partner community groups in need of research and university students in need of credit.

Through Community-University Research Exchange (CURE), an online database, community groups lacking economic resources and academic connections can post research proposals that will reach student networks.

CURE coordinator Emilie Connolly, U3 Cultural Studies said the initiative allows students to apply

their research skills to practical and beneficial projects.

“It’s a rare thing to get your research direction from a source outside of academia,” Connolly said. “It’s a direct way to contribute to community organizations.”

Through CURE, students can browse a database for projects related to their area of study and then propose a writing term paper or complete an independent study project to their university department for academic credit. Topics vary from research into violence against the deaf in Algeria to mapping indigenous placenames in the greater Montreal area.

According to Connolly, the project, which posts research requests

exclusively from Montreal groups, integrates university students with their surroundings.

“We made a conscious decision to concentrate on local groups so we could remain intimately connected with the students and community groups,” she said.

In keeping with their local focus, CURE hopes to expand by posting bilingual research proposals to make the database accessible to French universities in Montreal.

The non-profit, student-run initiative was born out of this year’s Study and Action conference, an annual meeting run through McGill and Concordia’s branches of the Quebec Public Interest Research Group (QPIRG) that seeks ways of

integrating university programs and social justice organizations such as Solidarity Across Borders and the Committee to Support Abdelkader Belaouni.

At the conference it became clear during panel discussions that community groups’ greatest need is often research, an area well-suited to student contribution.

“We realized that there was a concrete way to fortify links between academics, students, and activists,” Connolly wrote in an email to The Daily.

CURE coordinators took their initial cues from activists at SimonFraser University in Vancouver that introduced a similar project at their University that has since become

widely successful.

For now CURE is bypassing official collaboration with the University administration, instead choosing to offer research ideas and work directly with interested students and professors.

“We think it’s valuable to go under the radar,” Connolly said.

Although no students have contacted CURE to express interest in posted proposals, Connolly was confident that the initiative will gain momentum when term paper deadlines creep up.

Interested students can visit CURE’s web site at qpirgconcordia. org/cure/node/2, or email cure.mtl@ gmail.com.

– with files from Shannon Kiely

The McGill Daily, Thursday, September 11, 2008

Photo Essay

9

Lotus Land Portland, Oregon

by Joseph Watts

10 Features

Cowboys and Indians

Braden Goyette

(a short story)

T

he wind came blowing down the plains, through the front door and out the back again. There was dust on her skin, grit in her dreams. The trailer glinted small and metallic in the large flat space, a small silver insect pointing to the horizon, clinging low to the ground. It was nestled at the foot of a crest that became the wall of the canyon further to the west. She saw it from above in her sleep, outside of her body, looking down on the shining roof under which she and Daniel lay cramped in their narrow bed.

The wind sent the shirts blowing. Lotte had hung them to dry around the room, over the backs of chairs, at the head and foot of the bed, on hangers dangling from the curtain rod above the one small window. She liked to have them where she could see them. They still had the smell of C&A on them, white sleeveless blouses with low, crisp collars, the kind she’d seen in a film magazine the week before they were set to leave for America – one-way flight out of Frankfurt, no regrets, no turning back.

She went to the department store with all the cash she’d saved that month, and came back with enough to fill her suitcase.

She’d cried out when she saw the trailer, dropped the suitcase in the dust so that it

Ben Peck / The McGill Daily

burst its lock and some of the shirts spilled out. They’d driven an hour out of Santa Fe, in a car they’d acquired the same day their flight touched the ground. The dinged hood glinted in the sun behind them.

This is it, he said, and when she looked around uncertainly: What did you want? A palace?

The bed took up most of their bedroom, though as marriage beds go it was not so large.

Its frame was solid wood, worn smooth as though many hands had passed over it. It called up stories of its previous lives – in motels? in a sanitorium? Not quite wide enough for two people, wide enough to feel empty with just one.

Lotte raised a hand to her face and exhaled into her palm. She touched her forehead and felt the heat seeping out of her skin. She had been dozing. The heat inside held her close in the middle of the day. The light through the curtains filled up the room bright and yellowed like a fruit’s pale inside. The linoleum floor was patterned to match the curtains. The room’s metal walls were painted over, almost white.

She saw Daniel through the window, approaching. His outline grew, swelling up out of the distance with the same steady gait that

she knew from before, his figure bobbing up and down in the unmeasurable space.

He was gone during the day, at the job he didn’t want to talk about. The one at the cattle ranch, the job he’d been dreaming about growing up in the city, watching cowboys and Indians on TV. Lotte got out of bed and went into the kitchen. She set the glass ashtray on the table and straightened it, fastidiously, stepped back and looked at it, self-consciously poised, aware of the line of her neck above the folded collar, the position of her folded arms.

There were things she kept from home: a letter from her brother, a few magazines, a cheap notebook with stiff photographs pasted inside. She read the letter several times, ran her fingers over its creases. It did not say very much, though it was the most communication she’d had from her family in some time.

His handwriting was small and agitated, like he didn’t have enough patience to keep his hand in one place long enough for the words to come out. He relayed news from her parents in an impersonal tone, as if that could prevent it from hurting her. She read it over until it didn’t sting anymore, the way she’d worry a sore until it was numb.

She looked at the window, trying to keep track of Daniel as he got closer. Usually, she didn’t notice him right away, though you could see for miles around on all sides. He seemed to be moving without getting closer. She had the feeling of waiting in her gut, the kind that pulled her through the days.

The rest of the world seemed deceptively far away here. She tried to listen to the radio, but her English was weak, and straining to put herself into the stream of words filled her with a strange irritation – one that got into her legs down to the marrow, that she could feel in her toes. She was relieved when music came patching through, a tinny mariachi band, a crackling pop song. She sat at the small kitchen table, cut-off shorts and garish painted toenails, feet tucked up underneath her on the plastic-covered chair.

Whenever she asked Daniel questions about the ranch, he would only answer: I’ll take care of everything. Just relax.

She would glide around the peeling linoleum floor, waiting. She read her brother’s letter. She smoked. She chewed gum.

She could see the mesa through the window, its flat-topped, dun-coloured rise studded with scraggly vegetation, bushes the deep-green

The McGill Daily, Thursday, September 11, 2008

11

Noelani Eidse / The McGill Daily

colour of pine boughs in the forests back home.

The brilliant blue sky beyond it, the grayed-yellow expanse of brittle grass below, stretching toward the horizon.

There were ridges and ditches running through it, like miniature canyons cut into the earth. Sometimes she walked through them, with sunglasses on and her hair done up high.

She would grow uneasy as soon as she lost sight of the trailer, until the growing tightness in her throat drove her back indoors.

She liked to watch Daniel moving around the small kitchen when he came home at the end of the day. He had a baby face that shone up with perspiration when he drank, some weak facial hair that would not take. She would talk to him in a steady stream as soon as he entered the door, like she was afraid to unlearn it, how to choose words and string them into sentences, control her tone of voice, take the right amount of breaths.

The wedding photo: she’d framed it, a cheap gold-coloured frame from the drugstore downtown. He’d take her to town once a week, in the car she couldn’t drive. It was an old railroad town from the turn of the century that looked partially abandoned now, a main street lined with brick buildings and a certain air of faded ambitions, the bank and the plaza, three diners and a liquor store.

They found the frame at the store on the corner. She slid the picture in, sitting in the passenger seat in the sun, waiting for Daniel to come back from the bank.

There she was, smiling into the camera, a thin nose and bony shoulders, slumped slightly forward in the sequined white dress. Her mouth

was open – joy, surprise. Daniel next to her with his hand around her waist, eyes looking off to the right. This was the reception afterwards, a wooden sideboard behind them, camera flash sparkling off the glass bottles – whiskey, gin, Wurzelschnaps.

Coming back across the parking lot he saw her asleep with her head against the window, looking small and fragile behind the glass.

The plains stretched out on either side of the highway, driving back from town, the sun coming down behind the line of mountains on the horizon. Lotte could hear her aunt’s voice in her mind. She had a habit of starting a conversation and trailing off in the middle. She was nervous of asking questions. Her advice was rote: wash your hair three times a week. Don’t talk back. Don’t smile too much or too little.

She would pick up a magazine, cross her legs, hold her cigarette poised next to her head. She would flip through page-by-page and evaluate the haircuts of everyone inside it.

“No good at all,” she’d say.

“His head is completely square.”

“Makes her look like a pig in a ball gown.”

“Look at that – it’s completely limp!”

“I don’t know what they see in her.”

She’d dressed conservatively the year they met, coming from the white-walled apartment that her mother and aunt shared, where they’d fight and make lists and write up budgets, mend blouses, cook thick soups. Her mother was a war widow, her aunt younger and unmarried. Their voices rose to the ceiling of the small apartment, singing along to the radio, the small one on the mantel in its white plastic case.

She’d see him biking around the neighbourhood, a grin slapped on his boyish face when he’d pass her walking home from school. His hair was combed carefully, a syrupy blond, the colour of honey sitting in a jar. After some time, he’d get off his bike and walk next to her. She’d hated those walks, the way he’d say so little. His silence had something dense at its center that she could sense helplessly but couldn’t touch.

He’d get off work and they’d go out, never getting too close walking down the street, moving in a pack with the kids they knew from school and around the neighbourhood. The way he’d meet her eye when she laughed, like everything was a joke and only they were in on it, smiling at each other conspiratorially over the shoulders of their friends. Looking back, she thought, was it this feeling? Was that why she did it? He wanted to get away from all the bullshit, he said. Meaning all of that: the lists, the magazines. The polite conversation, sitting on the sofa. The dresses and shirts, the radio programs. The haircuts that all looked the same.

They stuck it out in the trailer like that: days apart, nights lying side by side, waiting for things to begin. The days got colder, and the heat gave way to faded autumn. Before long it was December, and Daniel insisted they would have a real tree for Christmas, the kind they’d grown up with, candles and all. He insisted, though it made Lotte anxious. We’re living in a fire-warning zone, she said. This isn’t like home.

But I want this to be like home for you, he said. It snowed that night, and the ground was dusted with a light layer of white that melted

halfway through the next day He came back from work to find her clearing all the dry stuff she could away from the trailer.

The sky was so blue that day, it almost hurt to look at it. He brought the tree in over his shoulder, trying not to look at her. They set it up – it took hours, just getting it upright, putting on the feeble decorations she’d made by hand out of paper and string. Then they sat around the tree nervously. They tried to talk but it felt like they were just waiting, watching the sky get darker, staring at the flimsy tree.

It was strange that he insisted on the tree, since he wanted so badly to leave everything behind. The place that Lotte found traces of in the creased letter, the curling photographs, the smell of a department store she could now barely remember. He was trying hard to grow out his moustache, a golden-brown fuzz to cover his shining face that always looked too young and demanding. They had a few drinks once the tree was illuminated, small points of light that played off the metal walls. Lotte kept pushing her hair behind her ear, the way she did when she was nervous. Daniel sat down next to her.

He started to tell a story. He could retell entire Karl May movies, cowboy and Indian stories from a man who’d never been out West.

And the way he’d tell them, how animated he got, the light in his face, the whites of his eyes.

She barely remembered the stories afterward. Just those expressions, the way the light would sometimes shift and catch him for a moment, and you could still see that face lingering even after the light had moved on.

12 Commentary

The McGill Daily, Thursday, September 11, 2008

Googling myself: how Sana Saeed stole my life

volume 98 number 03

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Shu Jiang le délit

Maysa Phares redaction@delitfrancais.com Contributors

James Albaugh, Josh Chapman, Kelly Ebbels, Noelani Eidse, Laura Gregg, Erin Hale, Shu Jiang, Arjun Kumar, Matthias Lalisse, Ming Lin, Kayley Lins, Camille Mcouat, Charles Mostoller, Sasha Plotnikova, Olga Redko, Jordanna Remz, Kartiga Thiyagarajah, Aaron Vansintjan, Joe Watts, Alex Weisler

Sana Saeed

HYDE PARK

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side from breaking every fiber of idealism and hope within my 5’2’’ body, McGill has constantly forced me to ask, “Where the shit are you going with your life, Sana?” Like many other fellow students deprived of self-esteem, I initially found solace in egoistic endeavors, such as running for AUS and Googling myself – which isn’t as glorious as it sounds. It kind of sucks when you share a name with a former Bollywood child actor, and it’s even worse when the only results that relate to you are from mcgilldaily.com.

It was during my first year that I first ventured toward using search engines for self-discovery. With somewhat of a rare name, I decided to Facebook myself. I had just joined The Book and was naturally curious to find out how many Sana Saeeds existed in the world as determined

by Mark Zuckerberg et al. While the results were minimal, my heart ate itself a little. It’s always a tad annoying to discover that your name is shared by a few other humans. Opposite sex included.

I found comfort in knowing that the other Sana Saeeds were nowhere as interesting as me – most had a question mark beside their name and were from Pakistan. My attention, however, was caught by one particular Sana. She was a striking young woman with jet black hair and a dazzling smile. Her location was listed as Washington D.C., and she was doing her undergrad at Georgetown.

Impressed, I felt shittier about myself and went back to stalking the Australian model from philosophy.

Ben Peck / The McGill Daily

Someone else seemed to have my name and was going to one of the schools I had wanted to go to before I settled on McGill. I didn’t have time for this. While life moved on and I found other ways to satisfy my inverted ego, my mind constantly wandered back to that Georgetown Sana. It would be another year before I found her again.

I did not search for her in particular, but rather was interested in seeing how many more Sana Saeeds had come into existence since Facebook had exploded. The second search showed that the other Sana was now a grad student at George Mason.

Reaching for my ulcer medicine, I vowed that I would never search my name again on Facebook – she was the smart Sana and I was the broken

one. Two dichotomous beings living on the same coast, with the same name, never bound to meet. Oh, how woe became me.

I had completely forgotten about that Sana until a couple of nights ago, when I decided to Google myself again – out of sheer boredom and a bad mark in Introductory Arabic.

Instead of that Bollywood chick, this time one of the first results was my phone number. Sincerely creeped out, I clicked the link which took me to ZoomInfo.com. Lo and behold, there was the glorious face of Sana Saeed. Taken aback, I searched for where my number was located.

Instead, I found out even more about my dear name-sharer. She did her Master’s thesis on “the participation of Muslim women in Peace

Processes and how education can reduce patriarchal discrimination that prevents women from advancing in peace processes and society in the Middle East,” currently works as the outreach coordinator for the American Islamic Congress, started the Middle East Working Group, and is the director of the University Dispute Resolution Project.

There is someone else out there living my life. So what do I do now?

I blame Western liberal individualism for making me feel like shit.

The Sana Saeed who wrote this piece is a U3 Honours Political Science and Middle East Studies student. She asks that all the other real Sana Saeeds please stand up, please stand up.

Canada wins with broadcasters’ reversal The Daily is published on most Mondays and Thursdays by the the Daily Publications Society, an autonomous, not-for-profit organization whose membership includes all McGill undergraduates and most graduate students.

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Danai Reynolds

HYDE PARK

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ast night, the consortium of major Canadian broadcasters reversed its decision to deny Green Party Leader Elizabeth May a spot in the national televised debates.

However, the Conservatives and New Democrats backed the original decision, one which left the Green Party wounded. Prime Minister Stephen Harper had even said he would not appear in the debates if May was invited.

The initial denial – an inexcusable and undemocratic move – was a clear slap in the face to anyone who supports the Green Party and who cares about democracy and freedom of speech in this country. Two separate national polls, one by Harris-Decima

and the Green Party itself, showed that 77 per cent of Canadians wanted to see the Green Party leader included in the debates. Canadian airwaves are publicly owned, and the public spoke loud and clear in wanting to hear more from the Green Party and Elizabeth May. Thankfully, now they will.

The Green Party is the only global political party on the planet with representation in governments all over the world. The Green Party of Canada is a national party, which runs across our entire country – garnering 4.48 per cent of the popular vote in the last federal election – while the Bloc and Reform parties were first invited to the national debates despite never having this level of support.

In a recent interview with the Deputy Leader of the Green Party, Claude William Genest, a WestmountVille–Marie candidate in the upcom-

ing general election, I asked him for his opinion on May’s exclusion.

Genest replied, “The Climate Crisis is also a crisis of the dysfunctional and gridlocked climate in Parliament. It is a crisis of democracy. The most important issues of our day are being excluded from public debate by a cabal of non-elected network executives. Ask yourselves, ‘Why?’ What are they so afraid of?”

The Green Party receives federal funding from Canadian taxpayers.

Therefore, the 1.5 million people who support and fund our party should not be prevented from hearing what we have to say during the most critical campaign event of an election: the debates.

Canada was founded on core democratic values, and we take pride in our right to free speech. However, it seems as though our Conservative government has forgotten what

Canadians value most, as their heads are buried too deep in the Tar Sands and in Afghan soil.

As the facts pile up, it has become clear that the decision to exclude the Green Party from the debates was ridiculous from every angle, and we’re happy – though, considering Harper and Layton’s attitudes toward the situation, a little surprised – that the broadcasters chose to listen to Canadians and include May. This was never a Green Party issue; it was about democracy and the right for Canadians to be informed, an issue all parties and all people should care about.

Danai Reynolds is the President of the McGill Green Party and VP Internal of the AUS Environment Committee. She invites you to visit youth.greenparty.ca to get in on the action.

Commentary

The McGill Daily, Thursday, September 11, 2008

Letters: money, drugs, and Red Bull

Letters McGill gives you wings I was reading in the library this morning when a voice behind me suddenly offered “the gift of energy!”

I turned to find a woman holding a Red Bull with a smile. “No thanks,” I said, and turned back to work with a kind of self-righteous energy better than any Red Bull addict will ever know. It was not long before I realized that I am offered Red Bull on campus nearly as much as I’m offered weed in Jeanne Mance park – and I feel much less violated in Jeanne Mance.

Attending McGill shouldn’t feel like going to a movie downtown: paying $11 to sit through a half-hour of commercials. I imagine McGill has nothing to do with Red Bull, but they certainly could have more to do with keeping them off our campus. And this issue is miniscule compared to the grievances of those who are fighting to reclaim our campus.

The SACOMSS fiasco is unforgivable in itself. The TA situation was “resolved,” perhaps explaining why they are no longer situated in any of my classrooms.

Despite what some say, I have no doubt that I have witnessed McGill systematically choose reputation over education during the past four years. I’ve met enough kids from Columbia University – and went to a sufficiently “elite” high school – to know that reputation isn’t everything; it is, with few exceptions, synonymous with money. You don’t have to agree with each student group on all fronts – I know that I certainly don’t. But if you have even

the slightest argument with McGill’s current direction, anywhere from Red Bull to tuition, I urge you to share your voice with those already rallying to reclaim our campus for its primary purposes: education and community.

David Eisenach U3 English Literature

A real good shoot ‘em up Re: “The great safe inject debate” | Mind & Body | Sept. 4, 2008 The supporters of the safe-inject sites are talking about some statistics that supposedly show these sites actually help, but they forget the main point. They should instead consider the number of drug addicts in Canada, and according to Statistics Canada, there more than 3-million, or one in every ten Canadians have used drugs in the last year at least once. With this scary reality, society should not turn its back on those people by letting them “shoot themselves up”.

Julien Montreuil’s argument that addicts can only quit if they are “ready to work on it themselves” is immature and anti-social. It shows a basic lack of understanding of the dangers that drugs hide – if those people were to quit on their own, they wouldn’t even start!

It’s society’s responsibility to battle this pandemic by making sure addicts are placed in detox even if they don’t fully understand it in this difficult moment. Stop treating addicts like kids and stop neglecting the moral principles that this society is based on by allowing such selfdestructing practices.

Alexander Kunev U2 Mechanical Engineering

Le Majumdar magnifique retourne!

Re: “Arts Undergraduate Society sued by their own for $14,000” | News | Sept. 8, 2008; “It’s time to care about international fees” | Commentary | Sept. 8, 2008 Geoffrey Hall (“AUS sued”) is not an “alumni” of McGill. He is an alumnus. Unless there are two of him or something.

Thanks for finally noticing the international fee issue. Perhaps you’d also like to look at the special treatment handed out to students from countries like France and Luxembourg, who actually end up paying less than someone from India or China. Or Alberta. Shouldn’t the fees be lower for people from developing rather than developed countries, if they are different at all? If it helps, French is an official language in India.

Also, can we really blame the Principal? I detested paying my international fees (especially when Quebec and French students are studying for relatively nothing). But McGill does have about three times as many undergrads as Harvard, with about a thirty-fifth of the endowment. If McGill’s primary responsibility is to Quebec and Canada, then this discrimination – distasteful as it may be – is understandable. Can we have some more numbers on this?

Manosij Majumdar U2 Chemical Engineering Please send your letters to letters@ mcgilldaily.com. Please try to keep them to 300 words. The Daily does not print letters that are homophobic, racist, sexist, or otherwise hateful. The Daily received more letters than it could print this issue, they will appear in the next issue.

Disrupting normal University activities

A vibrant collective of students, bikes, and assorted vegans converged on lower campus Wednesday to make the University aware of its poor treatment toward workers and students. Instead of taking the message to heart, the administration sent out a water truck to erase protesters’ concerns immediately after the crowd cleared.

The demonstration was an impressive show of support for a set of worthy causes proposed by the Reclaim Your Campus Coalition (RYC), and it is one that deserves your continued support through the year. Consider the following: Non-Academic workers deserve a fair contract with the University; teaching assistants who were fired from non-TA jobs during the AGSEM strike deserve just compensation; students deserve access to campus space; the McGill community deserves a Board of Governors that represents the McGill community; and the administration must listen to the voices of students, especially when they come from a democratic referendum.

Moments before the RYC demonstration began, the upper echelons of McGill’s administration handed out pizza 100 yards away. Clad in large, star shaped sunglasses, Provost Anthony Masi, Principal Heather MunroeBlum, and a host of others schmoozed awkwardly with about 30 students, asking them about their progress and programs at the University. To boot, the event was called “Meet the Stars,” which is exactly where their heads are.

But pompous small talk is not the attention students need. If MunroeBlum actually cared about the academic concentrations of individual students, she could look them up on Minerva. Based on the administration’s actions in the past few years, they are clearly more concerned about limiting students’ capacity to voice their opinions. In March, the University amended the “Guidelines for Booking Occasional Events” to limit “frequent, regular, or overnight gatherings,” and gave itself free license to squash any gathering that disrupts what it considers “normal University activities” at any time.

While the guideline was clearly amended to interfere with union protests and demonstrations like last year’s camp-out for accessible education, it would also make the annual overnight Holocaust Memorial against the rules. Nice one, McGill.

We’re also concerned with the manner in which this guideline was implemented. Instead of running the document through the Senate process, the admin abruptly proclaimed the new rules without consulting with students or faculty. We’re curious how their definition of “disrupting the University environment” might differ from ours, and hope that Senate contests the guideline at their meeting next Wednesday.

We urge you to support Reclaim Your Campus as they continue to mobilize throughout the year. It’s the only effective option we have to counter the disturbing trends at our University.

Editorial

Grad students are workers too: lessons from the TA strike Ted Sprague

HYDE PARK

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fter a bitter 11-week strike, 2,000 Teaching Assistants (TAs) at McGill who are organized by the Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill (AGSEM) ended their strike by signing a collective agreement.

On June 12, the TAs voted 91.5 per cent to end their strike, not with their heads hung low, but with their heads held up high in victory.

However, the strike has brought to the forefront something which is far more important than a collective agreement: the militancy of graduate students.

In this struggle against McGill administration, the graduate stu-

dents realized that they are workers too, that they are exploited, and also that they can organize and win.

Despite the repeated attempts by the McGill administration to portray the TAs as students – and along with the argument that it is not in their place to demand workers’ rights – the TAs never fell for it. At one point during the negotiation, one McGill spokesperson told the TAs to “grow up and take responsibility.”

In response, the TAs showed their maturity by banding together in an even stronger fashion in their union to fight for better working conditions. This kind of maturity never sits well with the administration – whose conception of maturity is blind obedience.

This strike has shown many grad students that they have different interests than those of the adminis-

tration, which is only interested in squeezing as much as possible out of them. As TAs and researchers, we are expected to work long hours for minimum pay. Universities in general try to disguise this exploitation under the blanket of graduate student “apprenticeship” – that grad students are just students, not workers; that we are here to study (read: perform research) and train (read: teach students) and that we should be grateful to receive a stipend (read: salary) while we are here.

While this concept of apprenticeship may have been true hundreds of years ago, graduate students are workers now. We sell our labour power as TAs and researchers. As TAs, we are not different from teachers, and perform the same services as them. As a researcher, graduate

13

students are the backbone of the University’s research. They are the ones who perform the dirty work in research and it is this research that brings in millions of dollars for the University. The strike itself was proof that McGill cannot function without the labour of the TAs. Today, graduate students have joined the ranks of workers, and the victory of McGill TAs further reinforces this notion. McGill’s attempts to undermine and break the union backfired; the union became stronger and its members became more class conscious. The victory at McGill serves as an inspiration for other graduate students across Canada to organize and to stand up for their rights as workers.

Ted Sprague is a Master’s II Chemistry student.

Errata In “Wide urban spaces” (Culture, Sept. 2), The Daily misspelled Chris DeWolf’s name.

In “Break a leg” (Culture, Sept. 8), The Daily stated that Audition Workshops would be taking place every Tuesday.

Though the workshop was the first of many Tuesday night events throughout the year, not all of the events will be audition workshops and they will not necessarily be happening every Tuesday night.

The Daily apologizes for the errors.

mcgilldaily.com

Mind&Body

The McGill Daily, Thursday, September 11, 2008

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One note at a time A volunteer’s time at the Long Term Care ward lifts spirits on both sides of the piano bench Lindsay Waterman The McGill Daily

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started volunteering in the Hôtel-Dieu Long Term Care ward expecting to be depressed.

I envisioned encounters with rank body smells and dementia, and some death-related experiences. I pretty much got all of this and more. The first day I arrived a corpse under a sheet was wheeled not-so-discreetly past me, I soon became familiar with all manners of stench, and my definition of sanity was broken and rebuilt as I met people in every stage of senility.

My job at the ward was to brighten the place with my carefree youth, and more specifically, my piano skills.

Every Thursdays I volunteered for an hour, playing for an audience of five to 15 patients. For those who have played music competitively, play once in a place like this and a concert hall will never be the same. The Long Term Care ward may not be the most

glamourous place to perform, but there, the most stumbling performance garners exclamations of joy, truncated sonatas are greeted with riotous applause, and truly excellent concerts invite tears and runny noses.

It took me a while to get those tears I now cherish so much because I made the mistake of playing Mozart, whose music tends to be light and emotionally removed. I chose his lightest, brightest pieces, thinking darker music – the melancholy Chopin, and stormy Beethoven – wouldn’t fly in such a place.

After a few weeks as a volunteer, I got an unexpected request. A patient wanted to hear Chopin’s funeral march. The song is as depressing as it sounds. Feeling slightly ashamed, I played it complete with plodding chords and mournful melody – only to receive exclamations of joy.

The patients’ responses encouraged me to test the waters. I turned to Beethoven, selecting sonatas he wrote towards the end of his life,

Camille McQuat for The McGill Daily

Lindsay Waterman plays piano at the Hôtel-Dieu Long Term Care ward, as a rapt audience member listens on. most of which are emotional odysseys, treating issues like damnation and salvation, life and death. The following week as I played one of these, half-way through the first movement of a four movement sonata, I heard sobs. Looking across the room, I spotted the source: a 96-year-old woman whose face was covered in huge tears.

Playing at the hospital made me realize that I had found Beethoven’s true audience. It’s not a silent group of intellectuals stiffly poised in an austere concert hall, but a noisy mishmash of the sick and dying; it is not people at the height of their cognitive powers, but those losing them. Maybe because they saw their own struggles reflected in his music,

maybe because the good things in life seem more valuable close to death, those patients intuitively connected to Beethoven’s music.

There is healing in this catharsis.

Recent studies, such as one looking into the effect of music therapy on neurological patients, conducted at the Royal Hospital for Neurodisability in the U.K., have shown that music therapy can speed the recovery of neurological patients.

A Stanford study found that music therapy helped older adults overcome depression by improving their engagement with and responsiveness to their surroundings, emotional expressiveness, socialization, and overall quality of life.

Helping people by doing some-

thing you love gives you a feeling something like a drug rush. So, although when I started playing for the sick I expected doom and gloom, I soon began to look forward to hospital Thursdays. Whether I arrived cold, stressed, sleep deprived, or grumpy, I invariably left afterwards with what can only be described as a high that lasted for hours.

If you play music – be it classical, jazz, or neo-ambient trip hop – I suggest that you visit these hospital audiences at least once. Aside from getting to perform in front of a rapt audience and enjoying some headswelling praise, you might come to the same, life-changing conclusion that I did: humanitarianism is tragically underrated.

plished a similar feat in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which followed her family’s experience when farming in the Appalachian Mountains for 12 months. Alternately, Pollan’s book is a popular scientific and political look at the differences between food and nutrition, and the way that many products are promoted for profit, without our health in mind.

As a student, this book made me re-examine the way I approach the grocery store and the kitchen table. I can’t change everything at once, and I don’t have time to run around the city looking for that perfect, locallygrown tomato, but when I’m standing in the produce aisle, I will try to search out local vegetables rather than settle for the woody imported varieties.

At McGill, we’re lucky to have organizations such as Organic Campus at our disposal. On Tuesdays, they provide locally grown food, usually

inside or in front of Shatner, and they have organized a farmers’ market in Three Bares Park for the month of September.

Concordia offers a collectively-run student food co-op, Frigo Vert (2130 Mackay), which sells produce and bulk dry goods at reasonable prices.

Jean Talon and Atwater markets are also alternatives, as well as various health food stores, like Frenco’s on St. Laurent and Duluth, or BioTerre on St. Viateur and Esplanade.

With the constant flow of readings, essays, and exams, food seems to have taken a low priority in students lives, but without the proper nourishment, how are we going to feed our brains and write that perfect final sentence?

This just in: eat your fruits and veggies Sophie Busby

Mind & Body Writer

“E

at food. Not too much.

Mostly plants.” This is Michael Pollan’s mantra in his most recent book In Defense of Food. As an eater’s manifesto, this book strives to help readers find a healthier lifestyle and start enjoying good food. Although many of Pollan’s actual prescriptions may seem fairly obvious, in a world full of processed food, maybe we do need to take a more critical look at how our culture approaches food. He accomplishes this, in part, by revealing startling facts about the food industry and our own habits.

Pollan does more than critique the food industry and the influential monopoly of a few corporations and specific crops. He also reveals socially-promoted false beliefs on nutrients.

Providing evidence of the flaws of the typical North American diet, Pollan examines how the Mediterranean diet, among others, has succeeded where ours has failed. He notes that this failure is often due to differential cultural understandings of food, but not necessarily diet. For instance, Pollan describes the overlyemphasized French Paradox – French people’s supposed ability to eat rich, “bad” foods and not gain weight – is simply explained by smaller portions, slower meals, and an attitude of enjoyment rather than guilt.

Instead of settling on any one diet as a model to be followed, Pollan promotes local and seasonal food as he outlines the steps we can take to eat a healthier and more environmentally-sound diet. The book ends with a throw-back to its opening offering simple rules like “eat well-grown food from healthy soils,” or “don’t eat anything your great-grandmoth-

er wouldn’t recognize as food,” and “avoid any products that list more than five ingredients.”

Whereas in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Pollan’s previous book, he left out specific suggestions, his follow-up is more accessible, providing a guide meant to change our lifestyles and encourage us to start eating “right”. In Defense of Food is also more to-the-point, coming in at about half the size of The Omnivore’s Dilemma. In some cases Pollan’s brevity turns into a slightly repetitive and superficial discourse, but it is a practical starting point nonetheless.

The book follows an ongoing trend that has emerged in the past few years: going local. Vancouverites Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon coined the term “100 Mile Diet” when they published a book about eating locally for a year. Earlier this year, Barbara Kingsolver accom-

Pollan’s In Defense of Food is available in hardcover edition at bookstores around Montreal for $26.50. The book is 176 pages long.

Culture

The McGill Daily, Thursday, September 11, 2008

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Pirates of the Lachine Canal Party on the poop deck for Montreal’s weird punks Whitney Mallett

The McGill Daily

“S

hitgaze: it’s the newest indie rock craze,” says Shaun Anderson, member of the Montreal community-based promotion group Pirates of the Lachine Canal. He’s paraphrasing a British magazine’s reaction to Columbus band Psychedelic Horseshit’s selfdesignated genre: “shitgaze.” The media latched onto the joke term, coined when the Ohio rockers made the drug-induced decision to cite it as their myspace genre.

This past June, Spin ran an article

on shitgaze, using the term to categorize a plethora of bands garnering attention in Columbus’s lo-fi scene.

Shitgazing aside, the point is that the authors of nomenclature are changing.

“It’s putting the power of definition into the hands of bands and the people involved in the music scene, rather than in the hands of the journalists,” explains Chloe Lum, also a member of Pirates of the Lachine Canal and lead singer for local band AIDS Wolf.

The Pirates of the Lachine Canal are familiar with the power of words.

From weekly Weird Punk DJ nights to the Weird Punk showcases organized every night of Pop Montreal, the Pirates are bringing attention to the term here in Montreal. Like shitgaze, weird punk traces its ancestry back to the

Internet – Anderson remembers first hearing the expression on an online message board. And while in Canada the phrase “weird punk” has been gaining steam since the summer, overseas the genre is commonly known as “DJ Rick rock” – referring to the Californian DJ whose online radio station, artforspastics.blogspot. com, is notorious for playing the cornerstones of the musical style, whatever you want to call it.

So what is weird punk? Lum explains that although most punk today is mired in its own restrictive traditions and lacks renewal or experimentation, weird punk is going back to what early punk was all about: “different bands with different aesthetics playing different kinds of music.” It can’t be pinned down to a certain sound; instead, it is an umbrella term for stylistically diverse bands sharing the desire to experiment.

“This music is all about confounding expectations,” she notes.

Sasha Plotnikova / The McGill Daily

The inclusiveness of the term has created what Lum refers to as “crosspollination” between sub-genres: “We’re getting garage fans into noise, and the indie rockers into weird lo-fi hardcore.” The more that the bands’ influences vary, the fresher the sounds they create. “It keeps [the music] as diverse as possible, reaching out to all these different [genres],” comments Walter Scott, another Pirate.

The Pirates of the Lachine Canal extend this inclusive spirit beyond music. In addition to their DJ residency at Black Jack’s (3814 Notre-Dame O.) every Thursday, the Pirates organize bike rides, barbecues, and bringyour-own-FM-radio-transmitter parties in an effort to bring the southwest Montreal neighbourhood together.

As of late, the Pirates have organized three gigs, and are hoping to start up a regular series at the St-Henri institution Bar de Courcelle (4685 Notre-Dame O.) – a longtime local fixture of country cover bands, where weird punk was a new but well-received addition to the line-up.

The Pirates have also collaborated with other promoters to put on shows at Friendship Cove – a loft that kicked off the burgeoning southwest scene a few years ago – and at other venues around the city, always making it a priority to put a

southwest band on the bill.

Anderson endorses the DIY punk approach to booking shows. “If nobody is going to book a band or if you are saying ‘my favourite band hasn’t come to Montreal,’ the only way you are going to get them to come here is getting in touch with the band and doing it yourself,” he says. And he follows his own advice: Anderson has taken the initiative to bring weird punk across the border, as well as from the rest of Canada. Importing weird punk, Lum explains, will help “foster a scene and hopefully grow the local bands outside of Montreal.”

Although Montreal does not yet have the thriving weird punk scene that, say, Vancouver has – spearheaded by the Mutators and Shearing Pinx – there are some promising local bands. AIDS Wolf leads the pack, but other names to keep your ears open for are Panopticon Eyelids, ttttttttttttttttttttt, Triceratreetops, Red Mass, and Many Mental Mistakes.

AIDS Wolf has been making noise in Montreal since early 2003; the four piece’s polarizing sound is ripe with shrill vocals, harsh guitars, and tumultuous drums. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, you won’t be alone. However, Lum explains that by this point the band has internalized the negative reactions toward their music and sees it as liberating: “We are playing music as a way to do art. We are trying to do something creative that is challenging to us and that is interesting and the fact that our music seems to upset so many people is probably a good thing because we are probably never going to be in the position of having to cater to anybody.”

After touring heavily across North America, Europe, and Israel, releasing an LP in 2006, and numerous 7’’ and 12’’ splits since, AIDS Wolf is putting out their second full-length album, Cities of Glass. The band worked with their long-time icon Weasel Walter, a no-wave mainstay, on the new recording. “Whatever kind of music you want to call it, he is the expert,” says Lum. Punk, no wave, shitgaze – it’s all just music, whatever you call it. “All terms become meaningless over time, but if you can take something and make it your own for a little while, at least it works as a signifier,” explains Lum. And that’s just what the Pirates of the Lachine Canal are doing, taking two words – weird punk – and fostering a community of their own.

AIDS Wolf’s album release is tomorrow, September 12 at 8:30 p.m. at Sala Rossa (4848 St. Laurent).

16 Culture

The McGill Daily, Thursday, September 11, 2008

Moving pictures European cinema on the road and in the streets

Ben Peck/ The McGill Daily

Braden Goyette

The McGill Daily

T

he sky is exploding, popping with a thousand whirring lights. The camera travels through the night, the sky over Berlin flashes by, television tower aglow.

We’re left unsure: are they fireworks?

Are we in a war zone? Strange neondrenched landscapes, beautiful and sinister, pass over the screen. This is how Philip Gröning makes his introductions.

Gröning’s L’amour, l’argent, l’amour unfolds like a fairy tale for a jaded age – two kids on the run, lost in a world that offers as much magic as it does terror. It’s one of the offerings at the Goethe Institut this fall as part of Cinema on the Move, a new series showcasing road movies and films that take the action onto the street.

On the road Postwar Europe has had a solid tradition of road movies – films where the protagonists take off into the unknown, leaving the familiar behind and renegotiating their relationship to the world they pass through along the way.

Since 1989, there have been even more of them. “Europe is expanding,” said Michael Cowan, a professor in McGill’s German Department. As

road movies tend to deal with crossing boundaries and shifting identities, “it’s not by chance that there’ve been so many in the last decade.”

The street as a setting also has an important meaning in the history of European film, from the street films of Weimar Germany to the Italian neorealists’ shots of bombed-out roads. Cinema verité itself took off when cameras became small enough to be carried into the streets. As charged locations where people are forced out of their private spaces and into uncertain situations, streets have fascinated film theorists from Bazan to Krakauer. “They all claimed the street is a place where cinema becomes authentic,” Cowan said.

Cowan is one of a group of McGill professors organizing Street Takes, an academic conference organized in conjunction with the film series. Taking place over four days – with events at McGill and the Cinémathèque Québécoise as well as those at the Goethe Institut – Street Takes is the product of a new interdisciplinary research group called the Project on European Cinemas which unites scholars at McGill and the Université de Montréal.

The Project came together, Cowan explained, because European Cinema is increasingly less defined along national lines. “So many of these films are just de facto pro-

duced in many different countries,” he said, citing as an example Tom Tykwer’s Heaven, one of the films in the series. With its Italian setting, German director, and English lead, it’s the kind of multi-national production that’s so common in Europe today. “Is this a German film? An Italian film?” Cowan asked. “It’s definitely a European film.”

Here in Montreal, it became clear that scholars specializing in the cinemas of particular European countries could benefit from an exchange.

Cinema, the group posits, could be a powerful medium for forging a new European identity. “It’s an open question,” Cowan said.

Though Cowan expressed hopes that more universities would become involved, for now the Project is mostly a McGill phenomenon – a fact that indicates that cinema at McGill is on the rise, despite the lack of a fullfledged film program.

Uncomfortable encounters Christian Schlingensief is a political rabble-rouser. In 2000, as the ultra-rightist, xenophobic FPÖ (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, or Freedom Party of Austria) was gaining a foothold in government, Schlingensief cooked up a public “happening” that would bring Austria’s socio-political skeletons out of the closet and into the streets.

Right on time for the Vienna Festival, Schlingensief erected a “concentration-camp-like” container in the middle of the city and filled it with asylum-seekers recruited from refugee camps all over Europe. Tapping into the Big Brother phenomenon, he set up a web site where viewers could vote out their least favourite foreigner each day.

Paul Poet’s documentary, Foreigners Out!, covers the controversial event from a number of angles. The result is a political carnival, a tumultuous, fiery conversation on art and politics, public space, old prejudices, and the paradoxes of activism.

Austrian director Michael Haneke also forces his characters into the street, where conflicting backgrounds and worldviews collide. In films like Code Inconnu, he forces his protagonists towards encounters that they might not be ready for – particularly his white European characters.

Space and non-space The rise of neo-liberalism has been bringing out new anxieties in Europe since the fall of the Iron Curtain. Yella, Christian Petzold’s 2007 feature exploring the shady world of venture capital, addresses some of these fears. Cowan com-

mented on how some of Petzold’s shots blur landscapes into indistinct, impersonal planes of colour.

“Petzhold tries to render all space into non-space,” he said, “[into] transitory spaces that people have no intention of inhabiting.”

Gröning’s L’amour, l’argent, l’amour, on the other hand, breathes life into the impersonal “non-places” its protagonists pass through. Marie and David, a prostitute and a kid who works in a scrap-yard, meet one night and take off together.

They camp out in a bank lobby and threaten the surveillance camera. Alienating urban landscapes become intimate and infused with meaning.

Following in the tradition of Bonnie and Clyde couple-on-therun films, it comes off like a social realist Pierrot le Fou. Things only seem right when they’re on the road, somewhere between coming and going. Apparently a world in flux can produce beautiful things.

Cinema on the Move runs from September 11 to October 31 at the Goethe Institut, 418 Sherbrooke O. Seegoethe.de/ins/ca/mon/ver/ en3457812v.htm for more details.

Street Takes takes place from September 17 to 20. Lectures and screenings are open to the public.

Check out poec.mcgill.ca/?page_ id=17 for locations and times.

Culture

The McGill Daily, Thursday, September 11, 2008

A good time for Grassroots Charles Mostoller The McGill Daily

S

ick and tired of misleading news out of Palestine? Fed up with journalists taking the same-old storylines that just perpetuate the suffering of Israelis and Palestinians alike? Well then head on over to Le Sociale tonight for Growing Grassroots Media in Palestine, a benefit movie screening and dance party to raise money for the International Middle East Media Center (IMEMC) based in Bethlehem, Palestine.

Founded in 2003 by Israeli, Palestinian, and international journalists who desired to create an independent news source from the Occupied Territories, the IMEMC provides daily coverage of Palestine’s situation in English, Spanish, Italian, and Arabic. The IMEMC also produces a daily radio program called Today in Palestine and a weekly pro-

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gram called This Week in Palestine, which can be heard on CKUT radio, 90.3 FM, on Tuesdays between 7 and 8 a.m. and Thursdays at 11 a.m.

“We see the IMEMC as our sister station in the Middle East,” said Gretchen King, CKUT’s Community News Coordinator. “Given the mainstream media’s shallow coverage of Israel-Palestine, we feel that hearing the unfiltered voices and stories from people on the ground in the occupied territories is more important than ever.”

The IMEMC has provided a space for McGill students to practice journalism from an international hotspot.

“We’ve also had a number of volunteers from McGill go to Palestine and work at the IMEMC to gain experience in doing grassroots coverage of the situation,” said King. “There are not very many media centres where you can get that kind of hands-on experience working from a warzone.”

The IMEMC has also faced serious challenges since its formation. According to Aaron Lakoff, a member of CKUT and organizer of tonight’s fundraiser, journalists working in Palestine face violence from both Israeli and Palestinian security forces.

“The Israeli military, the Israeli government, and the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its security forces don’t respect the rights of journalists to work freely in the Occupied Territories (OT),” he said. “A reporter from the IMEMC was beat up very badly by the PA police at a demonstration against Bush’s visit to the OT in late 2007. It’s a very volatile atmosphere.”

According to Lakoff, however, the biggest problem has been a lack of funding. “Palestinians are demonized throughout a large part of the Western world,“ he said. “And if you look at Palestinian civil society, it gets labeled as a terrorist infrastructure.

So I think for Palestinians to access international funding, [it] is becoming increasingly difficult.”

King agrees that funding is the most serious challenge that the IMEMC currently faces. “They need funding to keep going,” she said.

“And CKUT thinks it’s crucial to support this sister station or else our relationship is not going to continue.

[It’s] a relationship that has directly benefitted our volunteers and that our listeners have benefitted from because they get to hear the voices of those that they would otherwise not hear in the mainstream media when it comes to coverage of the ongoing occupation and the continuation of apartheid in Palestine.”

Growing Grassroots in Palestine is tonight at Le Social (1455 Bishop) at 7 p.m. The film Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land will be screened, followed by the beats of local DJs. Admission is $5.

Courtesy of DHC/Art

A “Prenez soin de vous” contributor interprets a letter sent by an ex-lover.

Heartbreak, remixed One woman’s breakup becomes 107 women’s multidisciplinary artwork Alex Weisler

The McGill Daily

F

rench artist Sophie Calle has made a career of invading the privacy of strangers. In her first major project, Calle documented her clandestine pursuit of a stranger across Europe. Her portfolio also includes a study of an unsuspecting man whose address book she found on the street, and a stint as a chambermaid in Vienna spying on hotel guests.

In her most recent work, Calle lets the spotlight shine on her own life. The ambitious “Prenez soin de vous,” which debuted at the 2007 Venice Biennial, was conceived as a response to a breakup email sent to the artist by her lover.

In French prose alternately cold and personal, the writer explains to Calle that their relationship is over.

He ends the letter with the words “take care of yourself,” giving the exhibit not only a title, but a direction. At first, Calle refused to scrutinize the curt correspondence – but after sharing it with a friend, she decided it needed to be professionally interpreted by 107 women.

Calle selected an illustrious group of women to examine her

crisis. Some of them are celebrities, such as singer Feist and Spanish actress Victoria Abril; most are unknown. Original songs and interpretative dances are to be expected at such an exhibit, but it’s the more mundane “professional opinions” that define the show.

Upon entering the DHC/Art gallery in the Old Port, visitors are struck by a poster-sized copy of the letter, dissected by a professional proof reader. Her handwritten comments and highlighter marks bypass any emotion, critically commenting on the writer’s grammar and style.

Emotion does have a place in many of the pieces spread throughout the gallery’s four floors, though they never sacrifice the professionalism displayed by the proofreader.

A criminologist takes a CSI-like approach to the letter, while a children’s book author publishes a short tale of heartbreak.

Some reactions are bizarrely professional, like that of the 18th-century historian who translated the email into 17th-century French. The reactions displayed in the main gallery are largely textual, accompanied by photographs of the contributors.

DHC hosts the audio-visual portion of the exhibit, only a few steps across Rue St. Jean. Most of the other

17

videos, shot by Calle, are forced to share only a few screens. Several notable European actresses provide renditions of the letter and a variety of singers perform interpretations of the text. Canadian shock-rocker Peaches composed an uncharacteristically reserved song that displays her range as a musician. Montreal’s own Pony P, of Les Georges Leningrad, contributes a tribal noise dance.

Another standout is chanteuse de soul Nicole Williams, who sings the letter like a humble hymn. In the midst of ironing her laundry, the singer leaves the letter on the ironing board as if she has only just read it; the immediacy of her emotion and the vulnerability of the domestic setting mark this interpretation as the total opposite of the barren notes of the proofreader.

The exhibit doesn’t try to attack men or the patriarchy, as might be expected from such a powerful, feminine jam. Addressing her own faults – the letter insinuates infidelity on her part – Calle avoids the easy role of a woman scorned. Gender roles are rarely addressed in Calle’s exhibit; the women that she’s assembled are strong in their own right, not in reaction to the wrongs men have done them.

The women validate feminine strength by refusing to degrade men, addressing their own insecurities without blame. This is expressed by a sharpshooter who sends two bullets through the note. Her actions are not aggressive towards a man, but rather a sign of her own ability.

The layout of DHC makes the potentially overwhelming “Prenez soin de vous” easy to absorb, as the architecture of the space leads viewers from one clear point to the next.

The weakest part of the exhibit is DHC’s audiovisual presentation.

Maintained in a separate building, the arrangement suggests two parts to something that should be unified.

The majority of the projections share one screen, meaning that impatient viewers will not be able to skip ahead through the dozens of clips to the segments that interest them. It’s a good thing the exhibit is free of charge, because sitting through all the videos requires multiple visits.

At least a passing knowledge of the French language is necessary to appreciate the exhibit, and fluency is required to fully understand the first part, where many of the passages are handwritten. Still, Calle invited a few translators to contribute their professional skills and many of the songs are in English – or another language altogether.

Montrealers should particularly enjoy a translation of the note into French text messaging by an ado – French slang for teenager – which includes the adorable abbreviation “ajord8.”

“Prenez soin de vous” is on at DHC/ART (451 St. Jean) until October 19. Admission is free.

18 Culture

The McGill Daily, Thursday, September 11, 2008

Fleas, please Twelve musicians from Brooklyn mumble their way though postmodern romance Laura Gregg

Culture Writer

Stars Like Fleas have been around since 1998, but if you haven’t heard of them, you’re not alone. The Brooklyn band – featuring members of Beirut, TV on the Radio, Fiery Furnaces, Tall Firs, and John Zorn’s free-jazz ensembles – rarely leaves their home city. Sam Ubl, of Stylus magazine, suggested that the band will “never get anyone’s time of day, and frankly they’re too retiring to warrant an outcry over it.”

However, since the release of their newest record, The Ken Burns Effect, the group seems to be reaching a broader audience.

The band – founded by Shannon Fields and Montgomery Knott – experiments with a wide range of sounds and genres, including electronic, folk, and improvisational jazz; a feat made easier by the acoustic variety 12 musicians bring to a song.

Stars Like Fleas’s subtle layering of styles and tunes creates a textured, dynamic sound.

Their latest album maintains the strange mishmash of sounds and

styles present in their earlier albums (Took the Ass for a Drive and Sun Lights Down on the Fence), but takes a slightly tighter focus. Their music is as mournful and evocative as ever, but it’s gained a subtle energy. The songs on The Ken Burns Effect are faster and more cogent, making the overall listening experience more cohesive.

Lyrically, the songs maintain their pseudo-narrative, stream-ofconsciousness drive. In “I Was Only Dancing” Knott croons: “Learn that form of love / rip away sounds heard the spreading fingers / I’m in love

with hollow bullets / on the weight of which she said / ‘a modern weight with a tighter skin.’” This melancholic “almost-story” is typical of the band’s lyrics, which consistently epitomize postmodern romanticism.

Stars Like Fleas cannot be described as easy listening. The soft, dreamy texture of much of their music is punctured by sudden starts and stops, gleefully haphazard transitions, and piercingly sharp saxophone. In “Karma’s Hoax,” a song on the new record, the haunting, avantgarde fusion of jazz and folk that often characterizes the band’s sound is violently interrupted by electronic rock that’s almost as startling in its departure as its entrance.

One of the album’s strongest moments is the barbed attack of violins 30 seconds into “I Was Only Dancing,” which provide a faintly dissonant counterpoint to Knott’s slow, half-spoken – and more than halfmumbled – vocals. The songs on The Ken Burns Effect are engaging and

surprising – the melodies themselves are slightly off-key and far too improvisational for passive listening.

The jumble of instruments and musicians adds to the music’s eclectic, almost scattered feel. The sax and vocals, especially, share a mournful whine that demands attention.

Stars Like Fleas’s music is wonderfully weird, incorporating a multitude of styles to create something sad, sweet, and vaguely off-putting.

That said, fully appreciating The Ken Burns Effect requires attention. If you’re only half-listening, the unexpected musical choices and complex layering can sound cacophonous and jumbled.

The effort required to appreciate Stars Like Fleas is completely worth it, offering a clever, interesting, and startlingly pretty reward.

Stars Like Fleas play at lab.synthèse on September 14 with Echoes Still Singing Limbs. Doors are at 9 p.m. and admission is $5.

Aaron Vansintjan / The McGill Daily

CULTURE brief Still spellbound As a third-grader, I voraciously consumed stacks of Sweet Valley High and Baby-sitter’s Club novels that I borrowed from the library on a weekly basis. In hindsight, probably the only positive impact this had on my development was a deep-seated knack for spelling things right.

Because I got a shameful bronze medal in my elementary school bee, I’ve always felt a little spelling void, and watching Spellbound on repeat just ain’t fillin’ it.

Lucky for me, and other alpha-

bet enthusiasts, Perpetual Emotion Machine Productions – the sweethearts who brought you last year’s Slowdance Nights – are planning monthly Mile-End Spelling Bees at Le Cagibi (5490 St. Laurent).

As a slightly more forgiving alternative to traditional bees, participants at this event are given two strikes before being eliminated from the competition, not to mention coupons such as “Ask A Friend To Spell Your Word,” “Pass This One On,” and “Word-Swap.”

The entrance fee is $5 and registration is at 7:30 p.m., but it’s limited to 16 participants, so don’t be tardy! The bee starts at 8 p.m. The top spellers of the evening will be awarded literary prizes and jars of honey. S-W-E-E-T. – Leah Pires

Compendium Lies, half-truths, and Masi

The McGill Daily, Thursday, September 11, 2008

19

Protesters protest admin with signs, megaphones, beans

David Stefan for The McGill Daily

A security guard in a blue shirt videotapes protest, gets paid more than TAs.

Winston Jeffries

The McGill Daily

O

ver 200 workers and students assembled at the Roddick Gates at noon yesterday to hold signs, shout when instructed to, and wear free T-shirts made in Bangladesh.

After a few speeches, mentions of referenda and rights, and most importantly some decidedly groovin’ tunes, the growing mass of pro-union folk started to amble through campus, chanting “Reclaim this campus” and “Workers and/or students united will never be defeated,” or something to that effect.

A small marching band played some Klezmer-ish songs, with the baritone hitting every quarter note.

Photographers were seen climbing on stuff to get better angles of the action-packed stroll.

The walk ended at the James Administration building, and joined up with the ten bike protesters who had staged their own assault on the administration by pretending to die and then ride the wrong way through campus.

Again, the crowd engaged in some hootin’ and hollerin’, after which chalk was passed around, making it easy for students to take their message to the streets. Slogans that later appeared included, “I love campus space,” and “Who let the dogs out?”

Newly bearded and forever shiny-topped former SSMU-guy Max Silverman also addressed the crowd, urging undergraduate students who work at McGill to join a union. Daily editors then realized that the Daily Publications Society is a corporation and that they are not unionized. Shit.

Then came word of free vegan food, and tension filled the air.

“I was planning to stay for the food and then go to class,” said Fred Burrill of GRASPé and overall pinko fame.

Many attendees, including Burrill, went to join a line and wait for a delicious chili and cornbread, and music once again played over the loudspeakers. The party got especially hot when a classic eighties hip hop track with the hook “These, are, the breaks” filled the air with its old school vibe and funky-ass beat.

Throughout the entire event, McGill Security guards were on hand to wear ear pieces, shoo pedestrians from walkways near the Roddick Gates, and fold their arms. One guard even used his almighty power to take a sign away from U3 Geography student Lee Fiorio, who took part in the bike protest.

According to Fiorio, the police officer told him it was okay to protest, ride against traffic, and wear buttons and stickers – but that the sign just crossed the line.

When asked “Why, dude?” by a Daily editor, the security guard just stood there and looked tough. None of the other approximately 40 signs used at the event were confiscated.

At the protest’s peak, all the cafuffle was apparently enough to make the suited adults in the James building shut down the Registrar’s Office.

When U1 Arts student Max Karpinski went to the Registrar’s Office to get some forms signed, he was informed by a McGill staff that the office was on “lock-down,” and that he should “take it up with the protestors.”

“I’m a little bit upset about it,” Karpinski said.

This was also incredibly inconvenient for U2 Science student Alexa Smithson, who had been putting off the visit to the Registrar’s Office for awhile, she said.

“I just hate any situation that forces me to take a number and sit,” she said.

Shortly after the protesters left, McGill sent out trucks to waste water and erase the chalk, effectively ridding campus of filthy student opinion.

Ben Peck / The McGill Daily

Masi’s day out

David Stefan for The McGill Daily

See, everybody? Provost Tony Masi does care about you – especially when he puts his funky glasses on! Don’t you think they bring out his kooky, fun-times-a-feelin’ personality? Ooohhh Masi, you silly duck.