vol101issue28

Volume 101, Issue 28

January 30, 2012 mcgilldaily.com

McGill THE

DAILY Slackjawed since 1911

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

FROM NORTHERN QUEBEC TO PARLIAMENT HILL

10

News

The McGill Daily | Monday, January 30, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

Get INTENSITIVE. Write for news news@mcgilldaily.com CANADA COLLEGE www.collegecanada.com Any Language Course: 7.00$/hour TESOL Certification Recognized by TESL Canada.

TOEFL iBT, GMAT, MCAT, TEFaQ, TEF preparation.

Student’s visa, Visa renewal.

514-868-6262

Thinking of Teaching?

Applications open for the Bachelor of Education Secondary12-Month Option

French, Sciences, Business Ed., TESL, Home Economics, Theatre, Music, P.E., English, History, Geography, Modern Languages, Math, Applied Tech

info@collegecanada.com

Middle Years 12-Month Option

1118 Sainte-Catherine West, #404, Montreal, QC

Elementary 12-Month Option

English, Social Studies, PE, Sciences

www.teach.educ.ubc.ca

MCGILLDAILY

DOTCOM

Study in Vancouver!

2

Consultation fair about campus safety and security “intense” and “sensitive” Lola Duffort

The McGill Daily

T

he most recent installment of the twice-annual student consultation fair was held last Tuesday to discuss safety and security on campus, in the light of November 10 and the events preceding it.

The consultation fair was hosted

by SSMU, the Post-Graduate Students’ Society (PGSS), the Macdonald Campus Students’ Society (MCSS), and the Office of the Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning).

The concept for the fair resulted from a recommendation by the Student Consultation and Communication Work Group, which was formed last year after the closure of the Arch Café.

The fair – publicized by the SSMU listserv, Facebook, and student senators who dressed up as suggestion boxes – was designed to give students and staff the opportunity to discuss concerns, as well as ideas, with McGill administra-

tors in an open forum. The fair’s organization falls into the portfolio of SSMU VP University Affairs Emily Yee Clare.

“One of the things we’re working on is reaching out to students,” Clare said. “There are actually quite a few more students than last time that [don’t usually partake in student politics], so I think it’s working. I think one of the main problems is that most people just don’t know what a consultation fair is.”

Several tables were set up in the SSMU ballroom, each with a theme, an administrator, a student senator, and a faculty facilitator. Attendees chose a table to engage in a discussion for twenty minutes, and then moved on to another table.

Themes included “Safety and Security on Campus” with James Nicell, associate vice-principal (Student Services), “Community Engagement on the Rights of Free Expression and Peaceful Assembly on Campus” with Provost Anthony Masi, and “Student Rights and Responsibilities” with Dean of Students Jane Everett.

While many students and administrators spoke of having constructive, positive experiences, the mood was, at times, markedly confrontational.

The student senator at Masi’s table, Music senator Emil Briones, said that it had been an “intense” and “sensitive” discussion.

“Obviously, the issues raised here just aren’t the kind that can be resolved right now, or this easily,” Briones added.

At the conclusion of the roundtable discussions, the group agreed nearly unanimously on a suggestion from Nicell’s table to have security guards regularly posted in the same area, in order to make them more familiar and approachable.

Between rotations, SSMU President Maggie Knight and PGSS VP Academic Lily Han led brainstorming sessions in which people were free to shout out answers to questions such as “How would you improve McGill?” Responses included “Governance reform!” and “Respecting student referenda!”

Student blockade cancels workday at Ministry of Education First action for student coalition CLASSE Erin Hudson

The McGill Daily

W

ork was cancelled last Friday for the employees of 600 Fullum, the site of the Montreal offices of the Ministère de l’Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport. University and CEGEP students blockaded all entrances to the building for about three hours in protest of the Quebec government’s tuition increases. Beginning this year, tuition in Quebec will increase by $325 each year for the next five years, for a total hike of $1,625.

The blockade was organized by the Coalition large de l’Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante (CLASSE), a branch of the Association pour une Solidarité Syndicale Étudiante (ASSÉ), which organized the 30,000-strong November 10 march against tuition hikes.

CLASSE is a temporary coali-

tion of Quebec student associations formed to protest tuition hikes through a general student strike, scheduled to begin next month.

“It was the first action of our coalition, so it was a really a way for us to launch the campaign,” said ASSÉ spokesperson Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois. “[These] kinds of actions are going to be more and more numerous in the next month until the strike begins in the end of February.”

SSMU VP External Joël Pedneault took part in the blockade along with other McGill students. Pedneault explained the logistics of the general strike, which will begin with a demonstration after seven student associations representing at least 20,000 students on at least three university or CEGEP campuses vote for a strike mandate.

“Today’s action was to keep up visibility and to keep up pressure,”

he said. “It also had the very tangible effect of cancelling a day’s work for the Ministry of Education, and that fits within the perspective of making it very costly for the Quebec government to go ahead with the decision to [raise] tuition fees.”

McGill Arts students have brought forward motions to have the Arts Undergraduate Society give the society a mandate to join CLASSE for the general strike.

According to Nadeau-Dubois, the blockade started at 8 a.m. with about 200 people positioned at the building’s entrances and holding banners.

The blockade ended once participants learned of the workday’s cancellation.

“This kind of disruption or work stoppage will keep happening as long as [the Quebec government] decides to continue raising fees,” said Pedneault.

— With files from Queen ArsemO’Malley

News

The McGill Daily | Monday, January 30, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

3

SSMU Judicial Board activities suspended By-law Committee set to review SSMU Constitution Juan Camilo Velásquez The McGill Daily

T

he SSMU Board of Directors (BoD) has decided to suspend all activities of the Judicial Board (J-Board) as of January 27, and to send the J-Board structure for review by the SSMU By-law Committee.

The determination came at last Thursday’s Legislative Council, when councillors discussed the potential legal liabilities of the current formulation of the J-Board.

Concerns over liabilities were brought to the attention of SSMU by the J-Board case seeking to invalidate the results of the fall 2011 referendum regarding the

existence of QPIRG and CKUT. The case, filed by former SSMU President Zach Newburgh and student Brendan Steven, was scheduled to be heard by J-Board on January 30.

The BoD decision does not throw out the Newburgh/Steven case, but suspends it until further notice.

Liability issues arose from inconsistencies between the SSMU Constitution and provincial law.

SSMU VP University Affairs Emily Yee Clare explained to The Daily that the case is complex, because it could lead to violations of both the Quebec Corporations Act and the Accreditation Act. Because SSMU is both a corporation and a student union, it

is required to follow the Business Corporations Act. “[J-Board is] in violation of Quebec law, and that’s because under Quebec law, the Board of Directors has to be the highest governing authority of the SSMU. That means that nothing can limit the power or overturn the decisions of the Board of Directors,” said Clare.

According to the SSMU Constitution, J-Board has the final authority on “the interpretation and legality of all procedures, questions and results of all referenda and elections,” rather than the BoD. If J-Board had ruled to invalidate the QPIRG and CKUT referenda, it would have resulted in a direct contravention of what SSMU members decided in the referendum.

According to Clare, “Under the Accreditation Act, every member of SSMU is given the right to vote in referenda and have that decision to be binding. What the J-Board case did was basically putting forward the possibility of overturning a vote of the members, which effectively retroactively takes away that right, which is given under the law to SSMU members.”

The decision made by the BoD to suspend the activities of the J-Board followed recommendations of a resolution passed during Council.

The legislative body also advised the BoD to submit a reform of the J-Board to the ad hoc Bylaw Review Committee in order to resolve inconsistencies with Quebec law.

Arts Senator Matt Crawford pointed out the importance of not only suspending the activities, but also reforming the structure that led to the legal liabilities.

“There is a very important ambiguity that contradicts the general will of this Society, and that needs to be resolved immediately,” said Crawford.

Councillor Adam Winer echoed the sentiments, stating that to maintain a reputation of a “law-abiding organization,” Council had to solve the conflict.

The By-law Committee is set to meet this Monday to begin the process of reforming the J-Board. ­—With files from Queen ArsemO’Malley

Motions for SSMU Winter GA released Juan Camilo Velásquez The McGill Daily

S

SMU President Maggie Knight previewed the motions for the upcoming SSMU General Assembly (GA) at last week’s Legislative Council. Knight also expressed her enthusiasm over student participation in the writing and presentation of motions for this GA. “There were some really exciting motions, and not all of them were moved by people who sit on this Council,” said Knight.

One such instance was the “Motion Regarding Student Strike Solidarity Fund” submitted by Arts students Daniel Wolfe and Kevin Paul.

The motion is an attempt to create a strike solidarity fund, which would serve to provide financial support to students who cannot meet basic needs due to the effects of a student strike. A general student strike is expected to begin in Quebec next month.

SSMU Clubs and Services Representative Adam Winer moved a motion seeking to reduce “negative corporate influence on campus.” The motion resolves that the “SSMU works to build a University community governed by students, staff and faculty internal to the University community rather than by corporate agenda.”

The “Motion Regarding Denouncement of Bill C-10,” moved

by Law Representative Ian Clarke,

Victor Tangermann | The McGill Daily

SSMU GA motions include the creation of a student strike solidarity fund. would mandate SSMU to denounce the bill – the Conservatives’ contested Safe Streets and Community Act – in the media and to the Minister of Justice.

The motion stands out because it deals with affairs external to SSMU. Such motions require a quo-

rum of 500 students, as per Article 28.2 of the SSMU Constitution.

Councillors expressed a concern over the space capabilities of the Shatner ballroom if 500 people try to attend the GA. Knight told Council that those details were yet to be resolved.

“If it happens, that would be more than the capacity of the ballroom, so obviously in that event then it will be fishy, and we will see what we can do about that,” she said.

Other motions include the “Commission of a Reasonably

Priced yet Glorious Portrait of Karl Marx, to be Displayed Publicly in the William Shatner University Centre” and a “Motion to Reform Frosh.”

The GA is set to be held on Wednesday, February 1 at 4:30 p.m. in the Shatner ballroom.

4 News

The McGill Daily | Monday, January 30, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

City launches new plan to reduce incidents of racial profiling Police commit to administering consequences Chantelle D’Souza News Writer

L

ast Tuesday, the City of Montreal revealed its plans for a new committee to fight racial and social profiling within the Service de Police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM).

The committee, which is part of a three-year plan, is composed of elected officials from the SPVM, the Société de transport de Montréal (STM), as well as the city and its boroughs at large. The committee has been mandated to closely examine six main areas, including public security, equality of access to employment, social development, and the fight against poverty.

Marc Parent, director of the SPVM, hails the new plan as “one of the best in Canada,” and has already taken steps to adapt the SPVM’s definition of racial profiling to that of the Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse (CDPDJ).

According to the CDPDJ definition, racial profiling is “any action taken by one or more people in authority with respect to a person or group of persons, for reasons of safety, security, or public order, that is based on actual or presumed membership in a group defined by race, colour, ethnic or national origin, or religion, without factual grounds or reasonable suspicion, that results in

the person or group being exposed to differential treatment or scrutiny.”

The City of Montreal, and in particular the SPVM and STM, have a long history of racial profiling which has provoked public outcry and garnered media attention over the years. The most notable case is that of Fredy Villenueva, an 18-year-old who was fatally shot in a Montreal Nord Park in 2008.

Fo Niemi, the executive director of the Centre for Research-Actions on Race Relations, a non-profit civil rights organization in Montreal, explained that while “[Parent’s] leadership gives many of us hope of better, fairer, and more harmonious police community relations. The real skepticism lies in the position of the Police Brotherhood Union on racial and social profiling, and how it will work with the police management team to equip all officers with better management skills to police a diverse city. To date, the position is not clearly articulated where the plan of action is concerned.”

Parent has said that officers caught profiling will face consequences ranging from reprimands to dismissals.

In a January 17 press release, the SPVM pledged to do its part to curb racial profiling through “its code of ethics, the continuous training of its first-line employees, and the growth of its human resource pool,

Robert Smith | The McGill Daily

The SPVM and STM have long histories of racial profiling. so as to better represent the community it serves.”

According to Fady Dagher, a representative of the SPVM involved in the formation of the committee, they “would like to sit down with the Human Rights Commission and develop a new partnership to see how we can work better to respond

to each complaint.”

Dagher noted that the effectiveness of the committee is yet to be determined. “To eliminate [racial profiling] completely is extremely difficult, but to make progress and to get better is definitely possible,” he said.

Niemi, on the other hand, is not so confident. He explained that due

to increasing racial diversity, poverty, and homelessness, “the police will continue to be the tools to leverage and control social change and economic disparities.”

The committee is set to release a report to the public at the end of 2012, detailing the results of the new action plans of both the SPVM and STM.

Kahnawake woman to be sainted this year Vatican canonization process marked by dispute over Kateri Tekakwitha’s nationality Dan Smith

News Writer

S

ince December, reports of a Mohawk saint’s imminent canonization have peppered news media across Canada and the world.

Most know her as Kateri Tekakwitha, though the name is just one of many less-than-certain traits of a woman remembered for her intense devotion, selfmortification, and attachment to nature. Tekakwitha’s name and image adorn shrines, churches, and other public buildings across Quebec and North America. Pope Benedict X VI is expected to canonize her in 2012, making her the first North American indigenous woman to complete the Vatican’s long and multi-step evaluation of sainthood.

Two miracles must be approved by the pope before a saint can be canonized. Tekakwitha earned her second when a boy from Washington state was cured of a serious infection in 2006 after persistent prayers to the

Mohawk ascetic.

Tekakwitha was born in what is now Auriesville, New York, around 1656, but made the journey to – and ultimately died in – Kahnawake, a few kilometers from Montreal.

Tekakwitha found a community of Mohawk Catholics in Kahnawake more tolerant of her beliefs.

Tekakwitha is said to act as a patroness for children, those persecuted for their faith, and the environment, according to Deacon Ron Boyer of the St. Francis Xavier Church in Kahnawake, where Tekakwitha is entombed and enshrined.

“The best way to find God is in nature. She didn’t praise nature, she found God in it,” he said.

Boyer shares the position of Vice Postulator with an American Monsignor.

Postulators are appointed by the Catholic Church to manage cases for sainthood and investigate the miracles required for canonization.

While reports from CTV and the Toronto Star highlight claims for Tekakwitha’s nationality as Canadian or American, she died long before either country existed.

Boyer dismissed the mediareported debate over which country “owns” Tekakwitha’s memory.

“That borderline – we didn’t make that line,” said Boyer. “We look at ourselves as North American… People look up to her, native [or] non-native.

She’s well-known.”

McGill History professor Allan Greer wrote a biography of Tekakwitha in 2005. He noted that claiming her citizenship for one side of the border or the other would make for an anachronistic label. “People who claim her as a Mohawk saint probably have a more reasonable claim,” he said.

As Greer’s book, Mohawk Saint: Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits, recounts, different parties have long sought to define Tekakwitha for their own purposes, beginning just after her death. Two French Jesuit priests, impressed by the Mohawk woman’s spiritual devotion, penned hagiographic accounts of her life in an attempt to win canonization.

In 1884, the American Catholic Church, then associated with working-class immigrants, took notice of Tekakwitha’s record.

“The American church was looking for some way to Americanize themselves with a symbolic anchor in American soil,” Greer explained.

“She’s as far from being an immigrant as you can get.”

The American Catholic Church’s authorities petitioned Rome to consider Tekakwitha’s beatification, an intermediary step toward full sainthood. Within a few years, romanticized depictions of Tekakwitha’s life were published that emphasized a generic native identity. Greer wrote in his book that the name “Kateri” is likely the result of an American author’s attempt to indigenize the name “Catherine,” under which Tekakwitha was baptized at age nineteen.

The French-Canadian church promoted Tekakwitha by establishing a shrine for her in Kahnawake. Another shrine exists in Auriesville, marking Tekakwitha’s incorporation into the identities of European Catholics, conservative French nationalists, and Americanizing Catholic immigrants alike, according to Greer.

“She has been assimilated into these various identities, even as

she has been made to stand for the antithesis of modernity,” he writes in Mohawk Saint.

The only other native saint recognized by the Vatican in 2002 is Juan Diego, an indigenous Mexican who lived in the 15th and 16th centuries. The Tekakwitha Conference, based in Great Falls, Montana, describes itself on its website as “the only Catholic Native American/ Aboriginal Religious organization in North America.” The organization holds annual conferences to bring native Catholics together, and oversees a network of “Kateri Circles.”

Martin Loft, public programs supervisor at the Kahnawake Cultural Centre, spoke to the impact of Tekakwitha’s expected canonization in Kahnawake, saying there has been an impact “among people who are traditional-minded.

“But among people who are not – they’re not paying attention, to be honest,” he continued.

“We were known at one time as the praying Iroquois, the praying Mohawk,” he said. “Now, only a handful go to the masses.”

News

The McGill Daily | Monday, January 30, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

5

WHAT’S THE HAPS

Green Drinks Montreal Tuesday, January 31 from 5 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.

Thomson House Restaurant, 3650 McTavish The PGSS Environment Committee and Green Drinks Montreal present the film Fresh. The film celebrates the farmers, thinkers, and business people across America who are re-inventing our food system. Mix at 5 p.m., film at 6 p.m. All are welcome!

Arts Undergraduate Society General Assembly Tuesday, January 31 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Drew Childerhose | The McGill Daily

Jordan Venton-Rublee follows the NDP leadership race Tuition hikes dominate debate at Concordia

F

ive of the eight hopefuls vying to become the next leader of the NDP gathered last Wednesday for a debate at Concordia’s Loyola Campus.

With Oscar Peterson Hall almost at capacity, the candidates – Nikki Ashton, Nathan Cullen, Peggy Nash, Martin Singh, and Brian Topp – quickly settled into a two-hour debate comprised of four pre-set questions and three questions from the audience.

Nathan Cullen, MP for SkeenaBulkley Valley, BC, stated in his

opening remarks, “The progressive majority in this country needs a voice against the false majority of [Prime Minister] Stephen Harper.”

Compared to recent Republican candidate debates south of the border, the NDP candidates remained cordial, often sharing the same stance on the issues being presented.

Some of the issues tackled by the candidates included tuition hikes and accessibility to post-secondary education, environmental issues, and views on Palestinian statehood. All the candidates were in favour of Palestinian sovereignty.

Nikki Ashton, MP for Churchill, Manitoba, spoke to the issue of post-secondary funding.

“Your fight is the fight of a generation. Your fight is a fight we all have to be part of,” she said to the crowd.

Peggy Nash, MP for Parkdale-High Park, echoed a similar sentiment.

“We have to insist, in a modern democratic society, that young people have the right to an education. And a right to an education means financially accessible education.”

Notably absent from the event were candidates Paul Dewar, MP for

Establishing the NDP’s economic platform

P

eggy Nash stands as one of the eight candidates running for leadership of the NDP, and one of two female candidates.

From a background of community and international work, she has been an MP in the Toronto riding of Parkdale-High Park since 2006.

“I got to a point where I was feeling very frustrated, that we would work and work and mobilize for change and politicians would agree with us and then ultimately not do anything,” Nash said when asked how she got involved in politics.

Nash is one of the founders of Equal Voice, a multi-partisan organization that encourages women to get involved with politics. Her participation in the organization was a motivating factor in making the jump into politics.

“I also felt, ‘Look in the mirror.

You are encouraging other women to be involved, you should be involved,’” she said.

Nash has served as both indus-

try and finance critic for the NDP, positions she says makes her an ideal candidate for leadership. “[Former NDP leader Jack Layton] appointed me to be finance critic in our opposition caucus because he knew I would work to establish our credibility on economic issues,” she said.

“If we are going to win, we have to persuade Canadians…that we can also manage the economy.”

Nash said she believes that this year’s large leadership race is an opportunity for people to get involved with building the social democratic movement with the goal of winning the government in 2015.

“This is not a time to sit out. We have a Conservative government that was elected with less than 40 per cent of those who voted.”

“This government is taking us in the wrong direction, taking us backwards. So if we really want to build the kind of Canada that we want to live in, then people have to get involved.”

Ottawa Centre – who was campaigning in the Maritimes – and MP for Outremont Thomas Mulcair, who was at another event that evening.

Abitibi–Baie James–Nunavik–Eeyou MP Romeo Saganash was scheduled to attend, but had to back out at the last minute due to a family illness.

The debate was hosted by several NDP riding associations, including Lac-Saint-Louis and NDGLachine branches as well as NDP Concordia and NDP McGill. The NDP will vote for the next party leader on March 24.

Proposing a postpartisan Canada

N

athan Cullen, MP for Skeena-Bulkley Valley, BC, is not the front-runner in the race for NDP leadership.

Though he is the longest-serving MP in the race, Cullen does not have the visibility of candidates like Outremont MP Thomas Mulcair and former NDP President Brian Topp.

Cullen was elected as an MP after several years working in international development.

“It wasn’t a plan, it wasn’t setting up my education or my career step to step,” he said.

Cullen has served as MP in his riding for eight years, and has stood out by proposing the idea of “joint nomination meetings.”

“I would allow our ridings to hold a joint nomination meeting, like a primary, with the Greens and Liberals, and choose one candidate out of that to run against the Conservatives,” he explained.

It is something he labels as

“radical” – a word that he believes is being used by the current government against those who oppose them.

“You are raising a concern that there may be pollution? You are a radical. You say you have questions about the jobs? Radical. And that is just insulting to me, it really is. It insults me as a Canadian,” Cullen said.

“I think there is a post-partisan era coming,” he added. “I don’t know if it is here yet…[where] parties will just naturally work together more often. I hope for it, I really do.”

Cullen discussed Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the current political climate he thinks Harper has fostered.

“I don’t want to be overdramatic about it, but it’s a fact the stakes are high,” he said.

“What [Conservatives] are trying to do is really ramp down your expectations of what a government is.”

Stewart Biology S1/4 The Arts Undergraduate Society is holding a General Assembly for its members.

A McGill Arts student ID is required for eligibility to vote. All are encouraged to familiarize themselves with the brief guide to Robert’s Rules prior to attendance.

The deadline to submit questions for the GA is Wednesday, January 25 at 5 p.m. All questions should be submitted to Speaker Ben Lerer at speaker.aus@ gmail.com in either French or English. Submitted questions will be sent out the following day and made available on the AUS website.

SSMU General Assembly Wednesday, February 1 at 4:30 p.m.

3rd floor, Shatner Ballroom Care about student democracy? Want to tell SSMU and your peers what you think? Then make your vote count at the winter General Assembly! On the agenda so far: student-run cafe, a student strike solidarity fund, Frosh reform, denouncing Bill C-10, installing a portrait of Karl Marx in Shatner, and negative corporate influence on campus.

Motions can be submitted to speaker@ssmu.mcgill.ca or the SSMU Office until 1:30 p.m. on February 1.

SSMU Strategic Summit on Student Space on Campus Friday, February 3 from 2:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Breakout Room, 2nd floor Shatner Centered around the theme of Student Space on Campus, topics for the summit include: conceptualizing space, student social space (lounges, student-run cafes, and informal meeting areas), McTavish Street improvements, and lower field (ice rinks, Frosh, sunbathing, lawn furniture). McGill administrators and faculty will be present for the first part of the summit, followed by a period open just to students. There will be free lunch!

Commentary

The McGill Daily | Monday, January 30, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

6

Collective means, collective futures

Amina

Bat yre va | Th e Mc G ill

Daily

A history of student strikes in Quebec

Daniel Wolfe Soap Box

T

his semester will see tens of thousands of Quebec students participate in a general strike in response to the Quebec government’s attempt to unilaterally raise tuition. The coming increase of $1,625 over five years represents the largest in the history of Quebec.

The effects of tuition increases are clear. In the UK, the recent tripling of fees is expected to keep 23, 000 students from going to university.

In Quebec, students in minimumwage positions will be forced to work more hours, endure more stress, and go further into debt to pay for their education. Moreover, there is a racialized component to tuition increases. A CFS (Canadian Federation of Students) study found that communities of colour – especially West Asian, Korean, and Latin American communities – spend a higher proportion of income on tuition, and are therefore more likely to be limited by fee increases than others.

Lastly, and crucially, this increase is not an isolated event, but rather an acceleration of the process of privatization – shifting the funding burden to students, donors, and private companies – that has been ongoing for the past twenty years. Since 1988, the proportion of public financing of Quebec universities has decreased by 22 per cent, while the proportion of private sector contributions has almost tripled, leaving student tuition fees to pay more than double the proportion.

Since the advent of the modern Quebec student movement in the 1960s, Quebec students have repeatedly expressed – through petitions, demonstrations, and occupations – the demand for quality, accessible post-secondary education. The movement has only been consistently successful when it attaches this demand to general strike action. Strikes are powerful because of their unique ability to exert economic pressure on the government. For that reason, Quebec students have made use of this tactic eight times in the past forty years and achieved significant victories.

In the autumn of 1968, following the creation of the CEGEP system, 15 of the 23 CEGEPs embarked on a general strike. Students demanded improved financial accessibility to post-secondary institutions, pedagogical and institutional reform, and the creation of a second francophone university in Montreal.

Though the CEGEPs provided the strike’s initial impetus, several universities soon followed suit and joined a strike that lasted for two months. The strike is now acknowledged as the driving force behind the creation of the UQ (Universite du Quebec) network – that includes Universite du Quebec a Montreal and Universite du Quebec a Trois Rivieres – and the tuition freeze in effect until 1990.

In the 1970s, students built on the mobilization of the previous decade. After an initial period of political quietism, students embarked on a succession of strikes in the fall of 1974. CEGEP students began boycotting classes

in response to the introduction of aptitude tests for those wishing to continue on to university. The tests were seen as discriminatory as they were required only of francophone students. The government soon backtracked and withdrew the tests, but the mobilization and solidarity that had been created provided the momentum for students to push even harder.

Soon after the end of the first strike, a second general strike was declared in protest of an inadequate financial aid system that had lead many students to abandon their studies for a lack of means.

By the end of November, over 100, 000 students from over forty high schools, CEGEPs, and universities were on strike. This pressure forced the government to negotiate changes to the loans and bursaries system, serving as ongoing evidence of what is possible when students act with unified force.

In the following years, students continued to resist together when their collective futures were at stake. In November 1978, following a massive strike, the government was forced to make improvements to the financial aid system. Strikes in 1986 and 1996 forced the government to pursue alternatives to the tuition hikes it had planned. Most recently, in the winter of 2005, the government threatened to cut $103 million in financial aid. The ensuing response saw over 230, 000 students in the largest strike in Quebec history. The overwhelming pressure inflicted on the government forced it to restore all $103 million in cuts

by March 2005.

Yet not all general strikes have

seen such success. Following the 1989 decision to unfreeze tuition, some students endeavored to organize a response. The general strike that followed saw a lack of coordination among post-secondary institutions and low levels of participation. This meant the government encountered no effective resistance and was easily able to push its plans through.

Much has been said about the progressive nature of Quebec’s social programs. Nowhere is this truer than in the sector of postsecondary education, where tuition rates are currently the lowest in Canada. What is less often stated is that this is the case despite rather than because of the government.

Students demanded the creation of a public university network; students fought for improvements to financial aid programs; and it is above all because of students that Quebec has the lowest tuition in the country.

The upcoming strike, viewed as a specific event, is the culmination of students’ rejection of the Charest government’s neoliberal policies. Since tuition was unfrozen in 2007, a general oppositional movement has gradually grown.

Following the March 17, 2011 decision to increase tuition by $325 a year, mobilization efforts have intensified. Through lobbying (petitions and negotiations) and direct channels (demonstrations and occupations), students have expressed their rejection of the government’s austerity policies.

Yet, these feelings are nothing new. In fact, they have defined the Quebec student movement

for the past forty years. In this light, the upcoming strike is but the most present instance of a rich history of oppositional movements in Quebec. But it would be a mistake to view these movements as a solely local occurrence. Just as the privatization of the university is an international phenomenon, so are the resistance movements it has generated. In the UK, Chile, the US, and Colombia, students have said NO to reduced accessibility, NO to increased debt loads, and NO to an educational system that operates for profit and corporate interests rather than for people.

A general strike affords certain transformative possibilities. It is a time of both action and imagination. Classes are cancelled, but students continue to come together on campus, which is restructured around new daily activities – demonstrations, informal gatherings, general assemblies. During the 1968-1969 San Francisco State strike, students gathered daily at the center of campus for a rally and then marched towards their administration building. Strikes provide a unique opportunity to both conceive of and implement alternatives to existing educational paradigms. Through the carving out of autonomous spaces, students empower themselves and create opportunities to learn, share, create, and act together.

Daniel Wolfe is a U3 Political Science and Middle Eastern Studies student. You can reach him at daniel.wolfe@mail.mcgill.ca.

Commentary

The McGill Daily | Monday, January 30, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

7

Amina Batyreva | The McGill Daily

Revisiting November 10

An open letter from the First Year Council

D

ear first years,

We’re the first year council – the SSMU service elected by you to represent all first years and to help you integrate into the McGill community. In our previous piece in The Daily, we touched on last semester’s chaotic nature. The day of November 10, when a peaceful protest segued into an occupation and the forced dispersal of students by riot police on campus grounds – was a large focal point of last semester. In the aftermath, we felt that we should release our response to the events of that day.

After a careful review of Dean Jutras’ report, the preliminary report of the Independent Student Inquiry (which we support monetarily and of which our President is a co-author), as well as hearing and reading eyewitness accounts from our committee members and others, we have reached a general consensus about our stance on the events of November 10.

First and foremost, we feel that the decisions of the administration on that day were irresponsible and helped to cause the confrontation between students and police.

For example, it is inexcusable that the University did not activate the emergency alert system, which could have kept innocent people out of the path of riot police. As a result, several people unaffiliated with the protest, including a profes-

sor, were caught in the riot police action and physically harmed. The administrators who were present in the building and talking with the occupiers also failed to find a way to report to protesters outside on the state of negotiations – which could have helped to diffuse tensions.

This is especially true in light of the fact that the protest outside was being held partially in response to allegations that occupiers had been harmed by security staff and were being held against their will. We are not naive enough to believe that the protest would have ended as a result of additional communication, nor do we think ending the protest should have been a goal. Rather, this kind of openness would have alleviated the anger and resentment felt by the crowd and would have done a lot to prevent the violent confrontation with police that ensued.

The method by which protesters were removed from the principal’s office was unnecessarily forceful – they were pushed and shoved when, perhaps (we do not pretend to be experts on this), a simple carrying maneuver would have been sufficient to remove them. The fact that the occupiers negotiated their release shows that negotiation was possible, and the administration should have communicated this to the crowd outside. In light of this, we recommend that the administration

take measures to train security staff in more peaceful methods of conflict resolution and as well as to develop a communicationcentric protocol for protest and occupation situations. Lack of correspondence between students and the administration is one of the sources of frustration that led to the protest in the first place, and an emphasis on improving this relationship with students is imperative.

We deplore the Montreal Police’s unnecessary use of force; the Intervention Group (a.k.a the riot police) never attempted to negotiate with protesters or warn them of the coming forced eviction from James Square. As well, conversations with officers at the scene showed a clear bias on their part against protesters, and they were not interested in hearing about the alleged assault of students by Security. Why were negotiators not called in? Does the SPVM not have personnel that are experts in resolving standoffs, like hostage situations? Yes, it would have been difficult to communicate with a crowd of angry students, but the lack of any attempt to do so is telling. We believe that the police – in an ideal world, at least – should be impartial keepers of the peace, and this was not reflected in their behavior on November 10.

However, we also feel compelled to express the sentiment

that, though we agree in principle with the demands (such as accessible education) and frustrations of the occupiers (such as an intransigent administration that often does not seem interested in hearing students’ voices), the timing and execution of the occupation were lacking.

The occupation, we feel, was unnecessary after an extremely successful and largely peaceful march of 30,000 students. The execution of the occupation – occupiers effectively pushed their way into a restricted area, some sitting in the principal’s chair, some of them wearing face coverings – was unnecessarily provocative. Regardless of what the intent of the occupiers was, the execution of the occupation projected an unnecessarily aggressive and violent image of student activism. Considering the coming tuition hikes, this perception is more reductive than ever.

An occupation of the administration building lobby, for example, might have been a more sustainable and less contentious option that still carried the message of reclaiming student space and affirming student rights.

We understand the emotional nature of the event, and the varied opinions that many in this community hold about it. As such, we do not pretend to speak for all first year students with this

analysis, and we in no way imagine that it is the “right” analysis.

We did however feel that many first years, who are new to McGill, would find the event jarring and disorienting – as we did – and so we wanted, in our capacity as an elected council, to provide some of our thoughts concerning the issue, more to serve as a launching point for discussion and personal understanding than anything else.

We hope that first years will not let the traumatic nature of November 10 push them away from activism. In fact, we hope that November 10 will serve as a message: there is much to be fought for here at McGill.

The frustrations underlying the events of November the 10 are still very much present, and it will not be an easy fight. A strong, levelheaded, and sustainable student movement is what we need, and first years should definitely find ways to contribute – it is the fight for our future, after all.

Signed by your First Year Council: David Benrimoh, President; Michaël Lessard, VP External; Maymanat Nazari, VP Internal; Mibo Zhao, VP Finance ; Sara Chughtai, VP Academics; and Max Blumberg, VP Communications. You can send us questions, comments, or opinions at fyc@ssmu.mcgill.ca.

8 Commentary

The McGill Daily | Monday, January 30, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

Gimme freedom (Or at least QPIRG and CKUT) Jacquline Brandon and Mark Turcato Soap Box

A

t a recent Consultation Fair held by the administration, Provost Anthony Masi enlightened us on his views on the state of free speech at McGill. Emphasizing the vital role of this right on campus, Masi assured the table of students that we are entitled to speak our minds.

One does not have to look very far in our community to see that Masi’s claim is, in the most fundamental ways, both flimsy and limited.

Technically we have the right to dissent. We recognize that our situation is not comparable to places in the world that specifically target dissenters with violence. However, freedom of speech does not exist in a vacuum – it is not a technicality; it must be embodied by the full extent of the McGill administration’s actions. It is great that we have our independent student newspapers – but we are denied the meaningful exercise of our voice in actually shaping our community.

This academic year, the administration has consistently demon-

strated their one sided politics and ultimately the alienation of student bodies on campus. QPIRG and CKUT, both assets to our community, now face a dilemma thanks to the arbitrary ways in which the admin wields its authority (to say nothing of the tuition hikes they have asked for, the riot police they did not condemn for being here, and the names they require our clubs to have in their Memorandum of Agreement). It is the iteration of these actions that consolidate the view that decisions on this campus will be made behind closed doors. Decisions are made off the record and the McGill community is left to conjure up their own understanding.

McGill did not always have an enormous gulf between the administration and everyone else. That senior administrators, such as Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Morton Mendelson, can now make decisions unilaterally and then pass on the news to students cannot be overlooked. Older faculty members have attested that it was once possible – as recently as the 1990s during David Johnston’s administration – to merely walk

into the principal’s office and meet rather informally.

Upon walking into Fortress James, which conveniently no longer houses any student services, one is likely to receive quizzical stares by unfamiliar employees and perhaps a visit from a security guard or two.

In recent months, administrators seemed to feel threatened by direct action techniques such as those seen on November 10. Certainly a tone of hostility is not ideal; however it seems to be the only option, given that the senior administration makes no genuine effort to include us on any sort of established or substantive basis.

Consultation Fairs are superficial, easy, and allow the Provost to check an obligation off his list. The few students who are given the privilege to grace their presence are required to do so while confined to suits and speaking in the various permutations and combinations of formal administrative rhetoric. More than anything, we would like McGill decision-making to be more inclusive.

The problem is not just with the Provost, or with the principal, or with any other administrator in particular (though, undeniably, Mendelson does strike a chord). It is about a

system that, at its core, lacks student and even faculty input. Collegial forms of governance once exerted power in such bodies as the Senate, academic departments, and faculties. As McGill has become unreasonably top-heavy, these bodies have become increasingly formulaic and meaningless. In conversation with McGill professors, some have mentioned the collapse of attendance to faculty meetings, and it has become a recurring theme that both Senate and the Board of Governors are labeled as rubber-stamp entities.

On top of all of this, the Secretary General (S-G) seems to be an ever more ineffectual position. Mandated to impartially uphold the statutes of our institution, instead, observers of Senate meetings, will note the current S-G instead maintains a hesitant and non-confrontational relationship to those whom he should be holding accountable. If the Secretary-General were thoroughly implementing his duties, perhaps Deputy Provost Mendelson would not be taking issue with our campus groups after they had their referenda questions unequivocally approved through the majority of the student vote.

We do not aim to come off as conspiracy theorists conjuring up a narrative of evil administrators against some sort of progressive coalition of students. Frankly, it seems apparent to us that the administration just does not really care. They have made their priorities clear. As money is funneled into costly refurbishments and lucrative scientific and medical research, a freeze on hiring in the Faculty of Arts remains as class sizes increase.

We do not see this problem as limited to McGill, nor is our school the epitome of a global trend in which democracy is neglected in favor of neoliberal profits. However, McGill is a place where, along with learning academic skills, we can how to act within institutions. We must ensure that our school maintain the legacy of historical social justice movements while simultaneously learning the skills to foster our own movements.

Mark Turcato is a U3 Art History student. He can be reached at mark. turcato@mail.mcgill.ca. Jacqueline Brandon is a U1 History student.

She can be reached at jacqueline. brandon@mail.mcgill.ca.

The case for CLASSE How the AUS can fight harder for accessible education Robert Bell Hyde Park

T

he events of November 10 demonstrated to McGill students the contempt and disregard our administration and our government shows for the democratic expression of students in this province. The aftermath of that troubling day has produced a multiplicity of responses to, and critiques of, the way in which our University conducts its business.

These responses have spanned from calling for governance reform to creating projects that stimulate alternative learning, which engage students in an intellectual, ethical, and politically relevant fashion.

The fight against the corporatization and commodification

of university culture is one that McGill students have committed themselves too, both in SSMU general assemblies and their AUS counterparts. By democratically voting to oppose any and all proposed tuition fee increases and participating in the November 10 one-day strike, students on our campus have demonstrated their commitment to one of the most basic ethical and political rights – the right to an education.

On January 31, McGill students will once again have their commitment to accessible education tested. While the AUS General Assembly of last semester was a remarkable achievement for raising campus awareness of educational issues, the upcoming January 31 AUS GA will hopefully show how McGill’s Arts undergraduates can back up their com-

mitments with more than just words and pledges, and instead commit to action and progress against the regressive actions of the Quebec government.

The key motions on the agenda for the general assembly are threefold: the restipulation of the AUS’ opposition to any and all proposed tuition fee increases, the AUS to join CLASSE (Coalition Large de l’ASSÉ), and the formation of a strike committee to execute the logistical work of coordinating a general student strike on campus in March. CLASSE is the mobilizing body of ASSÉ (L’Association pour une Solidarité Syndicale Étudiante), one of Quebec’s largest affiliations of student unions and organizations. Currently ASSÉ represents over 40,000 students in dozens of universities and CEGEP’s in Quebec, and has consistently lead

the charge against the provincial government in times when the right to education is under fire. A vote to give AUS the ability to identify with ASSÉ will give the Arts faculty the resources and political experience born of decades of Quebec student political activism.

The defining principles of ASSÉ are the right to free, public, and democratically organized university education for all, regardless of social status, race, creed, or class. These principles reflect the ideals expressed by many McGill students, as reflected by the motions ratified in our electoral, institutional bodies. By casting a vote to join ASSÉ, Arts students will be given an opportunity to engage with the larger currents of Quebec student life, as well as craft a mechanism of faculty representation that is inherently

more democratic, more accountable, and more politically capable of fulfilling its mandate of opposing tuition fee increases.

While we all saw the brutality of our university’s crackdown on the ideals that its students hold so dear, we cannot realistically resolve these issues without affiliation with the broader currents of Quebec student mobilization.

November 10 demonstrated to the rest of this province that McGill students do not deserve the reputation of apathy and political conservatism, and Quebec has extended a hand to us in friendship and solidarity as a response.

We would be well advised to accept it.

Robert Bell is a U3 Middle Eastern w student. He can be reached Studies at robert.bell2@mail.mcgill.ca.

Science+Technology

The McGill Daily | Monday, January 30, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

9

Kyoto sunset Canada becomes the first country to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol Prose Encounters of the Nerd Kind Andrew Komar

proseencountersofthenerdkind@mcgilldaily.com

Alyssa Favreau | The McGill Daily

P

rime Minister Stephen Harper, vying for Canada’s 12th “Fossil of the Day” award – given to the most environmentally retroactive country by the Climate Action Network – became the first Kyoto signatory to formally break its commitments to the protocol in midDecember 2011. First put in place in 1997, the Kyoto Protocol was an international agreement to cut down on global carbon emissions in an attempt to mitigate some of the more dire effects expected from anthropogenic climate change.

The Canadian government, which has been a long-time critic of Kyoto, the only legally binding greenhouse gas agreement in existence, cited the fact that both China and the United States were not members of the Kyoto accord, and thus not bound to pay the significant costs that were set to be imposed on Canada. Collectively, those countries alone produce around 40 per cent of the total global emissions, whereas Canada produces less than 2 per cent. However, since the Chrétien government signed the protocol in 1997, per-capita emissions of Canadians have risen over 25 per cent from the specified target of a 6 per cent decrease from 1990 levels.

Under the penalties formerly agreed to in the accord, this increase over the prescribed limit meant Canada would have been legally obligated to buy carbon credits to account for this difference. During the announcement of the withdrawal, Environment Minister Peter Kent cited a cost of almost 14 billion dollars for these credits, and blamed the previous Liberal government as they were in power for a significant amount of time during these changes. In reality, the growth rate across all sectors has been about the same regardless of who’s in charge, and it is set to increase, since oil sand production well surpasses one million barrels a day.

Currently, there is no further binding legal agreement in place to take over when Kyoto expires.

The last three international conferences in Copenhagen, Cancun, and Durban resulted in a few successful policy agreements, but lacked Kyoto’s legal binding. The lack of a universally agreed upon standard in the face of this global problem is the primary issue with much of the policy discussion that

has happened in the last decade.

This is the troubling reality of climate change; while we dither and bicker about who ought to suffer the most cutbacks, we continue to collectively belch another 10 billion tons of gas into the atmosphere per year. As such, some of the more noble goals of the original Kyoto Protocol may already be beyond our grasp.

There are serious concerns that we are well on track to exceed the two degrees global warming that is generally agreed upon as the limit for dangerous climate change.

A recently released study in the Royal Society of Philosophical Transactions entitled “Beyond Dangerous Climate Change” calls into question the very idea that the two degree warming is the threshold for acceptable. This paper now puts that two degree limit as the threshold between “dangerous” and “extremely dangerous”. More troublingly, they estimate the probability of exceeding this limit as extremely high.

If we continue business as usual – which seems to be the most likely outcome – then we must understand that mitigation is incompatible with our current method of economic growth. Investing in

“green” technologies – such as nuclear, solar, and wind power for – could still grow our economy – without the negative consequences of fossil fuels. Furthermore, even if we were to stop global emissions today, the lag between our emissions and their effect on the climate means we can already expect at least a half degree of further warming, an increasingly acidified ocean that threatens nearly a quarter of the world’s food supply, a thermally expanding sea submerging low lying coasts and islands, and increased melting of permanent ice to further contribute to sea level rise.

Interestingly, the only time in the last few decades that our cumulative emissions have actually decreased was during the global recession in 2008. During that year, the rate of emissions declined by about 3 per cent. To seriously have a chance of offsetting the dangerous climate change to come, we’d have to reach peak oil by 2015, and globally reduce our consumption by twice the rate we saw during the great recession every year until we hit zero.

Studies on coral blanching suggest that this process will continue at CO2 levels of as low as 430 parts

per million (ppm), whereas even the most conservative estimates of our total emissions usually center on a final value of 550 ppm.

We have enough oil, gas, and coal reserves to last for decades, potentially hundreds of years of growing business as usual. There will be more of us – potentially 9 billion of us by 2050 – all vying for the same quality of life we enjoy today, which is only made fully possible by the continued exploitation of the ecosystem.

The choices we need to make today will not be made by governments whose primary purpose to be re-elected. The scale of the problem is well beyond the lifetime of one government, which is miniscule compared to how long the effects of climate change will be felt. It is not in the government’s interest to deal with this problem, and it will never be unless we hold them accountable. The fact that governments are able to use even the most basic carbon tax as a successful scare tactic for election campaigns shows our own recalcitrance.

As Canadians, we are responsible for one of the world’s highest per-capita emissions. Our place in the world ought to be to demonstrate that a more sustainable life-

style is possible. While cumulatively our emissions are not that important on a global scale, we must demonstrate that a “first world” lifestyle is possible, even without the exploitation of the environment.

However, part of this new carbon-free lifestyle is acknowledging that there are things we must give up. Air travel as we know it is would not be possible – modern technology has no sustainable alternative to airplanes. Eating meat at every meal is not sustainable. Having access to products that must travel hundreds of kilometres, using current shipping technologies, to reach us is not possible if we wish to live an emission free life. On behalf of the hundreds of generations that will bear the economic cost of our exceedingly selfish behaviour – and current generations – we must voluntarily commit ourselves to bearing these costs.

Prose Encounters of the Nerd Kind is a column written

by Andrew Komar on various subjects: nerdy and otherwise.

It appears every other week in Sci+Tech. He welcomes your thoughts – agreeable or otherwise – at proseencountersofthenerdkind@mcgilldaily.com

10 Features

LIGHT ON THE WATER A PORTRAIT OF MP ROMEO SAGANASH

BY JESSICA LUKAWIECKI

R

omeo Saganash, MP for the Quebec riding of AbitibiBaie-James-Nunavik-Eeyou, candidate for NDP leadership, member number 398 of the Cree Waswanipi clan, sits in front of me, and tells me about Johnny, the brother he never knew.

Outside, the snow rages against the window panes, blanketing his office, in 135 Confederation Building, with a sense of calm. The workday is near its end – dusk has settled, but Romeo appears in no rush.

Johnny was taken away from their mother at the age of six and sent to a residential school, where he died less than a year later. All this before Romeo was born.

The conversation slows. I see the pain that crosses Romeo’s features – pain that is not his own, but for his mother. His mother, who for forty years never found out what had happened to her little boy. A ghost she carried with her, a burden that weighed her down.

Until, one day, a nurse approached Emma Saganash, Romeo’s sister and a journalist at the CBC, and said the words that were decades too late.

“I know where the boy is buried.”

Emma set out to find him.

“She had her crew with her, my sister, so they filmed the scene where they were looking for him,” Romeo says.

“And we hear the other lady say, ‘well, you are standing on your little brother.’

And she crumbled in the snow - it was winter, and she crumbled.”

A break in the conversation – the

impossible decision of whether to tell his mother. Finally, he shows her the film that Emma made of that day.

“I have seen my mom – cry – many, many times. Many times in my life,” Romeo tells me. There are tears in his eyes now.

“But never the way she cried that day. Never.”

I

begin two months earlier, in the dead of the night, in a rental car with three friends. We are driving to Waswanipi, Romeo Saganash’s home town.

It is November, and the roads are slick with ice. Two feet of snow cover the ground. I have not slept in thirty hours – we have been driving for eight.

Somewhere in the last hour, we lost cell phone reception – this is the farthest North I have ever been.

We drive, aimlessly now, through an unknown town, hopeful that it is Waswinipi.

A bright orange sign catches my attention – a campaign poster for “NDP MP Romeo Saganash” – the only reassurance, so far, that I have come to the right place.

We happen upon a health clinic, and I enter, gathering what little composure I can. A lone Cree woman sits in the waiting room. If she is surprised to see me, she does not show it. I should go to the cultural centre, she explains, pointing me in the right direction.

The cultural centre is a log cabin by the river – a light in the window is the only sign of activity. Night descends upon the thick cover of trees that surround the building – our

tracks are the first disturbance in the freshly laid snow.

I knock on the door – no answer.

Knock again – nothing. But we have come this far – I open the door.

We walk in to a scene of comfort, of familiarity. We have interrupted four people eating dinner, but it is clear we are not intruders. Introductions are made – Claude Otter, who is living in the cabin, a Cree man who had lived in Montreal on and off as a journalist and translator – an old friend of Romeo’s. Claude’s son Gabriel, who was born away from the reserve, but still comes back in the summer for the peace and quiet. Astrid Peacock, a McGill graduate who moved away from home to be a coordinator at Waswanipi’s community centre.

And Robin Blanchard, a sixth grade teacher whose longing for adventure and the outdoors has brought him here, to work at Willie J. Happiejack Memorial, Waswanipi’s school.

No one asks why we have come. We are welcomed with all the hospitality of old friends, of family. Lisbeth Otter, Claude’s cousin, invites us to stay overnight with her – one room for the boy and one room for the three girls. Placing a disarming amount of trust in us, she gives us a key.

R

omeo was raised in the bush for the first six or seven years of his life.

When he was growing up, Waswanipi was just a small village along the river, the central meeting place for all the Cree living in the bush

in the surrounding area. At that time it was only home to a few hundred people. Now, he tells me, it has grown to 1,600 or 1,700.

Rich with tradition, much is still kept from the past – the Cree language, hunting, the preparation of food, “walking out” ceremonies that introduce children to Cree society when they learn to walk.

But a lot has changed since his days in the bush.

“In my time, when I was young, I watched my dad build a canoe, construct snow shoes, and I thought that was it, that I was going to become like him.”

“I thought I had no choice when I was young. You know, I said I’m going to become like my father, I’m going to be just like him, and that’s what I’m going to do. And I was glad that I had no choice.”

I am struck by the difference between the boy he speaks of, and the politician, lawyer, MP who now sits in front of me; surprised to hear a denigration of choices from a man who has gained so much from his own.

“Crees now have a choice between the Cree way of life, or participating in mainstream economy. Our young people have multiple choices, and it has an effect on society. Because having the choice in society is hard, for any person.”

“After the Quiet Revolution, Quebec had the highest suicide rate in the country,” he goes on. “And it’s a similar phenomenon I think. All of the sudden, the young Quebecker had multiple choices, rather than just being a forest-

The McGill Daily | Monday, January 30, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

ry person or agricultural person. And having the choice in society is something that is hard, for any person. And I think that’s what’s happening in the Cree society as well.”

He tells me about the changes that came with the James Bay Agreement – a 1975 land claim deal between Quebec and the Cree and Inuit peoples – such as a school and a community centre, and restrictions for development on Cree land.

He speaks of how difficult it was to get the government to honour the promises laid out in the agreement.

And he tells me how the village was moved away from the river, because the conditions of the soil would have made it slide into the current.

I

wake up to the phone ringing.

Lisbeth left earlier this morning – left us, four strangers, in her home.

“I’m answering it,” I declare. My friend’s protests follow me as I reach to pick it up – I am overstepping, this is not our home.

“Well, took you long enough to pick up!” Claude booms on the other end. A smile plays at the edge of my lips.

We arrive at Claude’s cabin, and for the first time see the teepees that line the river bank, effervescent in the sunlight reflected off the partly frozen water. Waswanipi is Cree for “light on the water,” a name that comes from the torches the Cree brought on night fishing trips, beacons to lure the fish to the surface.

Inside, the walls of the cabin are

covered with old pictures and hunting memorabilia. There is coffee brewing, and Claude is making blueberry pancakes. We help ourselves to food and sit down to eat breakfast – there is not a single pause in the conversation, as Claude tells one story after another. There is a slow pace to the morning, but I’m impatient to get to work – with a notebook full of questions, I would like to interview Romeo’s friends, his family, the children of Waswanipi. I want stories, recordings, as much on the record as I can gather in two days.

But Claude has launched into another story. “There are four parts to every Cree story,” he says. My questions are forgotten.

I reassure myself – there will be time, after breakfast.

But now Lisbeth is asking us to come outside. She is going to show us how to skin a moose.

Entering the tent, my senses are assaulted by the heat and the smell of flesh, and the constant scraping of the knife against the moose skin, a light pink blanket with eyes holes.

Lisbeth teaches my friend Mike, a tall, lanky kid, how to prepare the hide. “After, you soak it, and you scrape it, and you take all the blood off, and then you put it in the frame to freeze it, then you put the lotion, wash it again, put it outside. Then you put in the water, then you pound it.”

Claude can be heard in the background: “You have to earn your dinner!

Press hard! It’s already dead anyway!”

Soon Gabriel announces that,

next, we will be going skating with Robin and Astrid at the community rink. I am restless – we don’t have a lot of time.

It was not until later that Astrid put into words what I had by then learned through experience. “The idea of time goes slower here,” she told me. “There isn’t the same concept of time as something that you would fill up in a day. It’s just…you let it happen. And when things happen, they happen.”

And she was right – I did get my interviews, later that day and the next morning. They happened naturally, when they were meant to. As Claude told me, “There’s a time for everything. There’s a time to laugh, a time to cry, a time to eat, a time to sleep. We have to recognize that.

For us, when you’re awake and sitting around, it’s time to laugh and share jokes and tell stories. That’s part of how we get people to know us, we tell stories. I don’t tell you how much I make or my work – that’s irrelevant in my life. It’s not the amount of money I have, it’s how many stories I have in my heart.”

G

abriel, Claude’s seventeen yearold son, has lived in Montreal most of his life. However, right now he and his father are living in the log cabin.

His face lights up as he tells me stories of both Montreal and Waswanipi, of his two very different lives. Of music festivals and nights out with his

friends. Of hunting trips and killing his first moose.

But it is not all good. They had a giveaway just last week, at the cabin, he explains, and I am caught off-guard by the sudden darkness that has fallen over his features.

“A giveaway?” I ask.

“That’s when somebody passes away, we all gather here and expose all their stuff, and we take an item that we want, and keep it for ourselves to remember the person,” he explains.

“She was sixteen, a girl – she committed suicide.”

By now, Gabriel’s stories were not the only I had heard. With one of the lowest high school graduation rates in the country, the Cree school board suffers from a generation of children forced to grow up too fast.

I later asked Astrid what the biggest challenge was for the children growing up in Waswanipi. There were any number of answers I expected – teen pregnancy, high suicide rates, alcohol and drug abuse, violence.

“Anger,” she said, without hesitation.

“So many kids are just so, so angry.

You don’t know what’s going to set them off. Sometimes it’s as much as ‘take out your exercise book’ and they’ll just shut down. Like start shaking, quivering, and have to go outside and do deep breathing, because they’re so, so angry. I don’t know – I’m not sure what it is.

“One of the most interesting things I heard was from a guy named Michael – he’s been living here all CONTINUED ON PAGE 12

11

12 Features CONTINUED FROM PAGE 11 his life. What he was telling me, he said it kind of all stems from residential school. Right now we’re at the generation where the parents of these children were the children of the people that were in residential school. And so what he was saying was that, when people were in residential school, they learned to forget everything – give up your religion, give up your culture, your customs…

And give up your emotional connection to your parents. You move away, and you kind of forget.

And they raised their children in the same manner, not being hugged, no emotional connection.

And that gets passed on to these kids right now.

There are so many kids that if you try to hug them, they’ll just shy away, and say ‘what are you doing?’ They’ve never done this before. He’s saying that there’s this emotional void that so many kids are feeling. It’s just a hole that’s there, and it makes the kids so angry.”

It wasn’t until much later, speaking to Romeo in his office in Ottawa, that I finally began to understand.

“I find it difficult to imagine just how my mom felt every fall when her fourteen kids were taken away to residential school,” he says. “I just can’t imagine the parents in the Waswanipi community, when all the kids were gone from the reserve. I can’t imagine Waswanipi without kids. I try to put myself in their place at that time, when all of the sudden, one afternoon, all the children were gone from the community.

“I asked my mom one day, a couple of years ago, if you loved me that much, why did you allow them to take me away. And she said, the response was – it would have been boring for you to be the only child in the village, after all your friends have gone. Which makes sense, I think.

“What’s fortunate in my case is that, despite their efforts, it didn’t destroy me as a person. In fact, in changed me, in a positive way I think. The year I arrived at residential school … I learned that my father had passed away in January. I remember, we were convened in the director’s office, there was a priest. There was an intercom system in the residential school I attended, and one January morning they convened the Saganash family to his office. I knew what was going on – I saw my father sick when I left that August. We walked in; there was five of us in that residential school. And as we sat there I looked and listened to the director explaining that my father had passed away, and that the residential school had no budget to send us to the services.

“That very moment when he announced that, provoked something very strong in me. It was rage, I know. But I didn’t cry in front of him, just to show him that, if I’m going to be stuck in this place for such a long time, might as well try to get the best out of it. And one of those things was being strong. So I did not cry as my brothers and sisters were doing in front of him. I just stared at him, and looked at him, and walked out of the office that way. I was seven and a half. It’s pretty young to realize, okay, if it is what it is, I might as well accept it and carry on. But I am an exception to the rule.

It has destroyed a lot of people, including some of my brothers and sisters.”

Of course, I thought. Anger.

I

t’s Sunday, and Mary Saganash, standing no more than five feet tall, welcomes me into her kitchen.

Her house is simple, neat. The TV drones in the background, interrupted by the chiming of a clock striking seven.

Claude has accompanied us – Mary speaks only Cree. They greet one another with the ten-

The McGill Daily | Monday, January 30, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com

derness of old friends.

She sits us down at her dining room table.

There is a certain hesitation in her demeanour, a reserve in speaking to us. Though she is kind, her eyes appear to drift.

“She says life has changed a lot,” Claude explains to me. “She says she was happier in the bush – life was different, life was easier.”

Again, as when Romeo spoke of the perils of choice for his people, I am struck by this, confused. Here is a woman who had her 14 children taken away to residential school, whose husband died before his time, who continued checking the traps and snares even when he was gone. And yet, “life was easier.” There is no resentment in her voice, only acceptance, and perhaps some sadness. Now she lives alone, and seems to find the present even more trying.

Claude, translating for us, explains.

“She says, kids nowadays, they don’t really listen.

And the alcohol abuse has a big impact on the lifestyle here as well.”

“She said she was happier in the bush, and though she said ‘I can’t deny the fact that I too drank,’ but she said life was different, and life has really changed a lot since then.”

Without warning, Mary Saganash rises from the table, and moves to her bedroom down the hall. I am concerned – does she no longer wish to speak with us? Should we leave? But moments later, she returns, with a couple of old leather-bound books in her hands.

She opens the first one, a compilation of notes in near-perfect handwriting, to a page of names and dates – a list of all her children, 14 born to her and three adopted, and the dates of their birth.

Romeo Saganash, born October 28, 1963, is the 13th child.

Sifting through family photo albums, one of my friends sitting in on the interview asks if Romeo got his thick, dark hair from his mother. Mary’s laughter fills the room – though she does not speak English, she understands. And though she has seen much in her eighty years, she has not forgotten how to laugh.

She leads us to the wall in her living room, where photographs of all her children line the walls. Without hesitating, she climbs onto her couch, and begins pointing to the different photographs, speaking to us in Cree.

And though we are not in perfect understanding, I can tell – in a language more profound than Cree or English – how deeply she cares for every one of her children, and just how much she misses the ways of the past.

I PAGE 10: The Waswanipi River, the namesake of Waswanipi.

PAGE 11: A campaign sign for NDP MP Romeo Saganash in Waswanipi, Quebec (top left); roasting marshmallows in a traditional Cree tipi (top right); ceremonial tipis outside of the cultural centre (bottom left); the cultural centre, where Claude and Gabriel were staying (bottom right).

THIS PAGE (top to bottom): Lisbeth Otter tanning a moosehide; The names and dates of birth of Mary Saganash’s children; Gabriel Caron-Otter’s tattoo, which he got to honour his grandfather.

All photos taken by Michael Lee Murphy, Jessica Lukawiecki, and Gabriel Otter.

enter Romeo’s office, and am greeted by a man that I feel I know, though we’ve never met. He wears a red silk shirt, and behind him is a large window that overlooks Ottawa’s Bank Street.

I apologize – I have arrived late, because of the weather. He is quick to laugh it off – “If there’s one thing for sure up North, it’s the weather. It’s the weather that determines whether you can go up, back home.”

Going home is something that Romeo does, he tells me, as often as he can, mostly to see his mother.

“I dropped by – was it Tuesday? – just for an hour in Waswanipi, spoke to the people, thanked them for their support, and then went to my mother’s house to see her, because she had prepared something for me – some food, obviously. And when I left, she said to me – and there was a tone of resignation in her words – she said to me ‘I guess finally, I’ll have to share you with everybody, until the end of my life.’”

Science+Technology

The McGill Daily | Monday, January 30, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

Firewalls and firearms

13

Online attacks can have devastating offline effects – and we aren’t prepared

Amina Batyreva | The McGill Daily

Thomas Raissi

Science+Technology Writer

I

n June 2010, the discovery of a computer worm called Stuxnet inside Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities brought increased attention to cyber-attacks – and more importantly, how inadequate current defenses are. As many countries race to develop their arsenal of defensive and offensive online technology, commentators have declared “cyber-arms race”.

Cyber attacks are hardly new: in 1989 a worm referred to as the “WANK worm”, infected NASA computer systems. The moniker “WANK” stands for Worms Against Nuclear Killers; the worm was created in protest of nuclear weapons and displayed often humorous anti-nuclear and anarchist messages on NASA computers.

However, subsequent attacks have become less focused on protesting general policies and increasingly take sides in conflicts between states. And, although non-state groups still carry out the bulk of online attacks, this trend is shifting. The 1999 war in Kosovo was one of the first examples, when the Serbian Black Hand – a secret Serbian military society – attacked NATO computers. In 2007, Israel attacked Syrian defense systems – disabling them and allowing Syria to be bombed.

But amongst cyber attacks, Stuxnet stands out for its uniquely complex structure. The worm dispersed itself widely throughout the internet before replicat-

ing itself onto USB drives used in Iran’s nuclear enrichment system, allowing it to transfer computer systems that Iran uses to control the centrifuges that enrich uranium. The worm caused the centrifuges to spin too quickly, causing permanent damage and setting the Iranian nuclear program back by months. Meanwhile, Stuxnet fed incorrect data to the control systems, making engineers think that all was well.

There is no consensus on who developed Stuxnet, but its complexity has led experts to conclude that it must have been made by a state-sponsored team, with many suggesting it was backed by the United States, Israel, or both.

What is clear is that this attack shares a key feature with Israel’s 2007 attack on Syria: both had direct material consequences offline. While there is no disputing that attacks targeting online infrastructure (such as disabling communication networks) are serious, attacks causing physical damage to offline infrastructure can be even more devastating.

This expanding threat has led a number of countries to ramp up their development of cyber-security as well as cyber-warfare tools.

After alleged Hezbollah cyberattacks, Israel rapidly transformed itself into one of the major players in cyber warfare. In the U.S., the Pentagon has explicitly stated it is willing to launch “offensive” cyber-attacks. Recent attacks on South Korea – which disabled hundreds of computers – have been interpreted as tests by North Korea on their southern neigh-

bour’s computer security systems, and could be a warning of future large-scale attacks. China has been widely accused of statesponsored hacking and attacks, even allegedly hacking into the World Anti-Doping Agency computers to find out which Chinese athletes would be tested next.

Russia is becoming notorious for allegedly backing hackers who shut down opposition websites and interfere with its internal political process. It has also been accused of involvement in numerous external attacks, such as one that brought down swathes of Estonian websites down in 2007 during a row over moving Soviet war graves.

Many governments and non-state groups are finding it more effective to buy online weapons rather than develop their own. There have always been “hackers for hire”, such as the Russian computer scientists who were allegedly used for attacks on Israel. But the business is moving increasingly towards “off-the-shelf” cyber-attacks. Following the business model of Endgame, a secretive American cyber-security company, hacker groups without government affiliations work to find so-called “zero-day exploits” – vulnerabilities in software that have not been detected before – and sell them to the highest bidder, ready to be used. Unlike physical arms, which are subject to stringent regulation, these exploits can easily be sold to any state or non-state group that has the cash to buy them. Experts worry that their easy availability could be particularly destabilizing in already volatile regions, where the

lines between state governments and non-state groups are blurred.

Any one of many disparate groups associated with a state government could launch an online attack, triggering potential offline economic or military retaliation – even if the government had not directly authorized the cyber-attack.

Much of the fear about cyberattacks is due to weak cyberdefenses around the world. Derek Ruths, a computer science professor at McGill, explains that “nobody is doing close to enough” to defend themselves against cyber-attacks. He cites China as an example of the country that has been the most proactive: “It has developed its own operating system, made efforts to obtain the source code for popular commercial products such as Microsoft Windows, and implemented a kill switch.” A kill switch allows the system to disconnect essential services such as water and electric facilities from the Internet should they come under attack. “They are taking serious steps,” says Ruths.

“Outside China, besides clandestine initiatives, nations have taken very few steps to mitigate the threats of cyber-attacks.” However, China’s repressive Internet policies are hardly a model for other countries – websites like Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr are all blocked.

Cyber-defense is made even more difficult by the huge uncertainty of the rapidly evolving nature of cyberattacks. There is still no consensus on even the most basic parameters of cyber-warfare: what constitutes an attack? How does one retaliate?

Further complicating matters is the anonymity of the internet.

Attacks can easily be made virtually untraceable—rendering retaliation impossible. Unlike conventional warfare, highly technical questions surround all aspects of cyberwarfare, making it particularly difficult for policy-makers to adequately understand and deal with the threat. A conference on cybersecurity in London last November, which brought together civil servants and politicians from various countries, illustrated this problem with its participants’ inability to move beyond vague platitudes, such as US Vice-President Joe Biden’s call to eschew a “repressive global code” for the internet.

Not everyone agrees that cyberwarfare is a serious threat. King’s College London academic Thomas Rid argues that viewing cyberattacks as “war” is an inaccurate characterization of the threat – he asserts that the attacks are better seen as online analogues to the offline actions that frequently occur during war: sabotage, espionage, and subversion. Since these actions accompany war rather than cause it, he argues they are not a new form of war with widereaching consequences but simply a new way to conduct these ageold activities, one that will have little effect on warfare itself.

Just as with any new technological development, it will take time for the practical effects of increasingly advanced cyberattacks to become apparent. It may be decades before the military applications of the Internet have been fully explored.

Sports

The McGill Daily | Monday, January 30, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

14

Montreal screwjobs Courtesy of Patric Leprade

Inside the Montreal indie wrestling circuit, and its unpaid wrestlers

Henry Gass

The McGill Daily

I

’d just finished talking with his girlfriend in rudimentary English when Dirty Buxx Belmar jumped up in front of me, straddling the iron guard railing separating spectators from the ring with practiced ease. He wore tattered denim jean shorts, black face paint, no shirt, and gazed vacantly around the packed Jean-Talon community center gym like an office worker watching the clock tick closer and closer to 5 p.m.

“Am I bothering you?” he asked. He was still sweating from his appearance earlier in the show, his face paint smeared across his cheeks.

“No. Am I bothering you?” I answered.

“No.” I deliberated with myself for a moment. “You know, I was talking to your girlfriend a minute ago.”

I wasn’t sure if Belmar was listening to me. He was scanning the gym, as if looking for a way out of the conversation he himself had started.

“Yeah, she told me,” he said.

I don’t remember him making eye contact with me once throughout our conversation, before he hopped off the guard railing and jogged back behind stage. We were at the half-time intermission of Northern Championship

Wrestling’s (NCW) Season Premiere 2, and I had spent most of the break watching two fans receive “birthday slaps” across the chest from NCW star Alextreme.

“It’s cool if you know them,” Belmar’s girlfriend told me, referring to the wrestlers. “They do it for free,” she added.

Northern Championship Wrestling NCW publicist André Therrien repeatedly called the promotion “a family.” Wrestlers are not paid; they do it in exchange for the international exposure NCW’s taped shows might be able to provide them.

The roster is diverse. Some, like 19 year-old Leandre Sauve, are hoping to break into the WWE. Sauve began young. He used to follow his neighbour – also a wrestler – until he let him train with him. Sauve did his first show at 15 and was wrestling weekly at 16.

“I don’t even have a girlfriend for now, it’s wrestling all the way,” he said.

With his grades getting worse, Sauve took the last term off from CEGEP, although he plans on returning.

“If I decide to slow down, I’m just afraid that everything’s going to just crash and my dreams are over, so that’s why I always want to keep on going,” he added.

Most do it as a hobby. Day jobs for NCW wrestlers range from graphic design to working in a car garage. Stan Zimler, head of security for NCW shows, is also an unpaid

volunteer. He described the job as his “alter ego.” His nine to five is as a professional accountant.

I asked Zimler the craziest thing he’d seen at an NCW show. He told me one fan ten years ago had once tried to stab one of the heels with a knife.

Bumps, Bruises, and Chronically Dislocated Shoulders The Season Premiere 2 began with Dirty Buxx racing to help NCW Inter-City champion Mobster 357, in a match against tag team Size Matters, then sealing a formal alliance with Mobster in a spit-shake after the match.

The plot development proved immensely popular with the audience of over 200 at the show. The next weekend, Mobster 357 would sweep through the NCW endof-year awards, taking the Most Popular Wrestler, Best Match, and Best Feud awards.

Frank Credali, an NCW wrestler under the ring-name Apocalypse, said of Mobster, “He just puts his body on the line. He does crazy stuff.” Mobster spent much of 2011, for example, falling through tables, getting hit with chairs, and experiencing all the other wrestling pratfalls many of the kids in my generation grew to know and love.

Credali, who is also a 35 yearold construction worker, father of two, and NCW’s technical director, wrestled the third match of the show—a three-on-two tag team match. Credali came down

the ramp he had helped construct the day before, wearing a black leather mask and costume he paid for out of his own pocket, while an entrance video he had compiled himself using snippets from YouTube videos and the Discovery Channel played behind him.

Before wrestling, Credali played hockey for two decades, a career in which he separated his ankle and tore his meniscus three times. He said that he now takes the “safer route” with wrestling.

“I love wrestling, but there’s a certain limit that I will reach because I gotta think about my family. I’ve got to make sure that I can go to work Monday morning and pay for the food on their table, the clothes on their backs,” he said.

Other wrestlers are not so lucky.

Credali’s old partner has been out for over a year with various knee injuries. He also knows a wrestler who re-dislocates his shoulders whenever he lifts them to tag someone.

Jesse Champagne – a.k.a. Pit Bull Brando – had a more dramatic example.

“Some guy this summer, he had a hardcore match and he went through a flaming table, but he’s kind of a dumbass because he had his t-shirt on – and when you’re a wrestler you don’t wrestle with a t-shirt, especially in a hardcore match,” he said.

“His t-shirt caught fire. He was burnt to a second and third degree on I think 40 per cent of his torso.”

During the week, Champagne is a fitness instructor in schools, but he reserves his weekends for wrestling.

In his six years of wrestling, he has taken injured ribs, three concussions, and broken fingers back to work with him on Mondays. I wondered what the kids he teaches thought of this, and his tattoos, piercings, and spasmodic facial twitches.

“I punched a wrestler once in the backstage. It was his fault, he blew my spot,” he told me. “I don’t trust everyone in the wrestling business.”

The night before Season Premiere 2, Champagne had been wrestling at another promotion. Going over the top rope on his way out of the ring, he landed on a steel chair his opponent had left there by accident.

“Maybe it’s broken. I don’t know,” he said, referring to his foot.

He wrestled that next night anyway, in a tag match (“So I don’t have to do much”). After the show, I saw him limp across the empty gym and collapse in a steel chair. The facial twitches make him look almost constantly nervous, but he was calm, almost exhausted, telling me he would get the foot x-rayed in the next few days, expecting to be out for two to three weeks.

There probably won’t be blood Champagne’s tip for preparing for a blade job is to take two aspirin every four hours and chug a beer right before your match. The aspirin is supposed to thin your blood, which allows it to look like you are

Sports

The McGill Daily | Monday, January 30, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

bleeding more than you actually are.

The beer gives the ability to slice your forehead open with a razor blade.

Champagne said wrestlers often blade needlessly. “You have to have the whole story behind a blade-job,” he said. “If you just blade for nothing, then what’s the point of bleeding?”

Nevertheless, he pointed out several benefits to blading. He described one instance where a friend spontaneously decided to blade near the end of an exciting match.

“It added emotion, and people believed it. The fans were crying, literally, and that set things up for another match,” he said. “There’s going to be a rematch, and it’s going to sell more tickets.”

Champagne also knew another wrestler – Sexy Eddy – who got a career boost from getting smashed in the arm with a neon light tube.

After the match, bleeding profusely from the arm, Eddy clenched his fist, squirting his own blood into his mouth like a water fountain.

“Some guy in Japan saw that and he sent that tape to a booker – so he got booked in Japan, just for that,” he said. “They just wanted him because that was the craziest shit ever.”

How it became fixed According to Patric Laprade, coauthor of a book on the history of Quebec wrestling coming out this fall, the hardcore era peaked in North America in the mid-1990s.

Laprade has been active in Quebec wrestling for decades, working for almost every promo-

tion in Montreal in every possible way, including announcing, promoting, managing, and wrestling.

Like almost everyone else in the Quebec indie wrestling scene, Laprade has a day job. So we met on a Saturday morning in a coffee shop on St. Laurent, where he flaunted his encyclopedic knowledge of Quebec wrestling for over two hours.

Laprade dates wrestling in the province back to the 1850s, when crowds would gather to watch “catch-as-catch-can” wrestling matches, which were essentially unscripted brawls that could last as long as two hours.

Gambling was rampant at the time, and it was in this culture that catch-as-catch-can evolved into today’s professional wrestling.

“The promoters and the wrestlers realized that, depending on what the odds were for the matches, that if they could predetermine who would win, they could direct the betting into getting more money out of it,” said Laprade.

In the beginning, they only planned the end of the match. Later, wrestlers would plan high spots – for entertainment value – and today, Champagne noted, some wrestlers like to plan entire matches.

With the 1940s, and the arrival of television, came the dawn of the first golden era of wrestling in Montreal. Promoters were hosting sold-out shows monthly in the Montreal Forum. Behind hockey, it was the most popular sport in the province, and, behind Maurice

Richard, headliner and close personal friend Yvon Robert was the most popular athlete.

Fellow Québécois headliners like Johnny Rougeau, Maurice “Mad Dog” Vachon, and Frenchman Éduoard Carpentier would succeed Robert.

“Before the Quiet Revolution [in the 1960s], it was even more important for the French people here in Montreal, in Quebec, to get to have a French local hero, because at the time…they felt like they were like second-grade citizens,” explained Laprade.

How WWE changed everything By the 1980s, said Laprade, Montreal was one of the five biggest wrestling cities in the world.

The market remained tough for Anglophone wrestlers, however. Len Shelley, a wrestler from the 1960s, told Laprade he thought he had been held back his entire career because he didn’t have a French name.

Perhaps the most popular nonfrancophone wrestler in Quebec history – Wladek Kowalski – garnered fame for accidentally stomping off an opponent’s cauliflowered ear during a 1954 match at the Montreal Forum.

The incident led to the immortal nickname “Killer” Kowalski.

One Montrealer, Pierre Clermont, wrestled under the name Pat Patterson – Laprade didn’t know why – and left for America before his career had really started, because he knew he would never become a star.

In 1985, Patterson returned to Montreal as the right-hand man

to Vince McMahon, chairman and CEO of WWE, and within two years, the WWE had run all rival promotions out of the city.

While promotions would normally charge TV stations for broadcasting their shows, WWE’s formula involved paying television stations to broadcast shows.

“One week you were watching [the Montreal promotion] on TV, and the next week – without any notice, same time, same station – it was WWE,” Laprade said.

In 1986, WWE signed Raymond and Jacque Rougeau, Johnny Rougeau’s nephews. As a consequence, all the big Montreal promotions splintered into smaller indie outfits – the NCW being one of these – and Montreal went into decline as a wrestling centre. 2011 was the first year since 1984 that the WWE did not host a show here.

Back to the indies Frank Credali grew up a fan of the wrestling world that WWE forged in Montreal. I spent a Sunday with him hoping to discern how prominent wrestling was in his life.

The day did not start well. Crisis hit on the way to the arena where his son’s hockey practice was being held: Credali would have to drive to Laval that afternoon to help a family friend move a fridge. I didn’t touch upon wrestling until we were driving from his parent’s home in Montreal Nord to LaSalle to pick up a bigger truck.

In the car, I tried to bring the

Glossary

Courtesy of Frank Credali

Face – “good” guy Heel – “bad” guy Kayfabe – pretending to be injured The promotion – wrestling company Spit-shake – exactly what it sounds like Blade job – self-inflicted cut for dramatic purposes Chair shots – hitting someone with a chair WWE – World Wrestling Entertainment

15

conversation back to wrestling. “So you’re friends with Pat Patterson?”

I asked. Credali’s father had mentioned this during a long conversation about World War II when we stopped by his house.

“Oh, shit. Thanks for reminding me. It’s his birthday today,” said Credali, fumbling for his cell phone.

After a few rings, he had Patterson on the phone.

“You on a fucking cruise ship again?” asked Credali.

The conversation meandered for several traffic lights. Patterson was in Tampa, Florida. He told Credali about a reality show about old wrestlers he was about to start filming.

“You never retire from wrestling,” Credali explained to me after hanging up on Patterson.

Credali’s father had a different take in my conversation with him.

“My mother was in the hospital with Éduoard Carpentier,” he said. “I didn’t want to bother him – him being famous and all – but we ended up talking a bit.”

“They never took a day off,” Credali Sr. said of Carpentier’s generation. “If they got hurt, they wouldn’t tell nobody.”

The tradition rings true in today’s indie promotions. Wrestlers donate their bodies on a bi-weekly basis. TV money has abandoned wrestling in the province, leaving the wrestlers themselves to follow childhood heroes in their labours of love.

“It’s a hobby, it’s a passion for a sport that’s kind of supposed to die,” said Therrien.

Opposite page (clockwise left to right): Three wrestlers compete for the NCW Quebec Championship; Quebec wrestling legend Yvan Robert; former WWE superstar X-Pac. This page (clockwise left to right): The Season Premiere 2 main event; Credali with Vince McMahon; Leandre Sauve about to get slammed.

All other photos by Victor Tangermann | The McGill Daily

16 Sports

The McGill Daily | Monday, January 30, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

Divine interception How Tim Tebow became an American symbol of faith rewarded Evan Dent

The McGill Daily

I

n 2009, before the fame of Tim Tebow had grown as big as it is today, one brave reporter asked Tebow a question that many were thinking: “Are you saving yourself for marriage?”

The assorted media at the press conference burst into laughter, as did Tebow. Finally regaining composure, he replied, “Yes I am.”

Another reporter tried to move on to another question, but there emerged another round of laughter as everyone in the room tried to grasp what he had just said.

Here’s a prototypical college quarterback – an attractive, square chinned man – admitting that he was a virgin. Tebow then went on to say, “I was ready for the question. I don’t think y’all were.”

He’s right. The assorted media and the country as a whole have never seen anything quite like Tim Tebow, a professional athlete who has used his star power to spread his religion. He is perhaps the most religious pro athlete in any sport today: he prays before and after every game and gives all credit for his success to God. This is all combined with Tebow’s unbelievable habit of winning games in the final seconds on miraculous plays, after spending the entire game playing horribly.

This is a quarterback who regularly completes less than 50 per cent of his passes, often times throwing for less than 100 yards.

The offense designed for him by his coaches became predicated on him running the ball in a sort of throwback to 1950s era football. By any statistical standard, he is not a good quarterback, but somehow he led his team, the Broncos, to an 8-8 record, a division title, and an unlikely overtime playoff win over the defending AFC champion, the Pittsburgh Steelers. His success defies description and logic, making his story a compelling one.

Add in his intense religion, and you have the biggest sports media story of the year.

ESPN devoted two separate episodes of Sportscenter to Tebow alone, setting a record by mentioning Tebow’s name 160 times in one hour of programming. Many skits and comedians have devoted material to what is now known as “Tebow-ing.” Before and after games, and sometimes after critical touchdowns, Tebow will get down on one knee and genuflect to the Lord. The gesture itself has become a natinonal phenomenon.

After the Broncos miraculous win over the Steelers, in which Tebow threw an eighty yard touchdown pass on the first play of overtime to win the game, 43 per cent of respondents of a phone poll taken by Pollposition.

com claimed that Tebow’s success was divinely inspired – that God himself had a hand in Tebow’s unlikely success.

So what makes Tebow so much more popular than any other athlete who points to the sky after a touchdown and thanks God in the post game interview? It certainly doesn’t hurt that he is a white male as opposed to many other athletes in the NFL. But perhaps what has garnered him so much publicity is the fervor of his religion and the overwhelming purity that he seems to represent.

Tebow has already appeared in an anti-abortion ad with his mother. He takes missionary trips to the Philippines to circumcise impoverished children, and he has a charity foundation that helps troubled children. Additionally, he brings a different child to every game, talks to them, attempting to make a personal connection with them. He is, overall, one of the most altruistic people in sports – personable, genuinely kind in public, and, reportedly, in private.

His faith is no act, and it seems as though he uses it for what he sees as the greater good.

Maybe, though, Tebow’s popularity is predicated on the idea that God rewards the faithful. The Christian Right is a popular movement in the United States. With the typical ideals of the Christian faith being compromised in other

realms like politics, Tebow’s success represents to the faithful what is being lost elsewhere in America. His victories are a reassurance for the religious – tangible evidence that faith can and will be rewarded, no matter how difficult the process is.

In this way, Tebow has become a bizarre platform for the intersection between religion and sports, a traveling preacher, who performs modern day miracles while playing the all-American game. This connection goes far beyond anything seen before. The religious have now co-opted sports as a platform for their message, using athletic prowess and achievement as proof of their message.

I, personally, don’t share the same viewpoint, and think that

Amina Batyreva | The McGill Daily God (if real) would spare his prized player from a 45 to 10 playoff loss to the Patriots, or would give him slightly better mechanics and stats. Believe or don’t believe, but, whatever you choose, the projection of religion onto sports is a trend that doesn’t look to be going anywhere any time soon.

The road to redemption is a whole lot longer Sports, eh Sam Gregory

sportseh@mcgilldaily.com

W

ith the Canadian women’s national soccer team rounding out the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF) Olympic Qualifying tournament, the word redemption is being thrown around a lot. The tournament – hosted by Vancouver – marked the first time the Canadians have played at home since their disastrous showing at the World Cup in Germany last summer.

The team that some (admittedly very optimistic) supporters were predicting would win the World Cup finished last out of the 16 teams in Germany. The Olympic Qualifiers in Vancouver gained an impressive amount of mainstream media attention, with the key storyline centred around the idea of “redemption” for the women’s team after their

poor performance in Germany.

Unfortunately for the players, it will take a lot more than qualifying for the Olympics to redeem the team.

With the 2015 Women’s World Cup to be played in Canada, some supporters of the team are starting to get a little nervous. Anything close to a performance like the women had in Germany would be a low point in the program’s history. Canadian supporters saw their nightmares play out before their eyes in 2007, when Canada last hosted a major international event. The Men’s U-20 World Cup was seen as a stepping stone for the Canadian U-20 team that had done reasonably well at the previous two tournaments. When the tournament was at home, the team that had been so hyped up by the Canadian media staged an epic collapse, losing all three games without scoring a single goal. The effects on the U-20 program were devastating – they haven’t qualified for a World Cup since.

The U-20 World Cup in 2007 left a legacy of failure with the Canadian U-20 team. If the women do not

fare better in 2015 than they did in 2011, they may be left with a similar legacy. That is why it is absolutely essential that the women’s team does rebound from Germany, and, as has been said before, “redeem themselves”.

While the 2015 World Cup may offer the team a chance at said redemption, the current Olympic Qualifiers and subsequent Olympics are not offering that opportunity.

One of the biggest problems this national team has had is that it has been settling for too little. The players, fans, and the last two coaches – Evan Pellarud and Carolina Morace – have celebrated minor achievements as “enough.”

For example, when the women’s team qualified for the quarter-finals, supporters considered them a success even though pre-tournament predictions had Canada as a potential semi-finalist. When Morace took over as head coach in 2009, poor results were glazed over because people believed the team was “playing well” or “playing the right way.”

Under the new head coach, John Herdman, this complacency must be seen as unacceptable.

Earlier this month, American forward Abby Wambach told Sportsnet that she thought Canadian Christine Sinclair was “the best all-around player in the world.” If Canada truly does boast the best player in the world, anything but competing with the best teams has to be seen as a failure.

That is why the Olympic Qualifiers are not about redemption; they are about rebuilding a team. The team needs to have a winning mentality because they suffered the worst result of their professional careers only seven months ago.

Luckily for supporters of the team, Herdman seems to be leading the players in a new direction.

According to the players in camp, he has been far more open with them than either of the two previous managers and the results have been positive. Central midfielder Kaylyn Kyle spoke with Sportsnet about the changes that have been occurring

under Herdman, saying, “John is very direct with you; he tells it like it is. He told me, ‘Look, if you don’t improve this, I can’t see you playing in our midfield.’ It scared the shit out of me. So I watched game tapes and he went over game clips for me.

It’s been awesome. I really think I’ll grow under him”.

This type of change is the exact thing Canada needs in order to reach that next level on the international stage. Herdman is a coach who isn’t willing to take minor victories as simply “enough” and is demanding more out of his players than either of the previous two coaches were able – or willing – to do.

It is important to know that what happened in Germany is not thrown aside after the Olympic Qualifiers in Vancouver are over. It doesn’t matter that the media are calling this tournament a shot at redemption. What is important is that the players are aware that the only real redemption can come from a good performance at home in the 2015 World Cup, and that they have a long way to go before that.

Culture

The McGill Daily | Monday, January 30, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

17

Dancers in the dark Olivia Messer

The McGill Daily

N

ow in its sixth consecutive year, Igloofest has become something of a Montreal institution. The winter counterpart to Piknik Electronik, it’s a weekend activity on every McGill student’s to-do-beforeyou-graduate bucket list. Although I’m in my third year, this was my first trip to the neon ice igloo village. I may be adventurous in some ways, but night-time winter outdoor raves are not exactly my forte. Accordingly, as I bundled myself up in preparation, I had three key pieces of advice stuffed in the pockets of my winter coat: wear layers, show up early, and get as close to the stage as you can.

The idea for Igloofest was originally concocted by the same four men who started Piknic Electronik.

Ever since its inception in the winter of 2007, nine evenings every January have filled the Jacques Cartier Pier with walls of ice, spiked hot chocolate, famous DJs, and screaming (mostly) twenty-somethings.

This year has featured DJs such as Montreal native A-Trak, south London’s dubstep legend Mala, and French DJ Sébastien Léger.

Igloofest, though, has evolved – it is more than just an outdoor music festival. Since its creation, the event has grown – as the Star described – to signify “Montreal’s importance on the global music scene.” Few would deny that both Igloofest and Piknic Electronik have been a large part of advancing the Montreal’s house, dubstep, and techno culture, even

within the context of Montreal’s music scene at large.

But one could easily argue that Igloofest is not entirely about the music. It is also the particularly unique experience of an interactive igloo village in which you can eat, drink, and dance. Many can say that they’ve been to Bonnaroo or Coachella or Sasquatch for their favorite musicians.

Most McGill students have heard stories about how their friends spent a weekend of their summer after Grade 12 camping out in tents, waking up to the heat, scorching their skin in the sun, and gorging on fried food. These don’t sound much different from Piknic or Osheaga.

Yet, Igloofest is a completely different experience. I was red-faced from the cold, not a sunburn. I was sweating from the layers under my hat and gloves, not the heat. My toes were frozen, my brain was dizzy from dancing.

Sure, I got elbowed in the face a little bit and I lost my cell phone (Note, add to that advice list: helmet, cell phone tether), but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a fun night.

Accessibility is also a major factor in the draw to Igloofest. I might have felt different about the imperfections of my night if I’d had to shell out more money. Igloofest and Piknic Electronik general director Nicolas Cournoyer told the Montreal Gazette, in an interview, that their “mission from the start, with both Piknic and Igloofest, was to democratize electronic music and make it accessible to everyone.” And when you consider that every winter approximately 60,000 people, many of whom are stu-

Olivia Messer | The McGill Daily

Exploring Montreal’s unique music culture in the cold

dents, gain access to world quality techno DJs for only $15, it seems that they have succeeded in that endeavor.

As Cournoyer explained, “it’s no longer the underground event it once was, but people who love the music still come. We’ve come a long way

from the prejudices of the early 2000s, when many people still saw techno and house as nothing but a series of silly, repetitive beats.”

Learning for learning’s sake What happens when classroom rules go out and innovation swoops in Christina Colizza

The McGill Daily

T

he font of the Alternative University Project’s manifesto is utterly disorienting.

Exclamation points, oversize letters, italics switching to bold, and wording jumping from side to side. It’s scattered, loud, written in different voices, and it’s devastatingly beautiful. Much like the creation of the Alternative University Project, the manifesto is a hodge-podge of varying interest, feelings, and thoughts, yet all of its creators are – quite literally – on the same page.

Conceived during a side conversation at the Redpath reserves desk, and born one night in an apartment on Mont Royal, the Alternative University Project has matured into an eighty-plus person initiative,

geared toward creating a communal learning environment. The classes are free, taught by anyone wishing to facilitate discussion, and range in topics from “Knitting” to “Studies in Post-Capitalist Futures.”

The project’s organic formation stems from a larger student geist. The strike of McGill non-academic workers’ union, the presence of riot police on McGill’s campus, Concordia’s cuts to student representation on the Board of Governors, and the Quebec students’ long-running protest against tuition hikes: said events have undeniably created a highly political, and frustrated, sentiment on our university campuses. “[The project] has managed to keep a strong excitement, passion, and just joy for what we’re doing. I’m letting myself feel really angry about what isn’t going on. Something is fundamentally wrong with the cur-

rent university system and we have created this because we want something else for ourselves,” said Galen Macdonald, a McGill Urban Systems student and one of the co-founders of the project.

Working under a consensus-based model of dialogue, creating the project was as much a lesson as the classes themselves. Anna Pringle, a McGill Cultural Studies student and project co-founder, felt that the creation of the project “was reflective of the learning process itself. We are constantly, creating, changing, reflecting, and transforming. It’s been chaotic, as the project is always in flux.”

With so many professors and students coming out of the woodwork to contribute, fluidity, adaptability, and optimism, as well as an understood level of respect amongst those involved, have fueled the initiative.

As Matt May, a McGill Sociology

student described, “the underlying factor is the level of respect we have for one another. We negotiate things amongst one another, we all understand we are working towards this together.”

Although it was a student idea, professors are an integral part of the group’s success. Cultural Studies professors such as Ara Osterweil, Alanna Thain, Derek Nystrom, and Ned Schantz are teaching courses on top of their own lectures, with others opting to do single lectures.

With classes being held in cafes, lofts, basements, and spaces in Concordia and McGill buildings, Montreal seems the perfect setting for such an initiative. McGill Cultural Studies student Tim Beeler noted, “Being at McGill, you can go to this school for four years and literally have the most superficial relationship with the community. A university doesn’t

have to be a place with gates around it. It doesn’t have to be four years. You bring what you are as an individual.

It just happens that we’re here and there is this exciting atmosphere.”

The ethos of this project is the free exchange of ideas. Free in creativity, free in self-expression, and free in cost. Macdonald encapsulated the project with a quote from George Bernard Shaw: “If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples, then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.”

An idea a day keeps oppressive learning structures away.

More information about the Alternative University Project can be found at alternativeuniversityproject.tumblr.com.

18 Culture

The McGill Daily | Monday, January 30, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

Don’t judge a journal by its cover Tamkinat Mirza reads up on McGill’s undergraduate academic journals

C

urrently, there are 23 undergraduate academic journals published and circulated on the McGill campus within the Faculty of Arts. However, ask any average student, and they would be surprised by this heafty number. It seems that students are largely unable to engage with these publications due to their limited circulation.

23 is a pretty significant number, and serves as evidence of the inherent value of academic journals to the student body. “Symbolically, [these journals] serve as a collection of student work, to broadcast or show the talents and abilities of those who either work on it or are published in it,” said Joseph Henry, The Daily’s former Health and Education editor and current coordinating editor of Vielfalt, the German Studies journal.

“The departmental journal is probably one of the most important things that each discipline manifests, and, to be fair, also looks great on a CV,” said Flora Dunster, The Daily’s former Copy editor and current editor-in-chief of Canvas, the Art History and Communications Studies journal.

Most undergraduate journals tend to be limited by department within the Faculty of Arts, but some have attempted to branch out and involve the wider student body. “[These journals] function to showcase the academic and pedagogical abilities of that department,” said Henry. “Though Vielfalt is certainly meant to be seen as a product of those from German Studies, we’re publishing work from English Literature, Cultural Studies, History, Political Science, Philosophy, German Studies itself – and that’s just the previously written academic purposes. So, we’re not so much for advocating the intellectual prowess of the department, though hopefully that can come across, but rather the academic dynamism of the field of German Studies [as a whole], especially if that’s comprised from multiple sources,” he elaborated.

As valuable as academic journals are for the larger departments within the Arts faculty, their value for individual students lies in the opportunity for them to see their own writing in print and to gain publishing experience. “Especially if you’re planning to go on with academic studies, trying to get your work published will be a huge part of your life, and getting some experience as an undergraduate is great in that sense,” added Dunster.

Amina Batyreva | The McGill Daily Seeing your writing published and your name in print is wonderfully satisfying, but working on the editorial boards of these journals is arguably even more rewarding – it’s a tremendous production experience.

“It’s also valuable for undergraduate students to have the opportunity to create a journal.

It’s like working for a newspaper, it gives students experience in editing, production, fundraising, et cetera”, said Henry.

Jasmine Lefresne, editor of Fields, the Anthropology Studies journal commented, “It’s a great way to meet people and gain valuable skills: editing, working with authors, and layout design.”

Most importantly, it’s work experience that doesn’t suffocate your schedule. For the editors on the Canvas editorial board, the bulk of production work is limited to a month or two, and can be snugly fit in along with their other extra-curricular and academic responsibilities.

Academic journals have the potential to benefit their uninvolved audience just as much as they do their producers and contributors. As a collection of past

term papers, the journals can be a handy teaching tool, especially for first year students struggling to figure out university-level academic writing styles. “It wouldn’t surprise me if people had used them in the past to get a sense of how successful papers are formatted, how they integrate citations, quotations… In that sense, it could be a valuable resource, and provide students with an idea of what professors in the department are looking for,” said Dunster.

Alternatively, journal content could also be harvested for paper ideas, but their relatively limited circulation seems the biggest deterrent, at any rate – for both harvesting ideas or teaching yourself how to tackle paper construction. “It’s true that it’s hard to get a copy of [Canvas] – you really have to be at the launch, and the people who go to the launch tend to be the people published in Canvas, or just people from the department in general, which definitely limits its circulation,” commented Dunster. “I think McGill would really benefit from a sort of journal library, a place where each department could file their respective publication each year.

As of now, you have to keep on top

of the launch date and come to the event if you want to get your hands on a copy, which is unfortunate, but hopefully in the future there will be a better method of distribution.”

This is by no means a problem only Canvas faces, however. “The first copy of Vielfalt seems to be something of a collector’s item,” says Henry, “I think I know of four or five copies left, one of which is my personal copy.”

The reason for this collective lack of circulation? As with most smaller-sized student publications, a lack of funding is to blame. Lefresne described how most of Fields’ funding “comes from AUS and the Anthropology department…We can only print a limited number of hard copies of the journal, based on this funding, although we do have an online version which is accessible through the ASA website (asamcgill.ca)… Having an online version is a good first step in making it more accessible.”

Other journals, such as Vielfalt, have branched out from this limited funding from AUS and also their respective departments, in hopes of securing larger funds from other sources. “We’re looking for funding from AUS – which has a journal

Don’t have a date for Valentine’s Day yet? Neither do we!

Come date Culture.

Meetings are Tuesdays at 5:30 p.m. in Shatner B-24.

fund – the German Studies Student Association, hopefully something from the Fine Arts Council, although we haven’t approached these groups formally yet.” said Henry. Vielfalt also does their own fundraising to pad their budget.

While academic journals at McGill struggle to overcome their financial obstacles, their continued existence alludes to consistent effort on the part of their respective production teams.

Besides issues regarding funding, what undergrad academic journals need most is student interest and contributions. So, the next time you’re dissatisfied with a grade, consider scouting out a copy and reading one cover to cover. When that “A” comes around, consider submitting to your departmental journal. Really, it’s a cycle of mutual benefit – see your name in print and contribute to an important scholastic resource in one move. Getting in touch with relevant on-campus journals for publication and production experience may be just what your term papers have been missing out on.

Tamkinat Mirza is a member of the Canvas editorial board.

The McGill Daily | Monday, January 30, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

volume 101 number 28

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

Joan Moses

coordinating@mcgilldaily.com coordinating news editor

Henry Gass news editors

Queen Arsem-O’Malley Erin Hudson Jessica Lukawiecki features editor

Eric Andrew-Gee commentary&compendium! editors

Zachary Lewsen Olivia Messer culture editors

Christina Colizza Fabien Maltais-Bayda

science+technology editor

Jenny Lu

health&education editor

Peter Shyba sports editor

Andra Cernavskis photo editor

Victor Tangermann illustrations editor

Amina Batyreva production&design editors

Alyssa Favreau Rebecca Katzman copy editor

Vacant

web editor

Shannon Palus le délit

Anabel Cossette Civitella

EDITORIAL

State of Emergency Canadians often pride themselves on having one of the highest standards of living in the world.

However, statistics regarding Canada’s First Nation’s population can quickly shatter this notion.

Paul Martin once dubbed the conditions on our Native Reserves as “third world.” Looking at the facts, the injustice behind Canada’s treatment of First Nation’s citizens becomes clear. According to Statistics Canada, in 2006, 60 per cent of First Nations on-reserve residents had not completed high school. Amongst First Nation’s individuals on reserves, the individual median income is just over $14,000. In comparison, the overall median income of an individual in Canada was $28,840 in 2009.

Further, the life expectancy for Native peoples is 7.4 years lower than the Canadian average for females, and 5.2 years lower for males.

These dire conditions are also exemplified by the fact that the government has declared States of Emergency in a number of First Nations communities, most recently for unsafe drinking water and prescription drug abuse.

Many of these problems stem from a long history of colonization, residential schools, and systemic racism – seeds that were planted long ago, but continue to creep into all aspects of life on reserves.

Indirectly, racism can be any form of prejudice that legitimizes unequal relationships, facilitating socioeconomic mobility for one group while placing the other at a disadvantage. Aboriginal peoples in Canada do not enjoy equal access to education or jobs, and continue to lose their resources and lands which are essential for economic growth and self-determination. The trauma of this abysmal period of Canada’s history is carried by current generations of indigenous populations, passed down from parent to child in an endless cycle.

Racism comes in many forms, and though today it may not be as visible as it once was, it continues.

In 2000, Canadians were asked how they felt about the statement: “If Aboriginal peoples tried harder, they could be as well off as other Canadians.” 75 per cent of Quebec francophones and 56 per cent of “rest of Canada” anglophones agreed.

These issues are deep, complex, and have no easy solution. In the larger framework of politics and governance, Canada needs to start working with Aboriginal populations, rather than working for them.

Providing funding is only half the battle – reserves need to be given the support and services that they have long been denied, along with the autonomy to use those things as they see fit in order to become sustainable communities. Development of mining, forestry, and energy must be done in collaboration with the aboriginal communities that they affect.

Solutions so far have come from the top down, and they have not worked. There is groundwork that can be done, however, by us here at McGill. McGill’s Aboriginal population, though small, is making its voice heard, particularly through groups like First People’s McGill and Kanata. One step toward promoting growth of this community, is to give them what they, and many others at McGill, have been asking for for years now – a Native Studies minor. In a previous editorial on September 15, The Daily called for the implementation of such a minor. We have said it before, and we will say it again – a minor is needed both to aid the cause of increasing aboriginal enrollment at McGill and to create a space for analysis of the very oppression that prevents many aboriginal individuals from accessing post-secondary education.

rec@delitfrancais.com cover design

Michael Lee-Murphy Contributors Robert Bell, David Benrimoh, Max Blumberg, Jacqueline Brandon, Juan Camilo Velásquez, Sara Chughtai, Clara del Junco, Evan Dent, Chantelle D’Souza, Lola Duffort, James Farr, Sam Gregory, Andrew Komar, Michaël Lessard, Brendan Lewis, Maymanat Nazari, Thomas Raissi, Rachel Reichel, Daniel Smith, Colleen Stanton, Marc Turcato, Jordan Venton-Rublee, Daniel Wolfe, Mibo Zhao.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Daily strongly encourages all students to attend the SSMU GA on Wednesday, February 1. The GA will be held in the SSMU ballroom at 4:30 p.m.

Additionally, all members of the Arts Undergraduate Society (including Arts & Science students!) are encouraged to attend the AUS General Assembly on Tuesday, January 31, at 6 p.m. in the Stewart Biology building, room S1/4.

Bring your student ID to be eligible to vote!

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.

3480 McTavish St., Rm. B-26 Montreal, QC H3A 1X9 phone 514.398.6790 fax 514.398.8318

Boris Shedov Letty Matteo Geneviève Robert Mathieu Ménard

advertising & general manager

sales representative ad layout & design

dps board of directors

Anabel Cossette Civitella, Marie Catherine Ducharme, Alyssa Favreau, Joseph Henry, Sheehan Moore, Joan Moses, Farid Muttalib, Mai Anh Tran-Ho, Aaron Vansintjan (chair [at] dailypublications.org)

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

All contents © 2012 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.

19

Compendium!

The McGill Daily | Monday, January 30, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

Lies, half-truths, and national croissant day

20

GERTS J Board temporarily poured out Student politicians act out of concern for sobering effects Zee Lo Green and Jacques Nicholson The McGill Daily

A

judicitarian board (J-Board) case was submitted by Zachariah Carlsburgh, a U12 Honours Conflict of Interest Studies student and Brendan Sleeman, a U5 Textile Manufacturing student and Canada’s premier neo-liberal student journalist. However, before the entrusted student Judicitarian board convened for the case, the councillor’s at the Shit-Disturber Society of McGill University (SSMU) have temporarily suspended the whole process of J-Boarding.

The J-Board case was submitted on the grounds that Gerts mislead students about their liquor stock. However, the case failed to implicate other campus bars, such as the Engineering Bros Pub, who follow the same controversial protocol for liquor selection.

In an interview with Compendium! staff, Carlsburgh mentioned “I can’t believe our whole Judicitarian process is now being held in question… I mean what could be more democratic than a group of bad ass legal scholars. “ Fucking seriously, these bas-

tards are hypocritical. The J Board existed when my ass was on the line. Come on, can’t I get a little venture capitalism on the side as president of the Shit-Disturbers Society of McGill University.

Besides who says screwing over campus groups isn’t fun. I mean I could have reached a compromise with Gerts in a less complex forum… but that’s just too fucking boring,” said Carlsburgh.

Bartholemule Higglovich, a U0 Philosophy student and known maoist, expressed his joy that the whole J-Board inquiry system is currently questioned. “This is absolutely joyous. I love it when the Justice system falls apart. This whole sense of order and process shit is really pissing me off.”

Discussion also arose regarding the involvement of SSMU members in the well being of Gerts. In an Access to Information request obtained by Compendium! Staff, SSMU Director of Intoxication Karl von Boozer was reported as enjoying enough Gerts beverages to make himself intoxicated. His behaviour included puking in the hallways, pulling fire alarms, and engaging in illegall gambling.

In reaction to this information, Carlsburgh stated “Well of course

SSMU Councillors ilegally gambling at Gerts. von Boozer wants to keep Gerts open any way he can. Dude would burn down every other bar in Montreal to keep Gerts in business.”

In Section 6.9 of SSMU’s conflict of interest policy, it states that “ all

SSMU councillors and executives are allowed to engage in illegal gambling and enjoy as many alcoholic beverages as they please at Gerts” This section was amended only to include Gerts, given that

Bikuta Tangaman | The McGill Daily beverage consumption and illegal gambling make up 34.8 per cent of SSMU’s revenue.

Von Boozer could be reached for comment but his answers were unintelligible.

Happy national croissant day!

The Crossword Fairies The McGill Daily

Across

1. “Beowulf,” e.g.

5. Office papers 10. Kind of school 14. Bananas 15. Vital 16. ___ Against the Machine 17. Deutches lady 18. ^ 19. Diva’s solo 20. Hitchcock direction 23. Put one’s foot down?

24. In the near future 25. Computer symbol drawing 28. Boozehound 30. Blue-book filler 34. Soup dish 36. Cabernet, e.g.

38. Cousin of an ostrich 39. Boxing buddy 43. Comics shriek 44. Drag queen accessory 45. Fails to 46. Bell Centre, e.g.

49. Gert’s Thursday special 51. Middle English gift 52. Church arch 54. What Jay-Z does

56. Pedagogical placement 62. Aromatic balsam 63. Curie or Antoinette 64. Britich comedian Eric 66. “... happily ___ after” 67. Japanese port 68. Caboose 69. Initiated into the mob 70. Flower part 71. London art gallery

Down

1. Wee person 2. Pocket pool material 3. Passport standard setter 4. Royal attendant 5. Hairy-chested 6. African antelopes 7. Catalan painter Joan 8. Go too far 9. Begin 10. Scampi 11. Pink, as a steak 12. Protection: Var. 13. Bog mummy preserver 21. Judge 22. Clod chopper 25. Befuddled 26. Man or woman?

27. Oryx and ___ 29. J. S. Bach instrument

31. Intuit 32. Alter 33. Mongolian homes 35. Pen part 37. The old man 40. Billfold 41. Frolics 42. Souvenir shop item 47. Character 48. 30-day mo.

50. Soviet triumvirate 53. Japanese wrestlers 55. Pinocchio wants to be ____ boy 56. Thing 57. PBS science show 58. Toboggan 59. “Shut your ___!”

60. It comes to mind 61. ___ du jour 65. Before, to Burns

AND DUE TO THE MASSIVE AMOUNT OF WHINING THAT WE WERE SUBJECTED TO, YOU’LL HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL NEXT WEEK FOR THE ANSWERS.