Medium Magazine 2012

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CONTENTS

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PAUL MARTIN FORM E R P RIME MINISTER ON HIS TIME AT U OF T

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THE BROTHERHOOD TRINITY COLLEGE’S (NOT SO) SECRET SOCIETY

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BRENDAN CANNING BSS FRONTMAN ON HIS FAVOURITE PLACES IN T.O.

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ROOM TO GROW EXPANSION OF AN INSTITUTION

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THE PICK UP INSIDE THE WORLD OF SEDUCTION

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SAM ROBERTS CANADIAN MUSICIAN ON HIS NEW ALBUM AND TOURING

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E D I TO R M I CH A E L D I L E O

P U B L I S HE D B Y M E DI UM I I P U B L I CAT I O NS 3 3 5 9 M I SS I SS AU GA R D . N. , S T U D ENT C ENT RE, RM 2 0 0 MISS I SS AU GA, O N L5L 1 C6 WWW. MED I U MU T M. CA I NFO @MED I U MU T M. CA

CRE AT IV E D IR E CTO R S J UL I E D O, EM M A DAW N AL L AIN

EDI TO R I A L D I R E CTO R : M I C HAEL DI LEO

P HOTO ED ITO R EDWARD CA I

D I R E CTO R S : AMIR AHMED , M AT T H EW B U T L E R , V ICTO RI A D O LLIVER, PAU L D O N O G H U E , J ERO ME J O HNS O N, S VI ATO S LAV RO M A N I U K , LY S AN SEQ U EIRA

CO PY E D I TO R LUK E S AWC Z AK CON T R IB U T IN G E D ITORS ST EFA N IE MA R OT TA , N IVES H A J DIN, L A R ISS A HO , S OP H IA LEO NAR D DI GI TA L DE S IG N E R GA RY L I V I D E O D IR E CTO R K EEN A N M ACWILL IA M CARTO O N IS T C O RE Y B E L FOR D

CON T R IB U TO R S LUK E S AVAG E , K JA R TAN H EWITT, CA RI N E AB O U S E IF , A MIR AHMED, AR I S TOT L E E L IO P O U LO S, LYSAN SEQU E IR A , M E LISS A H ORN, RAE M A XW E L L TH A N K S TO AH M A D A L - HENDI, DEA N N E M AC RA E , REBECCA BE DN A R IK , CAT H E R INE FERRONI, R YA N J OS E P H , GU R A M LOMIDZE, M A R K OV E R TO N , B IL L M CFADDEN, ST EP H E N C U R R IE , NI CK SAVOY, JA M E S F ROM S TA R B UCKS…

C O MME N T S , C O N C E R N S , O R C O MP L A I N T S A B O U T ME D I U M MAGA Z I N E ’ S C O N T E N T S H O U L D B E D I R E CT E D TO T H E E D I TO R WH O CA N B E C O N TACT E D AT T H E E MA I L A D D R E SS A B OV E .

A L L C O N T E N T P R I N T E D I N ME D I U M MAGA Z I N E I S T H E S O L E P R O P E R T Y OF I T S C R E ATO R S A N D CA N N OT B E U S E D W I T H O U T C O N S E N T. OP I N I O N S E X P R E SS E D I N T H I S P U B L I CAT I O N A R E E XC LU S I V E LY O F T H E A U T H O R A N D D O N OT N E C E SS A R I LY R E F L E CT T H O S E O F ME D I U M MAGA ZINE. A D D I T I O N A L LY , T H E O P I N I O N S E X P R E SS E D I N A DV E R T I S E M E N T S A P P E A RING I N ME D I U M MAGA Z I N E A R E T H O S E O F T H E A DV E R T I S E R S A N D N OT M E D IUM M AGA Z I N E .

M E D I U M MAGA Z I N E I S A D I V I S I O N O F M E D I U M I I PU B L I CAT I O N S .

M E D I U M MAGA Z I N E I S P U B L I S H E D A N N U A L LY A R O U N D T H E FE B R U A R Y R E A D I N G WE E K .

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E D I T O R ’ S – N O T E –

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here is a spectre that hangs over student media.

Actually, all media (including the big-person kind), if you want to get all technical about it. But that’s not my concern here. Right now I’m concerned with where our newspaper will be five or 10 years from now. Will students be ready for the host of new challenges that will arise in this increasingly unstable industry? I’m talking about the “New Media”, and I think that the student and alternative newspapers and magazines of today will play an important role in shaping how we all get our information down the road.

Student publications are in a powerful position. We are privately funded, independent media organizations that cater to a very specific group of people. We do not face the same difficulties as the big papers. We can experiment. We can take risks. We can fail.

And, most importantly, we can succeed where others haven’t.

It was with that in mind that we started this magazine two years ago. Our frustration with the failure of student media to cover anything more than topical, regurgitated topics on a weekly basis was compounded by our own extensive news cycle. From then until now we have refined our method and our ideology. We know we occupy a niche, and we intend to cater the hell out of it.

Our challenge was to focus on a few key functions and execute them well. We wanted to dig deep into stories that were relevant and exciting for students to read. We wanted to present it in a form that is both aesthetic and functional. And we wanted it to be freely accessible to everyone. These are not small goals, and our team has worked exceptionally hard to make them a reality.

While print, especially in the case of the newspaper, may be withering away, I am of the opinion that it won’t die. It will take on a new form. Web content will be at the forefront, but it is clear that there is a shift towards shorter-run, higherquality print publications—physical media that takes advantage of its differences from electronic media. A non-disposable alternative. This magazine is our first step towards that end.

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MAGAZINE. MEDIUMUTM.CA FOR THE VIDEO

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U

THE

nderground MEDIUM MAGAZINE UNCOVERS UTM’S LEGENDARY TUNNEL

WRITER STEFANIE MAROTTA

PHOTOGRAPHER EDWARD CAI

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first heard about the tunnel when I was in second year. Nabeel, a friend of mine whose knowledge of the campus I hold in high regard, told me there was an underground passage from the William G. Davis Building to the North Building. On snowy and rainy days, students would pack tightly into the tunnel and travel from one end of campus to the other without coming into contact with a single drop of precipitation. As rumour has it, the university closed off the tunnel without reason a few decades ago.

My mom attended UTM back in the day when Davis and North were the only buildings that separated the deer from the woods, so I asked her about the tunnel.

“An underground tunnel? That sounds dangerous,” my mom frowned. “I don’t know about a tunnel, but I wouldn’t have risked it— and neither should you.”

Of course, my mother’s disapproval only served to spur my curiosity. I decided to set out in search of the tunnel.

A few nights later, I pitched the idea to Nabeel. We were studying late at night in the library and decided that adventure was more important than midterms. The discovery of the passage would make us campus heroes and would help my friend “bag a lot of chicks”. (His words, not mine.)

We left our bags and jackets in the library, as is customary if you don’t want to lose your table. Turning up the brightness on our phones in preparation for the darkness, we headed to Davis. I applied some of my hardearned university logic and figured that the tunnel entrance would be in the basement.

The Davis dungeon is scary enough during the day when one or two science TAs are down there doing research, let alone at midnight.

We crept warily down the hall, jumping at the

sound of our own footsteps echoing off the red brick walls.

After desperately trying dozens of doorknobs, we rounded a corner at the farthest end of the basement. We were about to give up when I saw the light—literally. Bright fluorescent bulbs shone through a gap between the wall and the ceiling. The space was about 12 inches high and three metres wide—just enough space to climb up and crawl through.

We had found the tunnel; we were so sure of it.

Nabeel clasped his hands together and hoisted me up toward the gap. Several grunts and bruised knees later (get your mind out of the gutter!), I grasped the top of the wall and craned my neck to peer into the tunnel.

Except it wasn’t a tunnel. I still don’t know what it was. There were some pipes and large metal objects that made clanging noises, but it certainly wasn’t what we were looking for.

Disheartened and in need of caffeine, we retreated to the library and abandoned our mission.

Two years later, I found the tunnel.

The university agreed to give Medium Magazine a tour of the underground path after I swore an oath of secrecy regarding the location of the entrances. Contrary to what we’d heard, the tunnel is not a safe passage.

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n the day of the interview, I imagine myself as Indiana Jones’s sidekick, braving treacherous territory like all the great explorers before me. Rick Peters and Christine Tan from Facilities Management and Planning lead me and our photo

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editor, Edward into the Central Utility Plant— that odd grey building next to the Instructional Centre. A narrow brown metal staircase spirals down to a cavernous basement decorated with winding pipes. Rick pushes open a red door and warm, dry air washes over me. I lick my lips, suddenly parched.

A row of fluorescent lights shine on gigantic white pipes that snake down the winding tunnel. The door clicks shut, encasing us in a 1,500 foot long cement tube. I fight the temptation not to turn the bright red valves attached to the pipes overhead as Rick begins to explain the purpose of the tunnel.

“This is not a place for students. Someone could get hurt or damage the infrastructure,” Rick cautions. “This tunnel provides energy to most of the buildings on campus.”

The service tunnel was built in 1968 to accommodate the district heating and cooling system that now pumps energy to the Davis Building, the Health Sciences Complex, the Hazel McCallion Academic Learning Centre, and a portion of the Student Centre. The pipes run steam and cold water across campus. The district system—a central energy supply— saves space in the academic buildings and allows for better monitoring and maintenance of the campus’s energy supply.

Moving slowly through the tunnel, Rick lo-

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cates our position on campus. Every few minutes, we creep along under a different parking lot or next to another building. The white pipes pierce the grey cement walls and slither towards the Health Sciences Complex (to power medical labs), the library (to power the mobile stacks), and Davis (to turn on the iced capp machine at Tim Hortons).

The tunnel under Davis is more spacious; it also serves as storage. Fume hoods and cabinets with red warning labels that read “ACID” and “FLAMMABLE” litter the floor along the wall opposite the pipes. A long cage holds hundreds of desks and chairs—desks and chairs that the custodial staff will haul up to the gym in April for exams.

Two brown doors mark the end of the path.

On the opposite side, students buzz through the halls on their way to a lecture or the gym.

Rick places his hand on the doorknob.

“Remember, the tunnel is not open to the public,” Rick says. “The location shouldn’t be published.” The door swings toward us.

Edward and I blink in the bright light of the hallway. A student speeds by without noticing us. The tunnel was right there the whole time, completely accessible, breathing life through the campus so students can work out at the gym and watch YouTube videos in the library MM

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PAUL MARTIN THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

In conversation with Canada’s 21st Prime Minister I N T E R V I E W B Y LU K E S AVAG E

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G E T T Y I M AG E S /P HOTO

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Paul Martin was prime minister for just over two years, but his interests while in office were diverse. In retirement, he has continued to pursue issues ranging from the state of the environment to global poverty and inequality to Aboriginal education. He also attended U of T during one of the most exciting and dynamic periods in its history—a time as formative for him as it was for Canada.

I wanted to begin by asking you a bit about your own time as a U of T student. I saw that you went to St. Michael’s college for your undergraduate and studied philosophy and history. And both your parents went to U of T—were they also St. Mike’s students?

No. My mother was in pharmacy and then she was also at the Conservatory of Music. And my father went to St. Mike’s.

And what did he study?

Philosophy.

So your family has some roots there. Did anyone else in your family go to U of T? Sure—I can do one better than that! My wife went to UC, her parents went to UC, and two of my three sons went to St. Mike’s.

So what was your own student experience like? I guess you would have graduated in the early 1960s.

I graduated in 1961 from St. Mike’s; in 1964 from [U of T] law school.

What can you tell me about your life as a student? What kinds of things did you involve yourself in?

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Well, at that time—I don’t know what it’s like today—they had a very active intramural sports program. So I played football, basketball, and water polo for St. Mike’s. I would like to say that my time at the University of Toronto was spent completely in the library, but I suspect that would be a bit of an exaggeration. One thing I would say—and I don’t know the degree to which you’ve been able to keep it based on what you told me [before the interview]—but I’ve always thought that one of the great advantages of the University of Toronto was the university system within the university.

In other words, you had all the benefits of going to a smaller school like St. Mike’s and yet all the benefits of going to a great university like the University of Toronto. My time at St. Mike’s: it’s one of the great schools of philosophy in the world, as an example. […] The English department was particularly strong. Marshall McLuhan was there and taught in the same house I used to live in. I probably spent more time auditing his classes than the ones I was supposed to go to.

Is it true that he used to give lectures lying on his back on a sort of Roman emperor’s chair, or is that just a rumour?

I heard that! I never saw it. I was in house number two at St. Mike’s. Our rooms were in the front, but in the back there were professors’ offices, and he used to give his classes in his office. I used to just go in, sit at the back, and listen. He was terrific.

He wasn’t impossible to understand?

Oh, he was exactly as advertised. He was a very good communicator. But the great advantage is that you’ve got all the great advantages of a smaller university like St. Mike’s, where you got to know the professors, and then at the same time you took other courses across campus. For instance,

history: I took them over in the history building, and the tutors that I had were some of Canada’s greatest historians, and so, in my time, I think the University of Toronto—as it is today—was one of the great universities in the world.

Were you involved in politics at all when you were here, or was that something that came later?

I was not. I was a member of the university Liberal Club and I went to the model parliament, but on my list of priorities politics was not very high. I think sports was really my main priority. My father was in [Lester Pearson’s] cabinet when I was in university, so naturally the Liberal Club came and got me! But no, I had very little interest in politics at that time.

When did that develop? Did it develop in your graduate studies or not until later?

It really developed much later. You’ve got to remember, I grew up in a political household, so I knew it pretty well. My main interests were elsewhere. For instance, I marched in the civil rights marches in the United States because I grew up in Windsor, right across from Detroit. I had obviously been heavily influenced by people like Martin Luther King Jr. My other interest was to go to the third world. My intention was to get my law degree and go to the third world, and that’s really where my ambition lay.

Do you think your experience as a student shaped your later life and career in any major way?

Without a doubt. The great advantage of going to U of T was being exposed to some of the great minds. It was a world opening up. I spent most of my summers working in the north, in the Arctic, and then I would come back to school [after] the stillness of the Arctic and the Beaufort Sea or the Mackenzie River. I would then come in and sit down with people like Tom Symons, who later went on to be the president of Trent, or CP Stacy, who was the Canadian Army’s official historian. To have exposure to people like that, or Marshall McLuhan, or some of the great medieval scholars at St. Mike’s—it was just impossible not to be influenced by them.

that’s immoral, in my opinion. Immorality lies in the accumulation of massive wealth by a tiny, tiny percentage when the majority are poor.

So I think what the Occupy movement did was important despite people accusing them of not having clear goals. The fact is that Canadians are essentially decent, and the occupy movement crystallized what I think the vast majority of people felt.

If I can make a digression based on something you said, what do you make of the current debates in the United States surrounding all of this?

Everyone’s been following these Republican primaries very closely, and lots of people watched President Obama’s State of the Union address.

It seems like there’s quite a substantial polarization across the world, but especially in the United States, on these issues. What’s your impression of particularly what’s going on in the United States surrounding this debate?

I think that fundamentally, it’s the result of fear. I don’t have much sympathy for the Tea Party, but I think that what you’re seeing there is the result of fear.

Fear of what exactly?

The reason that we’re seeing these inequalities right now is not only a failure in the United States of having adequate redistribution of wealth—and remember, I’m not talking about confiscatory redistribution. I’m talking about education, healthcare, early learning for children, and money being spent on diseases and on the poor. What’s happening, clearly, with the rise of Asia and the rise of the newer technologies is that so much that was done by unskilled labour in my time in the US is now being done by unskilled labour in Asia. So many jobs are being changed fundamentally by the newer technology that requires a lot more education to handle. And that has caused huge fear in the United States.

“I’M INCREDIBLY PROUD OF HAVING GRADUATED FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO … I BRAG ABOUT IT AROUND THE WORLD”

I suppose your own generation was a bit more activist in orientation than my own, though one possible exception is the recent Occupy movement.

And you, I think, surprised a lot of people by saying, “These young people have touched a chord that is being felt in every family across North America and in Europe. I think it’s very important what they’ve done.”

Could you comment on those remarks? What did you mean by that?

Exactly what I said. The fact is that inequality is unfortunately part and parcel of every economic system. It could be socialism, free market, or state capitalism, whatever you want. Inevitably, a group of elites essentially begin to accumulate more and more of the wealth, and the poor get poorer and poorer. The essential success of free market capitalism has been its marriage with liberal democracy and its marriage with the redistribution of wealth. The only way to deal with savage inequality is to recognize the absolute necessity of redistributing wealth, through your healthcare system, through your education system, through social programs that will enable people who are not born to wealth or privilege to accomplish their own goals and to rise up on the income scale. Its greatest manifestation, in my opinion, was in the postwar years of the ’50s and the ’60s.

To give you an example, when the United States and the Brits were weakening banking regulation in order to attract financial institutions [in the 1990s], I fought it strongly because I said that free market capitalism without strong regulation on the one hand and the redistribution of wealth on the other will lead to massive inequality—and massive inequality will lead to a society which simply will not work. It will also lead to a society

I was reading a passage from your book last night; you observed that there’s a lot less job security now than there was when you graduated, because of many of the things you’ve just described: the changes in the global economy and the demand for many different kinds of skills, etc. How good do you think our education system in Canada is at dealing with the rapidly changing nature of the global economy and equipping students for the futures that they hope to have?

I think that our education system, at the university level, is very good.

To the extent that there may be more technical skills required, I think they are being provided by our college system. A lot of young people are going from university to college and from college to university, so you’re starting to get a proper blend of those things. I think that the real problem lies in our grade school and our high school system. The fact is that when people graduate from high school and they can’t really read or write, when they don’t have an accurate hand on math, I think that that’s where the failure lies.

Is that an issue of funding? Or is it something else?

In the case of Aboriginal Canada, where I’m now spending most of my time, it is absolutely a question of funding. I’m not quite sure where the problem lies in the grade schools and the high schools outside the Aboriginal system, but I certainly see the results. I’ve talked to too many people your own age and asked them the question, “How ready were you for university? Were you challenged in grade school or high school?”, and most of the young people I’ve talked to would share the views I’ve just expressed.

The U of T and other universities now seem to serve a dual purpose.

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They’re both there to equip people for specific careers in engineering, medicine, etc., but also to be places that create better citizens, and teach people history and philosophy… The role there is less about equipping people for jobs as such, because it seems there are fewer jobs available in those fields. What do you think about that?

Let me go back for a second. I’m incredibly proud of having graduated from the University of Toronto. I’m very proud of St. Mike’s. I brag about it around the world… I think that compared to many other universities around the world it’s really at the forefront, and I don’t say that just because I’m talking to you!

You see that the university system in parts of the US and Europe is in real trouble. Compared to U of T it’s night and day, all of it in favour of U of T. I think that the students that are going to U of T can have real confidence in what they’re getting compared to what would be offered to them in many other universities around the world.

But let me turn to [what you said]. Not that long after I graduated from law school and got into business [at] the end of the ’70s, which was a low point in the economy, I gave a lecture at the law school. In fact, it was in David Johnston’s class, the current Governor-General. One of the students stood up and said to me, “Mr. Martin, you have said that when you graduated from law school it was your intention to go to the third world, and I notice that you were very actively involved in the civil rights movement in the US. Why weren’t you worried about getting a job?” To which my response was, “I was a pre-baby boomer and I never had to worry about getting into law school. But the fact is that there’s a problem with your generation. Mine wanted to go off and help, and based on what you’ve 16

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just told me, you don’t want to do that!” And then he said to me—and I’ve never forgotten this—“Don’t you understand? You just told us that you didn’t have to worry about getting into law school and didn’t have to worry about getting a job when you graduated. One third of this class doesn’t know if they’ll ever get a job as a lawyer, because that’s the current state of the economy, and you had the luxury of spending a lot of your time doing things that did not lead to a job because that was the society and the economy in which you grew up.” And I have to say, that was a lesson for me.

So you agree that the kind of reality students face today is quite a bit different. What advice would you give them, if any?

Well, it would certainly be that if education was important in my time, it is even more important today—in ways that we’re only beginning to understand. What has happened now is that labour is available globally, and it is those countries [that] are able to focus on a constant creation of value in terms of the economy, [that] are going to survive, and that creation of value is going to come from education. The people who are going to take advantage of it are going to be educated MM

FOR THE F ULL INTERVIEW VI SIT MEDIUM UTM. CA

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Dirty Little Secret WRITER MICHAEL DI LEO PHOTOGRAPHER RAE MAXWELL

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G

etting to Trinity College is the easy part.

The building is on Hoskin Avenue, just north of Hart House. If you walk through the Hart House parking lot from the shuttle bus stop you’ll notice a medieval-looking structure.

Steeples, archways—all the classical elements I imagine they teach you about in architecture class.

I’ve heard it’s like moving to Notre Dame when you come out of high school. It can make you feel like a tourist.

It’s cold in the parking lot. It hasn’t snowed much this year, but when the wind whips in your face it’s difficult to see. I manage to pick out the green roofs of the college. Students walk hurriedly along Hoskin to their next class or the library or the Chinese food truck that sits near the intersection with St. George.

I notice others on the Philosopher’s Walk, to the east. They are also in a rush. No one wants to be outside on a day like this.

The building is impressive. Gothic Collegiate architecture, they call it. And, like the college, it is full of history. When John Strachan, the first Anglican Bishop of Toronto, founded Trinity College in 1851, it served only 20 students, most of them studying divinity. Back then they were based in a massive building on Queen West.

In 1904 Trinity College joined the University of Toronto. They remained at their Queen Street building until 1925, when they moved to their current location to be closer to the rest of the university.

The new building on Hoskin was modelled on their old one, which was demolished in the 1950s after temporarily housing the Canadian military in the Second World War. Trinity Bellwoods Park, named for and adjacent to the former college, is all that remains of its memory.

I open the large wooden door and peer in. No one is around. It’s the last week of exams and everyone has gone home for the winter break. All the better for exploring.

The cold is consuming. Must be the stone. There are some Communism-era radiators bracketed to the walls, but only one seems to be working. It’s a lost cause, anyway.

My boots click on the stone floors and the sound is amplified down the silent corridors.

“It’s all in your head.”

I need some reassurance. I feel like I shouldn’t be here. But I have come for a reason. And I want to see

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if there are any clues.

A set of French doors lead into a quad. Here stonework forms a grid pattern on the ground. The lines bend and twist like calligraphic flourishes, stretching around the trees to the four corners where the grass ends. On the quad’s southwest side there’s a bust of Strachan with an inscription. Opposite that, an Obama 2012 poster is taped to a window.

Directly ahead, on the far wall with the gated entrance to the field, are some administrative offices.

This part looks different. Lighter. Cleaner. More institutional. There are stairs and doors and signs that cover the length of the wall.

I look up. The walls have formed six ledges at the top where the roof begins. On each of these ledges sits a short statue. Their metal has oxidized over the years, leaving them nearly unrecognizable under a green coating. One looks like a mitre, another like a tricorne.

The second ledge from the right is conspicuously empty.

I have been told this wasn’t always the case. There was a time when a statue was proudly displayed to all those passing through the building. It, like the others, was noted for its symbolic connection to Trinity College. No one knows for sure who took it down, though there are theories. When I ask what the statue was, they tell me.

A skull with two keys.

It is true.

This is a story about what was. About an institution that, after a century, broke away from a part of its history. It’s a story about the people who carry on this tradition, in the darkness of the night and the secrecy of their bedrooms. Under the veil of the collective and feigned ignorance, a secret society operates to this day.

Episkopon lives.

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he scene opens. That guy from Dawson’s Creek is in an interrogation room, surrounded by police officers. He has some information about the death of his friend Will.

“The Skulls, man. Who do you think is pulling the

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strings around here?”

I press on. I tell them about the fancy cars, the island The cops don’t listen. They tell him he’s crazy, and retreat, the contracts they sign, and the keys they in an overacted fit of rage he lunges at the nearest wear around their necks. detective. They handcuff him and pull him out of the The one on the right looks up. room as he screams.

The keys.

“I’m innocent! Innoceeeeeeeeeent!”

“They wear keys around their necks. And the Scribe, Most of you probably don’t remember The Skulls, he wears the biggest key.” the 2000 thriller starring Joshua Jackson and Paul I’ve found something of interest. After weeks of Walker (of Fast and Furious fame). You probably don’t research, dozens of unanswered emails and Faceremember it because you had better things to do for book messages, favours called in from high school the entirety of its theatrical run, not to mention you acquaintances, and snooping around the college would never ever pay money to see either of those property, I’ve got a lead. two douchebags on screen. You’ve got your principles, Information comes—slowly at first, but with more and I respect that. detail and excitement over the next few questions. It If you manage to rent the VHS, you’ll notice two becomes a game. They remember things they thought things. First, the Skulls, a secret society not so subtly they had forgotten and laugh about their stories. A based on Yale’s infamous Skull and Bones, are some- picture of Episkopon begins to develop in my mind. what of an open secret. People know they’re around, How do members join? who their members are, and when they pull shenaniNew members are selected, usually in their first gans on campus. year. The upper-year members hold “At-homes”, a Second, it was filmed at the University of Toronto. kind of initiation, in some apartment to see if the At Trinity College. candidate will fit.

The filmmakers must have heard something.

How often do they meet?

Someone must have told them about how Trinity Apart from the At-homes, Episkopon has three College had their own secret society—a real one that major meetings every school year. These are called in many ways was similar to the secret society depict- “Readings”. The first Reading is usually in Septemed in the movie. They probably heard about how, only ber; the members meet at Queen’s Park and make eight years before the film, this secret society was their way to a ravine in the city. The next one is in the banned from campus after a number of very public late fall—usually on Halloween—at Trinity Bellwoods incidents—and how the college was still trying to rid Park, the original site of Trinity College. The last one itself of their association. is sometime in the spring, held in a fraternity or other I wonder if the movie helped. acceptable indoor location.

I discuss the film with a few Trinity students What do they wear? Tuxedos. The men do, at because I feel like it’s an easy way to lead into the least. The women wear all black clothing and bright conversation they don’t want to have. I’ve heard that red lipstick. They all wear large keys around their Episkopon is still a touchy subject. Administrators necks. Oh, and gowns. Everyone must wear a Trinity ignore it. Members don’t talk about it. Most students dress gown. keep their opinions to themselves, either for fear There are women, too? There are two Episkopof reproach or because I’m not the kind of guy they ons: Fem-Pon for women and Man-Pon for men. let into their group. You know, knowledge is power, There are 15 members in each. Both groups attend or some Foucauldian shit like that. The only reason the November Reading together. these few are here with me is because they don’t What’s the Scribe? The Scribe is the leader, the want to be rude. They didn’t know I would bring it up. one who conducts the Readings. When they are electI tell them about the part in the movie where the ed for the coming year they have to run through the Skulls meet in the cave under what is supposed to quad, naked. be the Yale campus. I tell them about their dress, Do they all just go home after their meetings? their bond, their pranks, and their high status. They Not usually. They often go to Grossman’s Tavern for look at each other, uninterested. “Nothing quite like a few drinks. that,” they assure me, but I can feel some hesitation.

Wait. What do they do?

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irst we must rid ourselves of the misconceptions.

Everyone I have spoken with—anyone I’ve heard of who’s even remotely connected to Trinity College—has given me a different answer. Most of the time they tell me that Episkopon makes fun of people, or some variation of that. But to leave it at that is both uninformed and a disservice to the group.

It began as a satirical newspaper by the same name in 1858. I’ve heard a few anecdotes about why it came about. Some say it was in part to curb the “better than you” attitude present in those days—a response to a need for chastising.

The society has since changed. They stopped printing and began compiling satirical prose for their annual volumes. These volumes were ornate, sizeable tomes, filled with illustrations and scripts. It then became tradition to carry out readings of these manuscripts at the end of each school year, whence comes the name of the modern meeting.

These readings contained thoughts and commentary on their fellow Trinity students. A gentle poking fun, if you will. Anyone could submit a piece, which was then read aloud by the Scribe at the Readings.

This tradition carried on for well over a century, all with the permission (hell, the support) of the college.

But then things changed.

Not all at once, mind you. It is important to remember that at the time of the college’s founding, everyone was of the same background: white and Anglican. As the makeup of our society changed through the years, so did the makeup of the University of Toronto and, by extension, Trinity College.

People, were different—more different than before— and satire is meant, if nothing more, to exaggerate and point out differences.

There is no clear timeline for when Readings turned from good-natured to hateful, but we do know when it became too much to handle.

“TRINITY CUTS OFF EPISKOPON” read the October 8, 1992 headline of The Varsity. “With little debate and no opposition, Trinity College Council voted on

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Monday to cut all ties between Episkopon and the college.”

No more funding from the college. No more events on college property. No more Episkopon in college life. In a symbolic move, Trinity removed the board on the wall listing all the past Scribes. It now rests in a basement somewhere.

This, all a result of pressure from disgruntled students, many of whom were offended by the readings that year, which were described as “sexist, racist, and homophobic”. These students even created the group “Students Against Episkopon”, the spokesperson of which was doused with a bucket of human feces when exiting his dorm room one day. Episkopon was to blame.

The intense coverage by all, not just student, media sparked a war of words and elicited a number of responses in the defence of Episkopon.

One particularly vocal member wrote to The Varsity, ending his particularly harshly worded letter with a warning: “Thankfully, you will be gone soon. We, however, will not. Although you may think you have killed Episkopon, the only casualty here has been Truth. See you in Hell.”

I

want to know what has changed since then.

I want to know if and how Episkopon still operates. Do students support them? Does the administration know or care? Are their Readings still as offensive?

I need to speak with a member.

No one responds to my emails. I consider posing as a Trinity student looking for more information on the next meeting. I feel that might not turn out so well for me.

A Facebook event pops up. It’s a gathering for Trinity students at a nearby pub, the Bedford Academy.

Maybe I can get some information there—someone is bound to be a member. I enlist my friend, Helen , who will act as my spy. They might know what I look like by now.

We arrive early and sit down for a few drinks. We go over the game plan. She will approach Trinity students and ask when the next Reading is. If they

25

become suspicious, she will flirt with them. I will watch, casually and from a distance. It is foolproof.

The bar fills up quickly. Most of the students come straight from a pre-drink and several are already having difficulty standing. Helen sets off.

I get a text: “Met some new friends :)”. This could be good. I don’t hear back for another half an hour; I contemplate searching the crowd for her. But before I can leave my seat she returns with writing in marker scrawled across her arms. She’s been having fun when she should have been working.

“Did you find anyone?” I ask.

“No. Well, sort of. I have his name.”

“He” didn’t want to talk to her. He didn’t even want to introduce himself; she had to find out his name from others. But all is well: I now have his @utoronto email.

Early the next morning I send him an email, explaining that I am writing an article about Episkopon, and that I would like to get his thoughts on a few things.

A week goes by with no reply. I forget about it.

And then I receive a message: “Hi Michael, Those who know do not speak, those who speak do not know.

NSTM, Him” NSTM. Notandi sunt tibi mores.

Your ways are being noted.

P

eople have asked me why I want to know about Episkopon. Do I want to expose them to further media scrutiny? Do I want to embarrass them? Do I have a bone to pick?

I don’t care about any of that.

I am interested in the role they play in the ongoing history of the University of Toronto, whether or not the university sanctions it. I am interested in how they represent an element of the institution that we have moved far away from. But most of all, I’m interested in the thought and practice of tradition in an everchanging and increasingly public world.

Now and then people will speak out against Episkopon. Most recently, a Toronto Star article featured negative reactions from Trinity administrators, call-

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ing for an end to the their practices after a student was seriously injured in an initiation ceremony. “It seems to me that the way that it will die, as I trust it will, will be when the students decide that this is something they don’t want to buy into,” said Andy Orchard, Trinity’s provost.

It is only a matter of time until the next incident and the next debate. Exclusive groups will always pose a problem for the university. There’s no way around it. And there’s nothing more the university can do to prevent students from participating. Some argue that this tradition has become engrained in student life and is inseparable from the college.

Others disagree.

Therein lies the appeal.

T

wo years ago I visited a friend at Trinity College. I wanted to have dinner in Strachan Hall because I heard it was unlike anything else on campus. You’re required to wear a gown, so I borrowed one from another friend.

We sat and ate and talked and I joked about how I felt right at home at Hogwarts, the muggle that I was. We finished our dinner, cleared our plates, and walked out of the dining hall along the main corridor.

We passed a few postings for the Lit Society on the notice board. One advertised an “Ice Cream Social” after the event that night.

“You know what that means?” my friend asked.

“What? Ice cream?”

“It’s code for the Episkopon Reading,” he said.

It was happening that night. I asked if we could go, but he didn’t want to. He agreed to drive by and hope for a glimpse.

Later that evening we got into his car and began to drive around Queen’s Park Circle. I can’t remember how many times we made the loop, but I know that my friend’s arm was awfully tired afterwards.

About 20 minutes in, I saw a light flickering at the opposite end of the park. As we drove around the loop the light became brighter and turned into multiple lights. People dressed in black were holding candles.

As we drove closer they walked away, the light trailing behind them, slowly disappearing behind the trees MM

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BRENDAN CANNING’S NEW SCENE

WRITER KJARTAN HEWITT PHOTOGRAPHER EDWARD CAI

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SINCE THE BREAKUP OF BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE LAST NOVEMBER, BRENDAN CANNING HAS BEEN BUSY AT WORK ON HIS OTHER PROJECTS. WE ASK HIM ABOUT WHERE HE’S AT, THE STATUS ON A BSS REUNION (PLEASE, DEAR GOD), AND HIS FAVOURITE PLACES IN TORONTO.

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B

rendan Canning looks like a ’90s rocker.

I don’t mean like how Rod Stewart still dresses like 1980s Rod Stewart and should cool it with the blond highlights.

I mean Brendan looks the same. He sort of tricked everyone into thinking that he can age when he grew that big, fat beard, but when I saw him clean-shaven, sporting a mop of blond hair, and shiny-eyed with his patented spectacles, I thought he may as well have stepped out of 1997. Minus a stupid Tilley hat or something that might give him away as a ’90s time traveller. He wears post-grunge well.

When I told him he looks like Peter Pan without his beard, he grinned and told me, “It’s a young man’s game,” poking fun at the prevalence of indie-rock beards these days.

In according style, Brendan will be taking a step away from the double-ought indie and reviving some of the rock music he was playing 14 years ago. If what he told me about his upcoming project is evidence enough of his ’90s predilections, his secret to eternal youth is as follows: “Don’t age—refine.”

Before grilling him about his next project, I, like so many other Broken Social Scene fans, had to enquire about the status of the band.

When the news of a “permanent hiatus” broke last November, many fans took it as the end of Broken Social Scene. The sheer size and talent of the group (which included Leslie Feist, Amy Milan, Andrew Whitman, and Emily Haines) had finally collapsed on itself and imploded in a terrible rock supernova.

Kevin Drew released a statement on their website after their “last show” in Rio de Janeiro about the break.“I said that we were gonna take a hiatus; people seemed to think that’s a breakup. But we’re all a big family; we’re gonna be around for a long time and when people want us back, we’ll come back,” he explained.

What Canning had to say seemed to corroborate Drew’s breakup ambiguity.

“It’s too early to tell. We’ve all got different bands, so, you know… just trying to live life without worrying about when the next tour is.”

However, when we were talking about David French, Broken’s saxophone player, Brendan mentioned “David, who played sax for us—and will play for us whenever that happens again...”

I breathed a sigh of relief, feeling as though in his mind the return of the group was an eventuality, not just a nice thought.

Brendan’s next project is actually a revival of his longtime sideband, Cookie Duster. Brendan told me that he and Bernard Maiezza (of Change of Heart) had been writing music together since 1998.

When I asked about the group, he described Cookie Duster simply: “You know. Drums, guitars, bass, keyboards, synth drums, a couple of us singing. [...] I’m not going to describe it any more than ‘pop rock’.”

Anyone who knew about the 2001 eponymous release can expect more from the next album. “Bringing in other songwriters has been massively key to the event, and plus, years of experience in Broken honed my chops a bit,” says Brendan. With the likes of Matt Murphy (Super Friendz) on guitar and Jeen O’Brien (Toronto rock vet) on vocals, Brendan assured me, “The sound will be ‘90s-ish.

That’s for sure.”

Moving away from Brendan’s 2008 solo release Something for All of Us, he also chose new labels for the album, as opposed to his longtime Toronto outfit, Arts and Crafts. We can expect a release in late April on Maple in Canada and on SQE in the States.

For those of you who can’t wait until April for a little more Canning, he does the headlining DJ set at the Piston on the last Saturday of every month. It’s free before 11.

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B R E N D A N C A N N I N G ’ S – T O R O N T O –

Cheap lunch: Probably, like, Ali Baba’s or Fish Plate. I’ll grab a sandwich every now and then at the White Squirrel; they do an okay sandwich there.

Nice dinner: In our neighborhood there’s Le Select, there’s Marben, there’s my friend’s place Tati on Harbord Street… uh, Libretto Pizza?

Small venue: Shit, the Piston. Just a great room. I haven’t seen a show there, but for DJing? Great! It’s small, you know? Eighty people on the dance floor and you’ve got a serious party. Another 70 in the front room, it’s perfect. The perfect bar for my sort of DJ sets.

Large venue: The Phoenix. I mean, people complain about every venue in the city, I don’t even mind the Sound Academy.

Recent film: The Descendants. Yeah, you know, it was pretty good. This year’s The Ice Storm.

Movie theatre: The Royal [laughs]. I don’t go there that often, but I do like it.

Dancing: My friends do a reggae night that I DJ once or twice a year at the Embassy. It’s called “Pressure Drop”. It’s all reggae.

Solid tunes throughout the night.

Coffee: We’re at it [Jimmy’s]! Or Mercury, where my buddy Neil Rankin used to work (putting on his “plugging” voice) from bands like Foxfire.

Drinkin’: Wherever people are paying for the drinks. But after soccer games we go to Sweaty Betty’s.

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KIDS THESE DAYS

A H A N D Y G U I D E T O W H AT M U S I C T H E L E A D E R S O F T O M O R R O W A R E L I S T E N I N G T O .

F O R A L L Y O U O L D F O L K S .

P H O T O G R A P H E R

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C A I

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eugene

c yr u s

f lo re n ce

S UMM I T SKRILLEX

S L E EP YO U R LI FE AWAY T HE FL AT L I N E R S

SO M E B O DY T HAT I U S E D TO K N OW GOT Y E

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04

05

06

h yeyoon

w aylo n

zak ar i ya

NI GGAS I N PARIS KA N YE W E S T & JAY- Z

LOV E S O NG B I G B A N G

S TAY SCHE M I N’ RI C K RO SS

07

08

09

ch r isti ne

m u r taza

d an i e l

ME RRYM AK I NG AT MY PLACE CA LV IN H ARRIS

ME 4 U - INFIDELITY T REY S O N G Z

GA R B AG E NU M B E R N I N 6

10

11

12

ju li a

b i ssan

sai n a

RI VE RSI D E MOTHE R F UCKER ( RE MIX) SID N E Y S AMSON

FI X YO U C O L D P L AY

R U N T HE WO R L D (G I R L S ) B E YO N C É

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ch an ya

m ar i a

su zan n a

ROLLI NG IN THE DEE P ADELE

IT W I L L R A I N B R U N O M A R S

S HOT FO R M E D R A K E

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A

mob floods down IB’s main steps. Students turn into classrooms. Students rush out of classrooms. They mill around the lobby, talking, texting, snacking, toting laptops, rifling through backpacks, clasping cigarettes between their teeth, dragging doors open and heading outside into the winter wonderland.

I hitch my laptop bag higher and tighten my grip on a Starbucks coffee cup. I inhale and prepare to storm up the steps to my second floor classroom, praying I won’t drop my laptop, spill my coffee, or get shoved down the steps by the mob.

It’s 12 p.m. on Monday at UTM in winter 2012, where the ratio of students to space has teetered further and further out of balance over the last five years. Compared to 2011, an extra 500 students now fill our seats, eat our food, and elbow each other for space on our buses.

Compared to 2008, it’s an extra 2,000.

Some students haven’t noticed a difference in the number of bodies on campus. Others have. They complain about limited class space, limited bus space, limited study space, and super-slow food lineups. But how many students is our campus built to handle? Can any planned expansions handle another enrolment hike?

LOOKING FOR FOOD

A

fter class I edge down the steps, riding a fresh mob to the CCT Building, craving more coffee before my next class. I peer through the glass windows as I enter the building.

I watch the Starbucks line extend beyond the edge of the counter, with waiting students leaning against the bar. I file into line and wonder whether the Tim Hortons line is just as long.

Chances are, it is. This year, the university installed a Tim Hortons webcam for students to check how long the line is before setting out

for the Davis Building. Maybe that’s a little entertaining. Maybe it’s a possible solution to chronic overcrowding. But isn’t the Tim Hortons webcam just a symptom of the problem?

When students are surveyed about food on campus, they usually launch into a rant about food prices or spout phrases like “There’s no variety” or “There aren’t enough healthy options”. But before all these woes can be dealt with, another overarching issue must be looked at: is there enough?.

When considering how much food a campus needs, two questions dominate the discussion: is the campus close to an urban centre, and how many students live on campus? The answer to the first question is a definite “no”; the answer to the second is 10%. In UTM’s case, the two aspects balance out.

Bill McFadden, the director of hospitality and retail services, says food planning involves the collaboration of several other administrative units, as well as building architects. It’s also about “putting the right thing in the right place at the right time”, he says. Food choices need to be suited to the purposes of the space. For example, a Second Cup fits better in the smaller IB lounge, whereas a Mr. Sub belongs in the larger food court of the Meeting Place.

Eric Madan, a full-time student representative on the Erindale College Council, acknowledges the complexity of accounting for the food necessities of all the bodies that pass through UTM, and also wonders whether building expansions can catch up to escalating enrolment.

In a 2009/10 report, UTM Services found that food availability was disproportionate to the number of students on campus. Nevertheless, in 2010/11, enrolment increased by about 500. September marked the opening of the new Instructional Centre, with its Second Cup and panini-making cafeteria.

But can new venues cater to the needs of an extra thousand students? What about the next thousand?

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FINDING STUDY SPACE

W

hen class ends, I drag my feet to library, hoping to catch a few hours of silent study. I dodge the slow-walkers, the talkers, and the texters, and descend into the basement. I peer over the cubicles as I walk by. Full, full, full.

I finally spot a seat on the fourth floor. I brush eraser shavings off the desk and drop into the seat. I look around again. Full, full, full.

Political science student Jericho Tan voices the concern of many students. “It’s not just the library,” he says. “There’s no space to sit anywhere.”

Madan, like many who are part of campus clubs and societies, is lucky enough to have an office in the Student Centre.

But when it’s time to study, Madan dislikes the noisy atmosphere of the Student Centre. First he attempts to find a space at the library.

When that fails, which it often does, Madan goes home.

However, students who have small breaks between classes do not have this option.

New study spaces have become available with the opening of IB, but again, the issue of keeping up with incoming students arises.

TRANSPORT

A

t the end of a semi-useful study session, I shuffle to the bus layby. It’s 5:23 p.m., and I’m ready to go home and collapse— but I can’t bear the thought of shoving, squashing, and squeezing through the mob that has now gathered at the mouth of the 110 north.

I stand outside the piles of pushing people and wonder whether I should wait for the next one.

With only 10% of our undergraduates staying on residence, the remaining 10,800 students must commute.

The UTM Residence Life staff says that unless some sort of expansion is made to their buildings, they will be accepting the same number of students for several years to come. They indicated that demand for on-campus housing usually stays at about 98%.

Aubrey Iwaniw, the environmental projects coordinator at UTM, confirms what students already know. Iwaniw, who liaisons with the Mississauga Transit office, indicated that routes 110 north and 44 north are the busiest on campus; the 110 is popular because it heads to Square One and the 44 because it runs along Mississauga Road.

Tan recites a typical day trying to get on the 110 north: “People crowd around the already very slippery road before the bus pulls in. As the bus pulls in, the bus driver honks and motions for students to back away from the curb. Students charge from all directions in no order at all.”

Tan, Madan, and fourth-year Priscilla Yuen can all cite days when they couldn’t push onto the bus.

Sometimes, students who succeed find themselves standing with nothing to hold on to, or even in front of the yellow line by the front windshield.

Yuen is thankful that bus drivers have been letting people on despite the crowding. The crowd, she says, has died down since September, with only the occasional full 10 a.m. bus.

For Yuen, the crowd itself isn’t the problem. “I don’t mind waiting for the next one,” says Yuen about the 44 north, “but sometimes it takes up to 30 or 40 minutes… and it still gets full.”

Iwaniw mentioned that Mississauga Transit added some shortterm routes for the busy month at the start of school. They temporarily added a short-term 110 bus that arrived every seven minutes and a 44 north bus that would shuttle back to take the students that were left behind.

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39

Yuen, however, insisted that she saw no extra buses. “I am pretty confident that Mississauga Transit did not add any extra buses,” she said. “Actually, the schedule has been the same since September 2010—I have a picture of the bus schedule from then that I still use now.”

The large crowds have incited one permanent change in this year’s 110 north schedule. Since December 12, the bus began arriving every seven minutes, hopefully easing some of the swarms.

Alana Tyers, a Mississauga Transit planner, holds that, despite the expected increase in coming years, Mississauga Transit has no plans of making additional changes to these routes. “Should incidents of overcrowding or any other related service issue occur,” she added, “we will make whatever changes necessary at the time.”

Bus ridership saw a massive surge when UTSMU lobbied for the U-Pass several years ago, but no more surveys have been taken since then to find out how many students take the bus instead of driving to and from school.

For students in 2012, the trouble is almost over, especially with the addition of the new 110 north route. For next year’s froshies and 40

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remaining undergraduates, things might get tough, unless the MiWay officials change their plans.

E XPANSIONS

N

ext year, campus administration foresees an enrolment dip for the first time since 2001. But numbers will hike up again to an extra 400 students in 2013/14.

Campus capacity is one of the many affairs tended by the ECC. The ECC and student leaders “meet before every formal ECC meeting and collaborate together on issues like these and try to come up with effective ways to address them at formal meetings,” says Madan. At formal meetings, however, staff and students sometimes clash.

Still, there is hope. In response to student surveys, the UTM library announced the creation of new silent study space on the first (base-

ment) level. The expansion, which will begin in May, comes at the cost of relocating older serials that no longer see much use.

Planned renovations to both the North and Davis Buildings will also aim to create more space for studying and dining.

This summer, parts of the aged, stony, high school-like North Building will come down. The new structure will grow by about two thirds of the current size and will include a new lounge-style dining area.

McFadden says the new dining area will introduce a more comprehensive multi-counter combined-cash setup, much like that in the Instructional Building. The new system means fewer lineups and faster purchasing.

The ever-popular Tim Hortons in Davis will also receive a makeover this summer. With a longer counter, grabbing your iced capps and double-doubles could take half the time. Along with the Timmy’s, the rest of the Davis Building dining area will also undergo a radical transformation.

Both buildings’ dining area designs include seating for different purposes: seats suited for eating, softer seats for studying, and in-betweens.

“We want to put in spaces that allow people to study and be productive with their time,” explains McFadden, “like, for example, when they’re waiting for the bus.”

Plans for similar changes at the Colman Commons dining hall (in Oscar Peterson Hall) are also in motion. Again, a more comfortable design aims to attract non-residence students to that area of the campus.

UTM administration has planned with up to 15,000 students in mind, a peg we’re set to hit sometime after 2017. By then, speculations about new buildings might become realities, bringing with them an urgency for more food space, more study space, and more transit space.

Madan notes what he sees as the most important issue. “It’s always a question of ratio,” he says. “The main question has to be whether the projects are proportionate to the inflow of students.”

Looking at our campus right now, students see a crowded space, one that grown radically—even over the span of one graduating class’s term at UTM. Graduates of the coming years should take a long look at the young campus.

Ten years from now, UTM might be unrecognizable MM 41

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T H E

W O R L D

P I C K U P T H E

O F

A R T I S T S

M E N

W H O

S E D U C T I O N , W H O

D A R E

M A D E T O

T H E

I T — A N D

E N T E R

I T

WRITER AMIR AHMED

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n December 10, 2011, 1:32 p.m., I pull open the doors to the Ramada Hotel on Jarvis and Gerrard. I can’t stop thinking of two

words.

Seduction lairs.

I saw the term on Wikipedia this morning: “Seduction lairs are an underground meeting group for men devoted to the study of seduction, as it is taught in the seduction community.”

Michael has sent me to a seduction lair.

As I wonder if I can sue my boss for sexual harassment, I walk up to the front desk and ask for the location of the Love Systems seminar.

The clerk directs me to the second floor, past the hallway, on the left. I thank him and head up the elevator.

This is a story about love. It’s also a story about 10 men. Ten men who each paid $3,000 to learn about love—and all the activities associated with it.

But to tell that story, we’ve got to talk about the seduction community, and a company called Love Systems.

Love Systems is a dating coach—a training firm that teaches men how to seduce women. The company exists thanks to Nick Savoy, a Canadian pick-up artist, businessman, and member of the Toronto Crew featured in Neil Strauss’s The Game.

Love Systems sells books, runs seminars, and offers personal coaching sessions to help men improve their chances with women. The company employs over 30 coaches. These coaches run classes spanning “day game”, phone flirting, and

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even seducing strippers. The company is based in Los Angeles, and runs seminars across the world; cities include Amsterdam, Tokyo, Singapore, Sydney, and Toronto.

Seduction is nothing new. Teaching seduction is nothing new either (the Kama Sutra dates back to 200 BC). But the seduction community—the modern group of players and pick-up artists of The Game, Magic Bullets, and Keys to the VIP— they’re something new.

The modern seduction community formed in Web forums around the late ’90s and early 2000s.

Across the Internet, men were experimenting with how to attract women—which approaches worked, and which ones flopped.

What made the seduction community unique was their approach. This wasn’t dating advice; this was dating science. These proto-pick-up artists tested their techniques with almost scientific rigour. Today, dating coaches refer to psychology textbooks to get their advice, and Love Systems’s website boasts that all of its teaching comes out of evolutionary psychology.

While most of the readers in Medium Magazine’s demographic were watching Dragon Ball Z, getting cootie shots, and deciding which Pokémon was the best (it’s Bulbasaur), a community was growing, and a new philosophy of dating emerged.

We know the seduction community from Neil Strauss and his book The Game. You might’ve seen The Game on shelves at Chapters under the shelf “What a Man Should Have”. The current print run is an impressive tome: thick, leather-bound, with a pimping red ribbon just like the family Bible.

Medium Magazine had the chance to send an intrepid reporter to Love Systems’s Toronto seminar—someone who knew people, who could pierce the veil of ignorance and return triumphantly with a story of our society, our humanity, and the need for social value in an increasingly alienating world.

Instead, they sent me.

I’ve never read The Game. In fact, I have no game. I once asked a girl out by shouting at her from across the street (we didn’t talk much after that). Sometimes I’m creepy. And I’ve been told my nose is big.

At the Ramada, as I headed up the elevator towards the Love Systems boot camp, I wondered what I was about to learn. What was it that let other guys chat up girls at parties, while me and my socially unfortunate brethren inspected the ceiling and made fake texts on our cellphones?

Was it our walk? Our talk? Our way of thinking?

Love Systems claimed that dating was a science— so what was the empirical difference between me and the dating coaches, the living and the dead?

But as the elevators opened, I stepped out, and realized there was one question burning brighter than all the others. One answer I wanted more than anything.

Just who were these guys?

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found two men waiting outside the Ramada’s courtyard room.

They had an Odd Couple vibe going on. One looked like money, wearing a classy steel-grey suit with a tie and vest. His aquiline face and gelled hair screamed fanciness. The other looked a lot more down-to-earth. He had an open, friendly face and short-cut hair, and wore jeans.

“Hey, are you the guys with the Love Systems boot camp?” I asked. “Cajun? Tenmagnet?”

“Yeah, that’s us,” the classy guy said.

“Cool.” I pulled out my notebook. “Um, if you guys aren’t busy, could I ask you about the stuff you’re gonna be teaching today?”

“What? Oh, no man—we’re here for the class.

We’re the students.”

What?

The suited guy introduced himself as Andrew.

The other man’s name was Carl.

They seem disturbingly normal. And yet each of the two had paid for the Love Systems boot camp.

For $3,000 I could put a down payment on a car. I could contribute to an RRSP. I could buy a white tufted marmoset (market value $2,000 USD), eat it, and still have money left over for a puppy. It was a lot of money.

But Andrew and Carl don’t look like they needed help. They were both different kinds of good-looking, and they seem friendly enough.

What were their problems with women?

I asked them. It turned out they had no problems. Carl was from Windsor. He read Nick Savoy’s book Magic Bullets and tried it out with some success back home. He wanted to learn more theory at the boot camp. Andrew was from McGill. He learned about the pickup community from The Game and wanted more experience from “in-field” training.

We headed into the courtyard room. It was a small conference room with a projector screen up front and a paper canvas for making notes.

The walls were striped white and beige, and the windows were frilled with curtains like Victorian underwear.

The thoughtful Ramada staff had left paper pads and pens on the rows of desks set up classroom-style facing the screen, but when we sat down, Carl and Andrew pulled out note-

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THERE’S THIS PREJUDICE THAT A S A MALE YOU’VE GOT TO ACCEPT YOUR LOT IN LIFE AND THAT YOU CAN’T MAKE YOURSELF MORE ATTR ACTIVE. THAT YOU HAVE TO MAKE MORE MONEY OR LIE. AND THE WAY WE TEACH IT IS: WORK ON YOUR SELF, YOUR ATTITUDE, AND PORTR AYING THAT CONFIDENCE THAT WOMEN FIND ATTR ACTIVE.

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books, already filled with notes.

Andrew had a Moleskine.

I own a Moleskine notebook.

They’re good notebooks.

I sat in the back, surreptitiously pocketed a Ramada pen, and tried to keep quiet.

Maybe if I just listened to them talk, I’d find the smoking gun—the quirk that unified these people.

Instead, Andrew and Carl started talking about the weather in Montréal. And bagels. They taste better in Montréal. Did you know that?

More students came in.

Some were young. Some were balding. Some were dressed up. Others needed some help.

One of students looked exactly like my high school English teacher, and I avoided making eye contact until I figured out it wasn’t actually him.

The students settled and compared notes about their in-field training last night.

During the in-field training, the coaches had rallied them through a bar called the Madison, letting these students test out their new knowledge. I attempted to wheedle out more quirks. I was disappointed. No obvious signs of neuroses.

A man in red flannel entered the room. This was Chris Shepherd, stage name Tenmagnet, one of the two instructors for the boot camp.

“Hey guys, how’s it going?

John, what happened to you last night?”

“Didn’t go last night,” one of the students answered from the back. “But I did get laid. Which was nice.”

“Cool,” Tenmagnet said. He pointed to an Asian guy draping his coat over a chair. “And you didn’t even sign up for the field training. What’s the deal?”

“Girlfriend,” he answered.

Another man walked in— bearded, with a blue rose inked on the inside of one forearm and Mic Mac hieroglyphs on the other. This was Cajun, the other instructor. He and Tenmagnet looked like people you’d see on the street. They looked normal.

No fuzzy hats.

These people can’t be like me, I thought, stealthily pocketing another Ramada pen.

They just can’t.

Tenmagnet beamed when he noticed me in the back, “Hey, you’re the journalist from U of T, right? You know, I used to write for The Varsity.”

What the fuck?

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he session starts with “self-adjudication”. The guys all went out last night in their first experience as pickup artists. Tenmagnet—he insists we call him Chris—tells the class that last night was all about “getting their feet wet”.

Okay, let’s go around the room,” Tenmagnet says.

“Carl?”

All of Carl’s approaches last night either went perfectly or well. He stuck to indirect approaches, but found it hard to get heard. Bars in Toronto are louder than in Windsor.

Tenmagnet nods.

“Your voice is a muscle,” Tenmagnet says. “And you have to work it. If a girl can’t hear you, you’re boring her. Here, try shouting at me. Do it. Just go ‘Aaaah!’.”

“Aaah!” Carl tries.

“Aaaaah!” Tenmagnet shouts back, louder.

“Try breathing from your stomach,” Cajun advises. “You have to be loud to be taken seriously. It’s silly, but that’s how the world works.”

After wrapping up the rest of the adjudication, Cajun and Tenmagnet start the day’s class, writing notes on the paper easel in black magic marker.

The Love Systems boot camp pushes their students through three days of dating science.

It covers roughly three stages: approaching women,

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getting their number, and having a great first date. In this framework, the instructors throw in a bunch of strategies for making step one to three fun and natural.

Today, Cajun and Tenmagnet build on the openers the guys learned yesterday, and will later cover how to have great conversations inside the bar. One of the openers the guys used most last night was “Are you guys friendly?” Somehow, they got numbers using that.

“Are you guys friendly?” It must be in the delivery; if I said that I’d probably get peppersprayed. Maybe it has something to do with the confidence. I missed yesterday’s class on confidence-building.

After the conversation-builders, Cajun and Tenmagnet instruct us on indicators of interest (that’s IOI to you), the body language cues that indicate if a girl is interested. Guys have to learn this because, according to Tenmagnet, girls are often unable (because of social pressure or just conditioning) to pursue men, even if they like them. As Tenmagnet says, laughing, “Girls have no game.”

We cover different topics to pursue during conversations, and more clever openers.

We talk about games to entertain people at the bar.

Halfway through the class, I get a text from my friend: Raj: “Did they teach you how to neg?”

I text back: “I’m not sure.”

Raj: “When they teach you how to neg, call me back.”

But no negging comes.

Instead of ways to trick women into bed, these classes seem to teach confidence.

They seem like lessons on being clear about what you want in a relationship, and then having the guts and social skill to go through with it. It seems like a primer on becoming a social guy.

Unless, I realize, they’ve already used their

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seduction psychology on me. Unless I’ve already become their slave.

I shift in my seat.

“Now we’ll cover how to tell interesting stories from your life experiences,” Tenmagnet says. He points to me. “So this might interest you.”

Huh?” I ask. “Oh. Yeah.”

Again and again, I’m awed by the logic behind the advice. The basis for Love Systems is research. Lots of research, experiments, and trial and error. Tenmagnet and Cajun use the aesthetics of Greek statues to illustrate proper body language and evolutionary psychology to explain their concepts of “social proof”. And the nutsand-bolts experimenting of going out constantly to try different lines and approaches amazes me.

Cajun and Tenmagnet experiment constantly.

Cajun once tried to pick up girls using only sentences of three words or fewer. The technique was intended to study expressive body language, but he still got a few numbers. He also spent months practicing the perfect first date by mastering online dating.

And it’s a huge field, one in which we have lots to learn.

When they talk about the techniques in The Game, Cajun and Tenmagnet grin a little shyly.

“Yeah, we’re a lot more clever now.”

“It’s sort of like when you think something’s cool when you’re a teenager, but then you look back and say, ‘Man, how did I think that was cool?’ ” Cajun says. The field of dating science is constantly changing. And the guys at Love Systems extend their reach into every area of it; Tenmagnet has even authored a book on seduction over the phone.

Class ends at 7. The students disperse for dinner. They’ll meet up again at 10 for more in-field training. And I’ll get a chance to find out if this stuff actually works.

INSTEAD OF WAYS TO TRICK W O M E N I N T O B E D, T H E S E CLASSES SEEM TO TEACH CONFIDENCE. THEY SEEM LIKE LESSONS ON BEING CLEAR ABOUT WHAT YOU WA N T I N A R E L AT I O N S H I P, AND THEN HAVING THE GUTS AND SOCIAL SKILL TO GO THROUGH WITH IT. IT SEEMS LIKE A PRIMER ON BECOMING A SOCIAL GUY.

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t’s dark by the time I find the Madison pub.

The Maddy is actually six different bars, all housed in a beautiful Victorian building on Madison Avenue, just off of Spadina. It sits across from a Tibetan Buddhist temple and a bunch of frat houses. I’m not Buddhist, but as I flashed my ID to get in, I felt a twinge of guilt as the Dalai Lama beamed down at me from a billboard.

The interior of the Maddy is all-out Englishpub: lots of threadbare red booths, lots of gleaming oak, lots of people drinking lots of golden alcohol.

Andrew and Carl are early again, sitting at a table to the side. Carl isn’t feeling too good. He ate a suspicious burger for dinner, but he wants to make the effort nonetheless.

Tenmagnet and Cajun come in with the others just a few minutes later. We gather in front of the bar as a team of servers crank beer from shiny brass taps.

“Okay, who wants to make the first try of the night?” Tenmagnet asks.

Andrew raises his hand. “I’ll do it.”

“Okay…” Tenmagnet looks around. He nods to three girls sitting up front. “Those girls. Go.” Aaron strides in—confident, energetic, dashing in his three-piece suit. He starts talking. He slips himself into a chair, next to a blonde with crinkled hair.

The blonde smiles.

“Let’s head upstairs,” Cajun says. We line up behind him and troupe up a narrow flight of stairs to a different pub. He tilts his head at an older

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group in a booth. “Ron, go.”

Ron walks up. He leans into the table and starts talking. Cajun shakes his head. “He’s not locking in.”

Meanwhile, Tenmagnet looks out for more girls. He points to three Asian girls sitting at the bar. “Sully, go.”

Sully goes.

It continues. Cajun and Tenmagnet troop the guys through the pub, sending them to groups of men and women. At 20 minutes in, every guy has ventured forth at least once.

Aaron walks by me with another student.

They’re heading to the smoking room.

“How’d it go with those girls from before?” I asked.

“Crash and burn!” Aaron said. “I used the grandma joke and they thought I was serious.”

“Ouch.”

“Nah, it’s fine.” Aaron flips his hand. “If I’d done this a month ago, it would’ve been worse, but yesterday night I realized—hey, this stuff is fun.”

Huh? Sully is still talking to those Asian girls. So I go talk to Ron. Ron is hanging back with Cajun and Tenmagnet. He’s an older man, and the Maddy isn’t his demographic. Case in point: there’s a girl at the pool table wearing a corset and not much else.

“How’d it go?” I ask.

“It went pretty good,” Ron said. “It turned out she was married—and her husband was with her.

But we still managed to have a pretty fun chat.”

Aaron and Cajun leave with another guy to go to the smoking section. Tenmagnet stays nearby to debrief Sully, who finally comes back after 10 minutes.

Sully looks happy.

“How’d it go?” I ask.

“It was cool!” Sully said. “I got her number and we have a date for next Wednesday.”

I take out my notebook. The bartender looks at

me funny.

“I just used a direct opener—just said, ‘You guys look cute’,” Sully explains. “It turned out she was Japanese and loved to travel. I asked her where she’s gone, and it turns out she’s been to New Zealand. I’ve been to New Zealand!” Sully flashes a thin jade pendant I remember seeing on some Kiwi relatives.

“So, are you used to this kind of stuff?” I asked, struggling to keep up with my pen.

“I’ve never done this before!” Sully exclaims, nearly shouting.

“Okay,” Tenmagnet comes in, “now here’s what you do. Text her back and pretend you got the wrong number. Say something like, ‘Dude, I just met this cute girl. I’m going back up to her right now. What should I say?’—and then see her again on the way out.”

But it’s only 10:30, and the team won’t be leaving for a while. The guys spread out to different rooms.

I have to catch the subway.

On the ride home, I get a chance to figure out what I think about all of this.

The Love Systems boot camp is not what you’d expect. It’s not about tricking women. It’s about attracting them. And that happens not through psychological tricks, but by learning how to become more attractive.”

Chris—sorry, Tenmagnet—said it best when I interviewed him: “There’s this prejudice that as a male you’ve got to accept your lot in life, and that you can’t make yourself more attractive. It’s not true. The way I figure, this seminar doesn’t teach how to pick up women so much as how to step out of your shell and be the guy you want to be.

On the subway back, there’s a group—two guys, three girls—sitting across from me. I put down my copy of The Stand.

“Are you guys friendly?”

And I put it back up, smirking MM

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UTM Department of Physical Education, Athletics and Recreation

PROMOTING A LIFETIME OF PHYSICAL ACTIVITY

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utm.utoronto.ca/athletics

facebook.com/utmathletics

@UTM_Athletics

The Zoo Diet Animals in captivity at the Toronto Zoo have a much more delicious and wellrounded diet than students in university. We compare.

Gorilla: high-fibre muffins, fruits and vegetables, alfalfa, tofu, herbal tea, fruit juices, flax meal Ahmad Al-Hendi: “Burrito for breakfast, coffee for lunch, then three free samosas and two-bite brownies from some club table”

Hippopotamus: romaine lettuce, melons, apples, carrots, parsnips, cabbages Nives Hajdin: “I had Cheetos and Nutella for dinner…”

Grizzly Bear: herring, apples, oranges, carrots, celery, grapefruit, parsnips, romaine lettuce, hard-boiled eggs, yams, grapes Lauren Gibson: “At breakfast I had a blueberry Pop-Tart and scrambled eggs with cheese and ketchup. Then I had a pumpkin spice dufflet cupcake and a slice of Canadian pizza with garlic sauce”

Elephant: apples, carrots, onions, mixed vegetables, jelly beans, seeds, peanuts Carl Ewen-Lewis: “McD’s quarter-pounder and Cinnabon for dessert”

Wood Bison: hay Sophia Leonard: “They only gave me a juice box and a granola bar”

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INTERVIEW BY ARISTOTLE ELIOPOULOS

W I T H A L O N G A N D S TA B L E C A R E E R T H AT H A S S P A N N E D O V E R A D E C A D E A N D A N AT U R A L APTITUDE FOR CRAFTING PERFECT ROCK SONGS, SAM ROBERTS HAS CARVED A NICHE FOR HIMSELF, AS WELL AS A L O Y A L A N D G R O W I N G FA N B A S E .

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Consistency is an underrated skill—one that singer-songwriter Sam Roberts has perfected at the very core of his music. With five records, six Juno Awards, 10 nominations, and the accomplishment of having one of the best-selling independent records in Canadian music history, Sam Roberts has achieved something that few artists in the modern music industry ever achieve, even the successful ones: longevity. We talk to him about the importance of writing his own music, self-competition, and the difficulties of maintaining a balance between his musical intentions and the finished product.

I noticed that the cover of your most recent album, Collider, is the first of your releases to say “Sam Roberts Band” as opposed to just Sam Roberts. What brought about this change? Did you feel there was something that made acknowledging Sam Roberts as a band important to listeners?

Yeah. I think with this record it’s definitely been one that reflects the biggest contribution of the creative front that the band has made to date. It was an important step to not only tell people, but to recognize that the band is not just contributing on stage but also in the making of the record as a whole.

One of the recurring facts that tends to pop up is that your EP, The Inhuman Condition, became one of the best-selling independent releases in Québec and Canadian music history. Do you ever feel the pressure to top yourself or even self-compete—if not with your own record sales, then just with the past you: you as a writer, you as a musician?

Yeah, that was a hell of a way to start off. At the time I don’t think we knew it occupied any sort of space on the Canadian music hierarchy with any historical significance or value. The next record came out so quickly afterwards, I didn’t really have time to think about what I was going to do and whether it was going to have the same impact. And I find that with every record that comes, I’ve almost completely forgotten how I made the previous one. Even if I wanted to go back and retrace those steps, my life has changed in so many ways, my approach to songwriting changes constantly, that—again— if I wanted to go back there, I don’t know if I could find my way. So I just end up taking each new record as its own challenge and a reflection of a given period of my life, rather than rehash or recreate something from the past. And I think that’s just a healthier way to approach creativity in general.

With songwriting in mind, I know that with Collider and the rest of your recordings, you write all the music and lyrics yourself. How important is it for you to write your own music?

To me, it’s enormously important. It’s my outlet. It’s the way I get to exercise something that wants to come out of me. Everybody has a different urge or a different impulse in how they want to express themselves creatively. There are some things you can’t do in conversation, there are some things you can’t do in your day-to-day life; it needs to be said in different ways. For me, it’s always been writing songs and writing music. So when I sit down with a guitar, it’s just what happens.

I just do it because it’s something I’ve always done and it’s something I’ve always wanted to do.

With something like your music video for “I Feel You”, the video—at least to me—feels quite dark and gritty.

Yeah, you’re on the right track, for sure.

So, with that in mind, are there themes that you feel continue to jump out or inspire you when creating visual counterparts for your music, like music videos?

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It’s funny, there’s always a visual component to a song. Whether it ever gets made into a video or not, each song in my mind has a visual storyline. That can change from day to day, but it always seems to be accompanied by a strong visual. And they help me write the lyrics in the first place, in that the music itself often evokes a lyric which evokes an image and I can follow that somewhere. Videos complement it in the same way, and it’s always been an important part of what we do. The first video we ever made was for “Brother Down”, and we were on a lifeboat. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it… I have! Yeah, it was a very low-budget video. We were in a lifeboat in the middle of Lake Ontario, and we eat—we cannibalize!—each other, as I remember [laughs]. It just started with that, and to me, I never really thought that it could be an expression of the lyrics or what the song is trying to say. In that sense, I like how [a music video] offers you an alternative version, or somebody else’s interpretation—the director’s interpretation—of what that song means to them.

With your most recent record, I couldn’t help but notice the sound is very relaxed, yet still “put together”. Are you finding it easier to write and record music as you progress through your career?

I don’t know if writing changes. It’s more about getting the time and space to think clearly about [the songs], getting off the road, and clearing my mind. In terms of the recording process, the more time you spend in the studio, the less nervous you are about trying things, or making mistakes, and the more you’re able to just play. Spending time in there and being under the gun and having the pressure of playing the song right takes time to grow into. I think that’s why the later records are now starting to sound more as if we were on stage, because that’s where I think the band is at its best—at its most effective and most relaxed.

When creating a song in the studio, do you ever think about how a song will translate for live performances?

Yes. Almost every time. Some of them I know are going to work well, other ones I have no idea whatsoever if they will work at all. Others I know for sure. There are a few records where we have songs that we just never play live cause they don’t translate at all live. It’s frustrating. I think with every subsequent record that comes out, we’ve tried to clean them out so we could play them live. Sometimes that requires a reworking or a completely new reinterpretation of the song. It presents an interesting challenge.

Again, we don’t shy away from anything that pushes us or stretches our abilities… not that we’re a prog-rock band or anything [laughs].

Is there anything you try to do to help a song transition from the studio to a concert experience?

It’s always an interesting process when you’ve finished a record, and you’ve been sitting in studio mode for sometimes months and months on end. And you’ve been focussing so much on the details—and I mean details that are so microscopic—that they can become completely lost to you and everybody else. And then once you get back into the rehearsal hall, all that stuff goes out the window and you’re dealing with this raw palette of sound. It’s always a bit disconcerting at first, because the songs sound completely different to what you’re used to hearing on the speakers. So you kind of have to get over that and... fight it out, basically. I don’t mean that in a literal sense. You know— work that song until it takes shape again and it’s reborn in a live sense, and then you start to realize that the essence of the song is still there, and no, it doesn’t sound exactly as it does in the studio— and it’s not meant to sound like it did. That’s what live performance is about. It’s about giving a song a chance for rebirth every day. And they always come out differently. In that sense, you never stop

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writing the song, you never stop recording a song, and the album version is only one version, and not the definite version. The definite version doesn’t exist.

Nice. I like that. Now, with your new record, I know you collaborated with some great people, like Elizabeth Powell, Stuart Bogie, Ben Massarella, and Brian Deck (who also produced and mixed this record). Even as a musician who has accomplished so much, do you have any dream collaborations you ever think about? You know, people that are dead or alive—people you would just love to work with?

Oh man, there are so many people I would just love to create music with. You know, even just one time. Like Fela Kuti, one of my favourite West African legends. He’s gone now, but just to sit in and jam with him one time would be a dream come true—just to feel what it would feel like to sit in his band. We wouldn’t even have to collaborate; just give me a cowbell to play. For a night. I mean, just on a songwriting level: Paul Simon, Paul Kelly out of Australia—I really always loved his songwriting. The Happy Mondays. The Stone Roses.

All these people that had great influences on me. You always wonder what would happen if you could connect minds with them. You know, what would come out. I mean the difficulty in a collaboration is sort of knowing how to work a give-and-take, an exchange of ideas. You kind of have to hold on to your own voice and thoughts, and yet be elastic enough to really accept somebody else’s way of thinking about music. To combine them together, that’s difficult to do, and it’s something I’ve been growing into. It doesn’t come naturally to me. I’m definitely open to it now, though, more than I ever was.

Great. One last question. You are a busy man, touring and recording, but when you have downtime, what do you, Sam Roberts, do to wind down or relax?

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Not much anymore, since I have three kids! So, in fact, it’s busier at home than it is on tour. I haven’t figured that out yet. That’s the next chapter. I used to... well, if I could do anything, I’d go home and sleep [laughs], I could read books, listen to my favourite records, go out for a walk with my wife. And now... [laughs] Sorry, I’m just thinking about what it’s like when I walk through the door, it’s like... full throttle, all the time! Yeah, I don’t relax. I’ll relax 10 years from now... No, check that, I’ll relax 20 years from now! I’m going go to an ashram in India with my wife and learn yoga. That’s what I’ll do. But that’s not for a long time. In the meantime, I’m either in a touring rock-and-roll band, or I’ve got a family to take care. It’s one of the busiest times in my life.

Well, if I talk to you in 20 years, I’ll hold you to that.

[Laughs] All right MM

Fear and loathing in SOC101 A savage journey to the heart of the academic experience.

In texts.

WRITERS LEONIE CHIRPENSTEIN & CHRISTOPH TROLLHARD

L:

This would have been better high.

C:

Totally.

L: C: L:

C:

Sexuality and society, my forte!

Are you writing this?

Every word.

This needs to be edited. This lecture is perfect for trolling.

Do you think this prof’s gonna notice I don’t have a laptop?

I’m sure she’s agonizing over it. Sexual revolution, eh? Is that where they overthrow the Jonas Brothers?

L:

Flash mob class! Also, a sex and sexuality lecture? Do you think she’s going to hand out condoms after this?

C:

If she brings out bananas I’m leaving.

L:

Every time she says “genitalia” I think of Jon Lajoie.

C:

C:

So New Zealanders kiss with their noses and Eskimos kiss with their eyelashes. Any earkissers out there?

So New Zealanders kiss with their noses and Eskimos kiss with their eyelashes. Any earkissers out there?

L:

I wish. But only Nick and Joe, not Kevin. I like Kevin.

L:

The French kiss with their tongues!

C:

She wants to play music as the students walk into class? Are we actually at a university?

C:

The French were probably responsible for the sexual revolution. They love that revolution stuff.

[The prof puts up a picture of a model and asks class to identify the sex.]

L:

Which model is that?

C:

Kind of looks like the collision of Lindsay Lohan and Cher, but somehow a man.

L:

So kind of like Justin Bieber?

C:

Exactly like Justin Bieber.

L:

Hey, how long does this need to be?

C:

There’s a “that’s what she said” in there somewhere.

L:

We picked the right class.

[The prof shows a slide with a picture of a church billboard.]

C:

“Is touching yourself worth an eternity in hell?” Why is Jesus watching me do it in the first place?

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L:

Sexual Revolution... “If it feels good, do it.” Isn’t that a Weezer song?

C:

Sloan. I read that Rivers Cuomo is celibate.

L:

Really?? Weird.

C:

So women emphasize the love aspect of sex, and men emphasize the fun aspect. I thought girls just wanted to have fun? What a gross misconception.

C:

What a gross misconception.

L:

It’s “wanna have fun”.

C:

“Let’s look at sex between adults.” So we’re watching porn now?

L:

Every time she says sex she blushes.

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C:

Apparently makeup is meant to replicate the way a woman’s face flushes when she orgasms.

L:

I see you paid attention in PSY100.

C:

So now we know that sexuality allows for human reproduction. Good to know. I was worried that I might be giving birth to orangutans.

L:

New Guinea boys perform oral sex on older man because they think the semen makes them more masculine. I guess that would make Sasha Grey pretty manly.

C:

A million teens become pregnant every year… most do not intend to become pregnant… the rest are on Teen Mom.

L:

Pornography is about freedom of speech? Because people love to talk during sex?

C:

So many different kinds of prostitution… apparently one referred to as “social working”. Gotta put that sociology degree to good use somehow.

L:

That awkward moment where you tell your parents you could potentially become a sex worker. … Whoa, a nun became a prostitute?

C:

That is one long striptease.

L:

Carla von Ray... Google that shit. She was “God’s sex worker”.

C:

It’s the oldest profession. I love how there’s a hierarchy of prostitutes. That’s like having a hierarchy of hobos. I see the appeal, but it seems objectively pointless.

L:

Not as pointless as this article.

“LIKE” US ON FACEBOOK. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER. NOBODY USES GOOGLE +, SO...

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IN CLASS W E M O S T

C H E C K

S T Y L I S H

W H A T

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I N

W E

W I T H

S O M E

S T U D E N T S

W E A R

T O

O U T

I S N ’ T

PHOTOGRAPHER

EDWARD

O F

U T M ’ S

M A K E W O R N

CAI

S U R E O U T

P H O T O G R A P H E D

O N

T H E

[ 5 - M I N U T E

W A L K ]

R YA N J O S E P H ART HISTORY & PWC

/

PWC CLASS REP, CCIT COUNCIL —

SHOES – ZARA / SHIRT, PANTS – CLUB MONACO / SUNGLASSES – VINTAGE / JACKET – LONDON FOG, THRIFTED

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[ I N

F R O N T

O F

I B ]

REBECCA BEDNARIK CCIT MAJOR

/

PWC & SOCIOLOGY MINOR —

SWEATER – MENDOCINO / BLOUSE – EQUIPMENT / BOYFRIEND TROUSER – VERO MODA / SHOES – ALDO / NECKLACE – FOREVER 21

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P H O T O G R A P H E D

I N

[ I B 1 4 0 ]

DEANNE MACRAE

AHMAD AL-HENDI

ENGLISH & PSYCHOLOGY

PHILOSOPHY & PWC

—

—

SWEATER – MICHAEL KORS /

JEANS – LEVI’S / SHOES – TOMS /

BLOUSE – H&M / SKIRT – ZARA / BOOTS –

T-SHIRT – SIMONS / HOODIE – URBAN

SPRING SHOES

OUTFITTERS / JACKET – GAP

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P H O T O G R A P H E D

O N

[ H M A L C

R O O F T O P

G A R D E N ]

C AT H E R I N E F E R R O N I ENGLISH & POLITICAL SCIENCE — SWEATER – RACHEL ROY / SKIRT – THEORY / T-SHIRT – FRENCH CONNECTION / HEADBAND – SALVATORE FERRAGAMO / SHOES – HALSTON / WATCH – MICHAEL KORS

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P H O T O G R A P H E D

T R E N T O G I LV I E ENGLISH SPECIALIST —

O N

[ S T A I R S

T O

R A W C ]

REBECCA BEDNARIK — BLOUSE – ELLISON / JEANS –

BLAZER – HUGO BOSS/ BOOTS –

JBRAND / FUR VEST – 525 AMERICA /

CLARKS / TIE – AMERICAN APPAREL /

SHOES – ALDO

JEANS – LEVI’S

DEANNE MACRAE —

AHMAD AL-HENDI — JEANS – LEVI’S / BOOTS – STEVE

DRESS – RIPE / BOOTS – GUESS

MADISON / SHIRT – CLUB MONACO /

SCARF – URBAN OUTFITTERS

CARDIGAN – THRIFTED / TRENCH – CLUB MONACO

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Did You Know...

Hospitality & Retail Services and Chartwells Dining Service at UTM /

Understand that access to quality food service is important to the success of the university community Believe increased food choice and menu diversity are fundamental to improving food service at UTM Know the Meeting Place Tim Hortons line is way too long.

/ /

Hospitality & Retail Services and Chartwells Dining Services have a detailed plan to address these facts by: /

Building better facilities: Â’

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Providing Increased Choice and Diversity : Â’

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Hospitality & Retail Services and Chartwells Dining Services are committed to improving the food service at UTM.

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Tickle you just right

69% of women polled said they look for a man with a sense of humour. Even above intelligence or physical features, girls are looking for funny guys. Therefore, women want to date comedians. Kjartan Hewitt gets advice from real Toronto comedians about dating.

Kevin Patrick Robbins IMPATIENT THEATRE CO. “Don’t tell me I remind you of Jack Black. Seriously.”

Bob Banks MANTOWN, PB & J “Look, just because you like funny dudes doesn’t mean you should date a comic. I like slutty girls, but that doesn’t mean I should date ‘professionals’.”

Dom Paré CBC’S SO YOU THINK YOU’RE FUNNY, THE DEBATERS, YUK YUK’S “Every woman wants a funny guy! Every man wants an attractive girl! The quickest way to my heart is being out of my league.”

Pat Thornton PB & J, HOT BOX “It’s simple. I’m the funniest person you’ve ever heard in your life, ever, or this is over in a second.

Also, you’ll need to lend me money sometimes and don’t be weird about leaving for work with me still sleeping in your bed ’cause I don’t have to be up for hours.”

Ron Sparks JUST IMDB HIM “Your timing couldn’t be better, as I’m about to launch this year’s ‘Win a Date with Ron Sparks’ contest!

Just send photos and an intro letter to sparksnation@gmail.com; the winning candidate will be invited to meet me at Swiss Chalet, where we will discuss my IMDb credits and then hug.”

Norm Sousa SUNDAY NIGHT LIVE, THE SKETCHERSONS “Laugh at everything I say and don’t talk to my girlfriend. Or rather, laugh at everything they say and don’t tell their girlfriend. Oh, and be good at grammar.”

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WRITER MELISSA HORN

I

was at a walk-in clinic several months ago, filling out the required information form, when I found myself blanking on what to put as my occupation. Should I write in “student”? But I had graduated in May. At work, my official title was “researcher”, and I guess my work was now what primarily occupied my time. But calling myself a researcher felt stupid. In a hopeful gesture towards my upcoming graduate school applications, I wrote in “student”, but then cringed inwardly when my doctor asked me how school was going. “Good,” I said; I couldn’t muster the mental energy to explain my weird, neurotic lie on the form. Besides, I was aiming on being a student again next year, anyway. That is, if I’m accepted into graduate school.

If we’re no longer students once we graduate, what are we? The vast majority of my friends who happen to be recent grads are suffering from some kind of post-graduate identity crisis. A mental survey of my peers reveals a variety of responses to this problem. Many have moved back home; some

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have financial reasons for it, and others just want to be back in the nest. A few have gone on to college, teacher’s college, law school, or medical school to further define themselves professionally. Some have climbed back up into the womb of academia by going to graduate school. Some are “just chillin’” (their words).

Very few have managed to claw their way into a position in their field. Most are working at jobs for which they are vastly overqualified. Many are “finding themselves” through travelling, or at least talking wistfully about it.

My reaction to my own graduation was to try to find my way back into sweet, sweet Mother Academia as soon as possible while working a well-paying 9-to-5. I started the job as soon as I finished up my exams, and was immediately exhausted. I never thought that sitting all day could sap my energy so much. My coworkers were all nice, but they were “office nice”, making awkward small talk with me in the communal kitchen while I waited for them to finish with the microwave.

After months of typing and clicking while

hunched over a keyboard, I developed pain and numbness in my hands. I slept poorly, waking up with pins and needles and running cold water over my wrists at 4 a.m., shaking my hands to try to wake them up. The doctor at the clinic suggested it might be carpal tunnel syndrome and referred me to a rheumatologist for testing.

I liked having a job that clearly separated work from the rest of your day—so different from student life, where there’s always some assignment you could be working on. After you graduate, your free time is truly free, and you’re accountable to no one. You can spend entire weekends just blazing and watching Breaking Bad! …On the other hand, you might spend entire weekends blazing and watching Breaking Bad. It’s a gift and a curse.

At the rheumatologist’s office, I didn’t lie a second time—I wrote “researcher” on the form. It still felt dumb. The doctor, sticking electrodes on my arm, asked me what I studied in school. “Art history,” I said. He smirked, zapped me, and asked, “So what does that qualify you do to?” (Thank God I left out my minors in philosophy and women’s studies!)

I wanted to counter with some liberal arts mumbo jumbo about “knowledge for knowledge’s sake”, but the man was running an electrical current through my forearm. I muttered, “It qualifies me to go to graduate school.”

It’s easy, as a student, to simply swing from essay to essay, class to class, year to year. But I’ve heard it so many times from so many of my fellow graduates: when the next hurdle isn’t laid out in front of you, you have to make it yourself—and the choices are terrifying and endless and paralyzing. What to do? How to spend my time? What to make of myself? What makes someone an adult, anyway? Having a degree? That can’t be right. Having sharp knives in the kitchen? Having a kid? Feeling exhausted at the end of the day?

The smartass rheumatologist told me my nerve conduction was fine. No carpal tunnel

syndrome. As usual, I followed up with some Google later that evening. According to the Internet, some medical professionals think carpal tunnel syndrome isn’t just caused by work-related activities. The symptoms can also be produced by stress and anxiety.

I left the researcher position because of my hands. They were nice about it. Office nice. I work at a café now. I fell into this kind of work really easily—I think I missed talking to people and being on my feet more than I realized. I like making sandwiches for people. I’m very understanding when they tell me they’re having trouble deciding. “I know!” I say, sympathetically. “There are so many options!”

The pain and numbness has subsided, for the most part. I’m still waiting for my application results. I think once they come in, I might go travelling MM

MM

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