The Tartan Issue 2 - Spring 2016 by The Peak

“I CAN’T GET INTO MY CLASSES AGAIN!?”

4 HOLLYWOOD NORTH BURNABY From Agent Cody Banks to Underworld Awakening, SFU has been a popular filming location for years — but being a movie star is not always an easy gig. Photo Courtesy of Caryn Cameron

An investigation of SFU’s course enrolment system and what the future holds in store to solve student frustration.

16 OH, MAGGIE Most people may only know Maggie Benston by the building named in her honour, but her close friends and family remember her as so much more. Photo Courtesy of Helen Potrebenko

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Filming Timeline A brief year-by-year history of SFU’s many appearances in the movies and on television.

SFU’s Best and Worst Movie Roles Movie aficionado Jonathan Pabico ranks the three best and three worst movies that feature the Burnaby campus as a filming location.

Culture of Detachment Writer Tamara Connor makes a case for a growing feeling of detachment between Administration and the rest of the university following our latest labour dispute.

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Renaissance Man Owner and founder of Renaissance Coffee, Parminder Parhar, reflects on nearly 20 years as our campus’ go-to coffee guy.

A History of Art From humble beginnings to three separate locations across greater Vancouver, the art gallery has come a long way.

Get with the Program! A brief run-down of what it means to be in a variety of different faculties at SFU.

37 20 SFU’S BOX IN THE ATTIC The Library’s Special Collections and the University’s Archives Repository hold keys to a past that most students will never take the time to unlock.

44 AN ARTWALK TO REMEMBER UniverCity’s public art initiative may be one of Burnaby Mountain’s best kept secrets, but it certainly isn’t hiding. Photo Courtesy of SFU Creative Services

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FICTION Prose and poetry from some of SFU’s brightest creative writers.

Rattrap Sometimes a bike ride is all it takes to remember what’s good about the little things in life.

Having spent his entire life on the outside, curiosity got the best of him and he took a shot at his “normal” life.

Who’s Afraid of Thomas Wolfe The last thing Hannah wanted after struggling to pay her way through college was to have to come back to her family for financial aid, but that’s exactly what she now finds herself doing — and her father won’t let her forget it.

The New Denny’s Both Alan and the restaurant he works in seem to be stuck in the past while the world around them has learned to move forward indiscriminately.

Thanks for Understanding

Poetry There’s also a poem on page 64 in between two of the prose pieces. Make sure you check it out!

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CONTRIBUTORS NON-FICTION Tamara Connor (Culture of Detachment, pg.25) is a fourth year Political Science student. When she isn't writing up a storm, Tamara can be found with a good book or watching her favourite television series, Murdoch Mysteries. She advocates for Canadian content broadcasting, the floppy disc, and the creation of a *drops mic* emoji. Jasdeep Gakhal (An Artwalk to Remember, pg.44) is a fourth year English major and History minor at SFU. Michelle Hickey (Renaissance Man, pg.30) is a student of Communications and Health Sciences. She enjoys learning and sharing people's true and unheard stories. Albert Kho (SFU’s Box in the Attic, pg.20) is a second year student transitioning from Engineering to Actuarial Science. If he's not in class, at the pool, or in front of a computer writing, he's probably asleep. Jonathan Pabico (The Best and Worst Movies Filmed on Campus, pg.14) is a third year Philosophy Major. He is currently a writer at The Peak and continues to be involved with it on a weekly basis. He also knows how to play the drums. Tessa Perkins (Oh, Maggie, pg.16) is a proud alumna, student, and staff member of SFU who is a former Arts Editor and current contributor for The Peak and writes for publications such as Dance International. She has a BA in English and French literature (with a minor in Publishing) and is working on a post-baccalaureate diploma in Communications. Oscar Lira Sanchez (A Space for Art, pg.32 & Get With The Program!, pg.48) is a student lost in the Visual Arts and History programs at SFU. Constantly confused and flustered, he is an artist and writer just trying to understand where he's going and where he's been. Hannah Urquhart (An Artwalk to Remember, pg.44) is a fourth year English and French Literature joint major. Adam VanderZwan (“I Can’t Get Into My Classes Again”, pg.37) is a fifth year Communications and Political Science student, currently working as The Peak’s Opinions Editor. Apart from consuming copious amounts of coffee and washing dishes to jazz music, he enjoys pensive walks on the beach and deep conversations.

FICTION (PROSE) Sam Fraser (Who's Afraid of Thomas Wolfe?, pg.66) is a fourth-year English major with a passion for Batman, bow ties, and bad movies. Sometimes he makes videos about these things and posts them on YouTube under the name “Adaptation Nation”. Jesse Gotfrit (Thank You for Understanding, pg.62) is a third year English major who writes both poetry and fiction, and who would love it if his stories made just a little difference in how people perceive and interact with the world. Stephanie Hefti (Rattrap, pg.52) is a fourth year English and History double major with a World Literature minor who presently bursts into tears each time she tries to think about choosing between serious

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grad studies and her plan to pursue creative writing alongside a teaching career. Ryan Hoben (The New Denny's, pg.57) is an English major who occassionally can be found smoking cigarettes and working on his first novel from the comforts of his tiny one bedroom apartment in East Vancouver.

FICTION (POETRY) Anisa Maya Dhanji (Atlantis and You, pg.71) is a third year Linguistics major and French minor. She enjoys Canada's lengthy coastlines and really great puns. Lukas Grajauskas (Nebula III, pg.64) is a fifth-year student majoring in Behavioural Neuroscience. Rajdeep Grewal (Run River, pg.75) is a fourth year Psychology & Dialogue student who loves writing and performing poetry, as well as connecting with other creative people. Kyle Michels (Blason for a Stranger, pg.73) is an English major completing his studies this semester Sam Weselowski (Consortium, pg.71) is a fourth year student who has recently began the English Honours program and will hopefully be writing a sensible thesis on the poetry of Jack Spicer. Rachel Wong (145, pg.72) is a second year student pursuing a Communications major and an International Studies minor. She is an avid blogger, foodie, and would like to one day read news to you for a living. Iker Zarebski (Here, pg.74) is a second year Cognitive Science Major. He is mainly interested in existential and erotic themes. Some of his influences are Pablo Neruda and Charles Bukowski.

ILLUSTRATION Serena Chan (Here, pg.74) is a Computing Science major as her second-degree, doodle-maker, and wannabe. Zach Chan (145, pg.72 & Who's Afraid of Thomas Wolfe?, pg.66) is a third year Interactive Arts and Technology student, where he explores connections between humans and technology in order to design

interactions that will be memorable, defining experiences for others. Having only just started delving into the world of drawing a few years ago, pencil and ink are his main tools but digital art is slowly becoming another part of his tool belt for creating fan art and illustrations for school publications like The Peak and Tartan. Momo Lin (Consortium, pg.71) is a second year Kinesiology major currently in her my fourth year in Canada. Her personal website is built for all kids and adults (2amconference.com) and she believes in the truth of illustration that reflects the reality of the world. Ariel Mitchell (Atlantis and You, pg.71) is a 4th year student currently pursuing a Joint Major in Health Sciences and Philosophy. Her favorite flavor is bubble gum, followed closely by mint and vanilla.

PHOTOGRAHY Jonathan VanElslander (A Space for Art, pg.32 & Fiction Cover Photo, pg. 71 & Run River, pg.75) is a fourth year Environmental Science major specializing in forest ecology. He spends his free time taking film photographs of beautiful places and people and getting lost in the woods.

EDITORIAL STAFF Andrea Bolland (Designer) is a fourth year Communications major with a passion for photography and design. Austin Cozicar (Associate Non-Fiction Editor) is a third(ish) year Communications major. He formerly worked as The Peak’s Sports Editor, but is still on the ground covering SFU’s sports scene. He also works as the marketing coordinator at SFU Hockey. He also hopes he is immortal. Brad McLeod (Managing Editor) is a fifth year Communications major who will soon be graduating. He is the creator of this magazine. Amneet Mann (Associate Fiction Editor) is a first year student, a fan of good stories, bad jokes, and the people who tell them.

COVER ART: MADY SMICIKLAS CORRECTION FROM ISSUE 1: In an article from The Tartan Issue 1, published in September 2015, entitled “The Only Escape: The Early Years of the SFU Theatre”, a quote describing the sociology and anthropology departments in the mid-60s as “manned with a lot of Marxist scholars and that was no secret” was falsely attributed to Penn Lewis. The quote actually belongs to John Juliani. The Tartan apologizes for this error.

EDITOR’S NOTE

A Brief Explanation of What This Thing Is

THE PEAK PUBLICATIONS SOCIETY PRESENTS:

Maggie Benston Centre 2900 Simon Fraser University 8888 University Drive Burnaby, BC, Canada V5A 1S6

The Tartan operates out of The Peak office which is located on the second floor of the Maggie Benston Centre, underneath Higher Grounds coffee shop.

MANAGING EDITOR

Brad McLeod ASSOCIATE NON-FICTION EDITOR

Austin Cozicar ASSOCIATE FICTION EDITOR

Amneet Mann DESIGNER

hat you're holding in your hands right now is the second issue of The Tartan magazine. If you didn't pick up our first issue, you may have a few questions. Like, What is The Tartan? ... What is a magazine? … How is this magazine reading my thoughts? ... Can I read people’s thoughts too? … Can other people read my thoughts? ... Is everybody secretly plotting against me? ... Is there a global conspiracy that I’m at the centre of, and everyone I know is actually an actor like in that Jim Carrey movie? … What is the name of that movie? ….Why can’t I remember the name of that movie? ... Why is ‘Yes Man’ the only Jim Carrey movie title I can remember right now? Let's start by explaining what The Tartan is. The Tartan is a bi-annual magazine published by the Peak Publications Society. We're basically the home of all forms of creativity that don't necessarily fit into SFU's weekly student newspaper, The Peak, but still need a home for everyone to see. That means we have long-form journalistic features about SFU issues and history, as well as fiction writing, poetry, artwork, photography and more. To find out what we're all about just dive in and start looking through this issue. We're sure you'll find something you like! We hope to continue to be a part of the SFU media landscape for years to come so if you like this magazine please let us and the entire world know it. Please enjoy this issue of The Tartan. A lot of people worked really hard on everything you'll find in here, and we really want you to like us. Oh, and to answer your other questions: a magazine is a misshapen book, this magazine isn't actually reading your thoughts, you can't read people's thoughts, no one else can read your thoughts, everyone is plotting against you, your life does closely resemble The Truman Show, and I can't tell you, you must just love that movie. Enjoy!

Andrea Bolland PEAK PULBICATIONS SOCIETY BUSINESS MANAGER Maia Odegaard BOARD OF DIRECTORS Tamara Connor, MuhammadQasim Dewji, Max Hill, Thadoe Wai PRINTING COURTESY OF

MET Fine Printers SPEACIAL THANKS TO Yemidale Ajayi, James Atamanchuk, Nini Baird, Ellen Balka, Monique Benedetti, Julie Bernard, Alison Blair, David Brisbin, Caryn Cameron, Arlene Chan, Gloria Chu, Karen Dean, Rod Drown, Stan Fox, Jesse Galicz, Todd Gattinger, Ann Goobie, Melanie Hardbattle, Christina Hedlund, Rummana Khan Hemani, Pansy Hui, Greg Jackson, Peg Johnsen, Paul Lougheed, Marian Lowe, Diane Luckow, Joel Mackenzie, Aoife Mac Namara, Greg McLeod, Kathy McLeod, Marianne Meadahl, Gordon Meyers, Rita Mogyorosi, Rella Ng, Angela Nielsen, Melanie O’Brian, Parminder Parhar, John Penhall, Cameron Porteous, Helen Potrebenko, Tim Rahilly, Mark Roman, Melissa Roth, Derek Sahota, Sandy Shreve, William Schmuck, Kent Sponagle, Ron Verzuh, Kelly Weber, Neal Wells, Sandy Wilson, Kendra Wingerter, Richard Woo, SFU Archives, SFU Community Trust, SFU Creative Services, SFU

Brad McLeod Managing Editor

Facilities Services & SFU Special Collections

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Hollywood North burnaby The

Vancouverâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s locations: SFU

tricky history behind one of

most legendary filming

Written

Brad McLeod Photo Courtesy of Caryn Cameron, SFU Student Services (Copyright CGCameron2015)

t’s been a top secret government laboratory, an evil corporation, NASA, the headquarters of the CIA and the FBI, a military academy, a military academy in space, the planet Caprica and a portal from a Stargate to another universe.

It’s where Keanu Reeves was interrogated about an Alien invasion, where Ryan Phillippe cracked a worldwide computer conspiracy, and where a hockey-playing chimpanzee once mopped floors on rollerskates. It’s been dressed up, dressed down, and exploded into a million pieces. While you may know SFU’s Burnaby campus simply as a place you take classes, it also leads a secret double life — it’s a bonafide movie star. From its first starring role in the early 70s to its boom in the 2000s, the film industry has a deep love for Arthur Erickson’s famed brutalist tribute to Greek architecture. But that love is not always requited.

who was responsible for the production coming to campus, remembered not having any procedures in place for filming at the time. “There weren’t any guidelines, we were making it up as we went along,” Baird explained about her involvement in the movie. “They filmed 24/7 . . . for three weeks.” Groundstar’s production designer, Cameron Porteous, remembers SFU as being an “absolutely perfect” location for the movie and they took full advantage of a large portion of the campus. “We did quite a bit at SFU. The university was designed to be some sort of great centre for investigation, similar to the CIA,” Porteous recalled. According to Porteous, there were no problems with filming on campus and as they shot during the summer, there was little disruption to students and almost no fanfare. There was one visitor who did capture his attention however.

Since the first film crew travelled up Burnaby Mountain more than 40 years ago, there has been a certain amount of tension between the university as a learning institution and as a filming location. Once very accommodating to filming, SFU has become increasingly reluctant to dedicate energy into being a location site for feature films and TV shows. Neither the local film community nor the university have any resentment towards one another, however there is obvious frustration on both sides.

“I remember one day Arthur Erickson came to the university and I was introduced to him and I sort of was embarrassed a bit because I had, in a sense, doctored up his architectural dream,” Porteous recalled saying he had just built an observation centre on top of the mall roof for the movie. He needn’t have worried though because “[Erikson] said, ‘No, no … the whole idea behind architectural structures he idea behind architectural is they must adapt to the needs of the people and it’s adapting structures is they must adapt to beautifully to your needs and the needs of the people that’s all that matters.’”

“[T ]

.”

On May 11, 1972, The While SFU will probably — Arthur Erickson to Cameron Porteous Groundstar Conspiracy held always be Vancouver’s go-to on the set of The Groundstar Conspiracy its world premiere at the Vogue ‘vaguely evil looking location’, Theatre with proceeds going to its long and complex history fund an SFU student aid bursawith filming make it difficult to ry. Although, in their coverage predict whether it will continue to be a major player in the film locaof the event The Peak gave the film the less than flattering review of tion game – or if it even wants to be. a “two-star television movie,” SFU’s film location experiment was an hen SFU opened in 1965, it didn’t just give British Columbia a overall success and SFU was now open for “film” business. It would new post-secondary education option — it gave the world a new take a while to heat up though. architectural masterpiece to marvel at. hile there certainly was some student filming done at SFU in Inspired by the Acropolis in Athens, architects Arthur Erickson and the years following 1972, there wasn’t another major HollyGeoffrey Massey gifted Vancouver with a look that did not previously wood production on campus until the late 1980s. exist anywhere nearby. It was big, futuristic and powerful. The public On December 17, 1985, SFU instituted a policy for ‘Visiting Film instantly fell in love with it, and so did the camera. Companies’ that states that “in support of B.C.’s film industry, [SFU] is The first people to set movies on top of the hill were undoubtedly prepared to permit the use of its facilities by film companies for prothe early ‘students’ at the SFU Film Workshop, a part of SFU’s Centre ductions which do not detract from the image of the University.” Aside for Communications and Arts — a non-credit fine arts program which from a revision in 1993, this policy remains intact to this day, along existed in SFU’s early days — but it was Hollywood that gave SFU its with the “charge of $2,500 per day for each day the film company is first big break in the early 1970s. on campus.” Although the first movie to make a deal with SFU was an adaptation While the policy also suggests that “the Vice-President, Finance & of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, which had an agreement in prinAdministration is responsible for protecting the interests of the Univerciple to shoot in 1971, the deal fell through and a less acclaimed sci-fi sity, negotiating agreements, and making appropriate arrangements,” film entitled The Groundstar Conspiracy took its place. this responsibility was delegated to the Facilities Service department, Nini Baird, the director of the Centre for Communications and Arts, which the VP oversees.

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FEATURE

HOLLYWOOD NORTH BURNABY

Although the reason for instituting this policy at that exact time is unclear, it seems to be due to both a sudden massive rise in filming in Vancouver in the mid-eighties and potentially the aftermath of some sort of unfortunate filming event at SFU. While the specifics aren’t clear, in a 2015 interview with The Peak, SFU Facilities Services Supervisor of Client Services, John Briggs – the man who deals with all filming on campus today – mentioned that a reason SFU has the policy in place, is that there “have been pornography movies made [at SFU . . . that] weren’t intended to be, as far as we knew.”

plained. “[It’s always] used for films like that where it’s supposed to be an impersonal, industrial campus.” The second movie shot at SFU however was the one movie that broke the mould and played just a normal university, a place called Simon Fraser University. Almost 20 years after graduating, SFU Film Workshop alumna, Sandy Wilson, returned in 1988 to film scenes for a sequel to her hit movie My American Cousin — which won six Genie Awards for excellence in Canadian film — entitled American Boyfriends.

Wilson’s recollection is that Location manager, they were only on campus for Ann Goobie, confirmed a few days and had no problem always plays the evil this story, as a legend at securing SFU as a location. “[We least, telling The Tartan had] a lot of trouble with almost corporation that s what we that “some of [SFU’s paraevery other location,” Wilson rewere going for in he ly noia] about being seen in called. “We did some shooting at the wrong light is based the Waldorf, that was a nightmare. on some movie from the — John Penhall, Assistant Location Manager We did some shooting down in 70s that filmed up there. the United States and that was a They thought it was Buck triple nightmare! But the SFU part Rogers or something, and was kind of fun.” it was some porno film,” though she clarifies that she didn’t know Throughout the 90s, SFU became a fixture for filming in Vancouver, the specific truth behind the incident. especially for TV shows. The campus appeared in shows like Viper, Either way, in 1988, the film The Fly II chose SFU as one of their Sliders, Stargate SG-1 and the X-Files, and also briefly in the TV-movmajor locations and became the first production to deal with SFU’s ie I Still Dream of Jeannie and the family comedy film MVP: Most new official policy. Valuable Primate. As a new responsibility for Facilities Services, the job of handling For the most part, SFU and visiting film crews got along quite well. incoming film companies was given to a 25-year old building techAtamanchuk remembers fielding hundreds of requests throughout nologist in his second year with SFU named James Atamanchuk. The the 1990s, with around two or three shoots actually taking place responsibility ended up suiting him perfectly. every other month. However, at the turn of the century, one produc-

“SFU

[...]

“I wasn’t like anybody else in the office so they thought I was a perfect personality to throw [filming] at,” Atamanchuk explained. “It was just something that happened once and then that was it.” The experience of shooting The Fly II in 1988 was described as quite pleasant by the film’s assistant location manager, John Penhall, who remembered how great dealing with Atamanchuk was. “He was wonderful [and] he knew the buildings really well,” Penhall remembered. “He walked me around and showed me the stuff that was really cool about SFU.” Penhall said that SFU, through Atamanchuk, was very accommodating to the production despite having their natural concerns about not disrupting classes or causing damage. While Penhall said that he didn’t work on a film at SFU again, he loved the experience and recommended it to many directors during his 10 year career as a location manager. He did admit, however, that it does get a bit typecast. “SFU always plays the evil corporation. And it does have that kind of look [. . .] that’s what we were going for in The Fly II,” he ex-

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’ T F

II.”

tion caused SFU to rethink its role as a filming location.

fter a decade of almost exclusively filming television at SFU, at the end of 1999, SFU was turned into a major motion picture movie set when the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie The 6th Day requested the campus’ services for a major car chase scene. For those working on the movie, filming at SFU was a great situation. As Paul Lougheed, an assistant location manager for the film’s first unit, who were only up at SFU for about a night, said “We were up there with Arny [and] we had a helluva good time out there.” From SFU’s side however, it wasn’t all fantastic. The film was a much larger production than anticipated. While it was initially estimated that filming would take about 10 days on campus, the second unit ended up being at SFU for more than a month, completing setup and stunts for what ended up being a two minute scene in the movie. They also needed to make significant alterations to campus to make a car chase through the Academic Quadrangle and the mall possible. According to an SFU News article from February 10, 2000

Students Film Too! Founded in 1967, the SFU Film Workshop, a part of SFU’s Centre for Communications and Arts, is where SFU’s first filmmakers were born. As one of the first places to ever to use 16mm portable video as a medium, Stan Fox, who ran the workshop from 1969 to 1971, remembers it as a small and informal environment but also extremely progressive. “I interviewed them and saw if they had any level of seriousness,” Fox, a CBC producer at the time explained about the program’s requirements which taught about 12 people a semester. “Anyone who had the right attitude and energy, sure.”

Photo Courtesy of Stan Fox

entitled “Arny’s Army Invades Campus,” several “highly visible changes to the campus” were required. This included “the draining of the AQ pond so a new bridge could be built, the removal of several stairs leading to convocation mall so a more shallow set could be constructed, and the appearance of banks of lights and other equipment across campus,” all of which were completed by film crews over an extended period of time. The major problems occurred during The Sixth Day’s third and final visit to campus in January 2000 when the second-unit was filming stunts. The problems were accelerated due to a CUPE strike that caused Atamanchuk to be temporarily unable to act as SFU’s liaison for filming. “Somebody else took over […] management, and they’re not familiar with film companies. Unfortunately, it was very bad timing for everything,” Atamanchuk recalled. “It was too big for the campus and the amount of damage that had occurred to heritage architecture and stuff [was unfortunate].” The difficulties of housing such a major film were further brought to light by an incident that occurred on January 31, 2000 covered by The Peak, in which some fumes caused by the production found their way into the library and caused an early closure after some students reporting feeling ill. Although SFU was reimbursed for everything, it caused a lot of trouble for the university. “People got really pissed off. They went up to the VP. It actually went to the board of governors. So it was very bad,” Atamanchuk recalled. “So filming was ceased, for a short period thereafter.” Comments made by associate VP-administration Rick Johnson indicate that the university was not happy with the general condition of cleanliness of the production and it caused serious doubts about allowing filming in the future. “After this particular film, we’ll be assessing whether we’ll do anything of this nature again,” Johnson was quoted as saying at the time, and explained that “most films are restricted to localized areas on campus, and don’t have the broad impact that this one has had. Filming of this scope has presented many challenges in terms of our ability to coordinate it.” Despite the difficulties however, SFU was rewarded handsomely, receiving approximately $150,000 in site charges and recovery costs. From 1991 to 2000, the uni

One of those students was Sandy Wilson, a Genie-award winning filmmaker who said the workshop gave her an amazing foundation. “[Fox] would hand out the cameras and say go out and shoot something,” she recalled. “The footage had to go to Seattle to be processed [. . .] then we would edit the films, all kind of in our spare time.” According to Wilson, there was plenty of filming done on campus, and no one seemed to mind. “Everybody was kind of mad for film at that point [. . .] you know like when I said I wanted to do a film for sociology class they said ‘go right ahead.’” The Film Workshop ceased in 1976 and by 1983, when Rob Groenboer, now an associate professor with the SFU film program, first took a class, the film program had become full credit and had expanded to around 50 students with more formal regulations. “We had to fill out a questionnaire and then, I remember there were about 3 or 4 people and they’d ask you questions . . . it was intimidating,” Groenboer explained. Groenboer said that while film was still located in Burnaby at this time, the program only had very basic equipment, was housed in a small trailer, and rarely used the campus for filming. Now located at the downtown Woodwards campus since 2010, Groenboer says it is still rare for any students to want to film at any SFU campus and there isn’t interest in having them as observers of major productions visiting campus either. According to Groenboer, SFU’s film program is its own world entirely in it’s own tight-knit community. “The community feeds itself [. . .] right now, there’s a number productions going on where people who’ve graduated 10, 20, 30 years ago are working with people who’ve just graduated a couple of years ago,” Groenboer said. “It’s not the big high industry, I’m talking about the independent film community.”

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Hidden Gems While SFU is most requested by filmmakers for its more recognizable areas like the Academic Quadrangle and Convocation Mall, throughout the years films have found plenty of other gems around campus in which to set memorable scenes. Cameron Porteous, the production designer for The Groundstar Conspiracy, remembers finding all sorts of nooks and crannies at SFU. “There was a scene where they put the guy in hot water and strapped him in [. . .] that was done somewhere in the university basement in one of the furnace rooms or engineering rooms where there was lots of pipes and stuff,” Porteous recalled. “I also built [a] façade in a landfill just outside the university, at the [east end . . .] that’s where we had a big explosion one night where we blew out through the laboratory and had people flying through the air and stunts were done.” While Porteous said that a couple of scenes were done in a movie studio, he remembers SFU as a great source of locations, a sentiment shared by production designer David Brisbin, who did the same work for the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still more than 30 years later. “The reason that the SFU campus was so interesting to me for telling the story visually was that Arthur Erickson architecture speaks of strength and a sense of the future and a sense of order and a sense of social control,” Brisbin explained, saying SFU fit what he was trying to capture in the film perfectly. “When we started crawling around [SFU], it was just amazing how fruitful the campus was.” In his scouting, Brisbin recalled finding places that most people would’ve never thought to capture on screen. “Somewhere under the gym, [there was this] room with these enormous beams going across and it was just like some kind of wrestling department’s storage area with a bunch of mats and junk,” he recalled. “So we got the folks at SFU to clear it all out and did some repainting and reworked the floor and that’s where old Keanu gets the electrodes plugs into his head.” While Brisbin said that the amount of scenes shot at SFU were too numerous to remember them all, he said SFU was an absolute dream for a production designer. “There were places all over the place [. . .] there’s one [room or corridor] with [a] beautiful concrete honeycomb ceiling that we used for one of the recovery rooms,” he explained. “I knew it was a fruitful place, [but] I think it was only after I looked around when I realised how many incredible spots there would be there.”

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Photo Courtesy of Caryn Cameron, SFU Student Services (Copyright CGCameron2015)

-versity collected nearly half a million dollars with almost half of that — $225,000 — coming from 1999-2000 alone. And while a review of their filming practices was held afterwards, it didn’t stop being a site for major films. However, in The 6th Day aftermath, SFU gained a reputation of being a difficult place to film, a feeling that permeates to this day.

espite the massive hassle that The 6th Day caused for administration and students alike, the affair did not cause any significant changes in SFU’s filming policies. The pleasant, agreeable situation described by location managers before the year 2000 has since been replaced by a less straightforward or compromising system. While Atamanchuk said no major official changes were made, after 2000 there were more people involved in making filming happen. “I was more managed. There were more people watching,” he explained. Bruce Brownstein, who worked as the location manager on both Antitrust (2001) and Agent Cody Banks (2003) — the next two major shoots on campus — described the experience of securing the SFU locations for those films as “very difficult, expensive and time-consuming compared to filming at UBC for example.” Brownstein believed that following the problems with The 6th Day, filming at SFU began to be “always very difficult and extremely bureaucratic,” and even recalled having to go up and beg to allow Antitrust to film on campus. “The Location License Agreement was another thing that went back and forth forever,” Brownstein explained, recalling his first experience with the university. “Once one production jumped through the myriad of hoops, it confirmed that [SFU] felt they were on the right track to protect the campus and weed out frivolous productions.” Ann Goobie, the location manager for the 2008 film The Day the Earth Stood Still, who did extensive filming at SFU, had similar feelings about doing work at the university, and said that it is the location license agreement that is the major problem. “It’s not the easiest place to film sometimes,” Goobie, who graduated with a degree in Communications from SFU in 1989, explained. “[There is] this clause that

HOLLYWOOD NORTH BURNABY

they have in the contract […] it gives [SFU] the right to enjoin the movie — to stop the movie from being distributed — if there is something in the movie that they feel is showing the university in a bad light.” According to Goobie, this ‘enjoinment’ clause has caused problems for almost every production that comes up to film at SFU, and it often causes larger movies to move their filming elsewhere. “They can’t put their product in jeopardy because of one entity.” This situation occurred most recently — to the knowledge of the public — with the Seth Rogen movie The Interview, which wanted SFU to pose as North Korea for some scenes in the summer of 2013. After a long dispute of trying to make changes to the agreement, and having SFU refuse, they begrudgingly chose not to film on campus. In an article published in The Peak in February 2015 concerning The Interview situation, the SFU representative John Briggs claimed that it is SFU policy to not change the agreement, and that he made that very clear to Rogen’s team from the beginning. He also said that he couldn’t even remember the “minor, insignificant things” that they requested be changed. According to Goobie, however, the problems with the location agreement are not minor, and while SFU is reluctant, they have made amendments to it before.

FEATURE

“I’ve gotten that changed in the past, with quite a fight going on to get it done mainly with the guys on the Burnaby Campus rather than the guys downtown,” Goobie recalled. “I had the film commission and a VP from the downtown campus help me. And, I don’t know who he called, but they basically said, ‘you make this change’ and we paid to make the amendment and we got the change.” Goobie says that she has often received phone calls from other location managers requesting the amendment she received, and that the location manager of The Interview even suggested that their production was facing the exact same problem that hers had more than five years prior. She claims that SFU should be well aware of the problems with the agreement by now. “The film commission has been through it. They’ve gone up there a gazillion times to sit and talk with them about this stuff,” Goobie explained. “It’s just really gotten nowhere and there’s no rhyme or reason why, quite frankly. You know it’s easily resolved with different language in a contract.” In his interview in The Peak in February, Briggs took the complete opposite stance however, stating that very few productions had any problem with the agreement and that the occasional large production that did have a problem wanted no more than to “change the sentence or the wording of a sentence sometimes, just to suit themselves.”

“Once

one production jumped

through the myriad of hoops it confirmed that

[SFU]

was

on the right track to protect the campus.”

— Bruce Brownstein, Location Manager

Photo Courtesy of Caryn Cameron, SFU Student Services (Copyright CGCameron2015)

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Checkin’ Out Caprica Launched in 2010, Battlestarlocations.com is a website that combines a love of travel wih a nerdy obsession for the locations in which the TV series Battlestar Galactica (2003-2009) were filmed. As one half of the team who have tracked down and visited everywhere the hit sci-fi show filmed in BC, Monique Benedetti says SFU was one of her absolute favourite visits. “The nice thing about SFU is that you see it at the beginning and then you see it again at the end, so it kind of bookends the whole series,” Benedetti explained. “At the very end [of the episode] ‘Daybreak’ you have Laura Roslin walk out into the Koi Pond and sit on the rock in the academic quadrangle there and I remember thinking, oh I have to go and do that!” Benedetti and her web-partner Anne visited SFU twice over the time they spent on the BSG location project and during their second visit ran into another production filming on campus. “As soon as we started approaching the Academic Quadrangle, [we] saw they’d done a wet down of the whole area and [thought] ‘oh something’s going on,’” Benedetti recalled. “There was a whole fake elevator with something like Antigen on the top of it. And we saw the lead actress from Underworld with her skinny leather outfit on gallivanting about the area.” While their BSG project is now done, Benedetti says that she now notices SFU often in its other TV appearances and looks back with warm memories of travelling up the hill to what is in the Battlestar universe, the planet Caprica.

Paid Programming

Photo Courtesy of Ken Sponagle

While Briggs’ opinion seems reasonable, it runs into problems when you consider that what he describes as a waste of time is exactly the procedure at UBC, the school that SFU initially modeled their procedure and rates after. There is no standard contract at UBC, which allows minor changes to be made when it seems reasonable to do so.

he large disconnect between BC’s two biggest schools has major implications for SFU’s confrontational reputation in the film community. Many complaints from location managers aren’t necessarily focused on how SFU is difficult, but how easy UBC is to deal with in comparison. At UBC, filming is being done constantly with an average of over 40 productions shooting on campus per year over the last seven years. While they charge the same daily rate as SFU, UBC has invested more into making it a regular activity, perhaps seeing it as a good source of revenue. Greg Jackson, whose only experience at SFU was back in 1991 as an Assistant Location Manager for the TV movie I Still Dream of Jeannie, but who has been part of the film community for over three decades, explained that for one reason or another UBC has made it their business to be a filming location and SFU hasn’t. “[UBC] is extremely film friendly and has a very smooth process for scouting and choosing locations,” Jackson explained, saying that unlike SFU, UBC has a dedicated person who deals only with filming. “SFU, up on the hill, for whatever their internal reasons are, they don’t look at it that way.” According to Goobie, having that one person dedicated to filming at UBC makes it run smoother than at SFU, where a representative from Facilities Services — who has a lot of other responsibilities — is in charge. She explained that this allows UBC to read every script they get and properly protect themselves against any damage to their reputation.

Besides TV shows and movies, SFU also has been a filming location for a number of commercial advertisements. Over the past five years, Visa, Honda and Lexus have all shot spots up at the Burnaby Mountain campus and just this past December, “the A&W guy” caused quite a stir on campus when their crews showed up to convocation mall with some juicy hormone-free burgers.

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“SFU is not interested in reading the script. They want you to provide just a little synopsis,” she explained. “It’s an easy thing to change in their contract that would still cover them off for inflammatory stuff, and fair enough, but anyway, it’s not a priority.” It frustrates me because you know I’m an alumnus, but that’s their process.”

HOLLYWOOD NORTH BURNABY

Once again however, while Atamanchuk only commented on the way things were between 1987 and 2007, he said that while UBC and SFU are both universities in BC, they share nothing else in common when it comes to being a filming location.

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Saywell Hall, and the Surrey and Downtown campuses have begun to accommodate a number of productions every year, with location managers seemingly universally positive about their experiences there. Already this year, according to Facilities Services, as of November, the university has received $4,103 for filming in 2015-16 and in the last two years pulled in $11,738 and $30,972 respectively. While it is not the whopping $220,000 they got in 1999-2000, or the $327,036 they earned in 2010-11 when Underworld Awakening was filmed, it does meet the $20,000 average they were earning for the nine years prior to that.

“We are completely different campuses, completely different everything. The Burnaby campus is quite compact overall whereas UBC is quite spread out,” Atamanchuk explained. “[At UBC] they could be filming in one corner and nobody would ever know. They’re independent buildings, they’re all separate. SFU’s quite connected.”

espite the complaints from location managers about some of the difficulties they’ve had with SFU, they all admit there are still some positive aspects about shooting at SFU and do appreciate what the university has been able to do for them, to an extent.

The situation could be better, however. According to Facility Services statistics, although SFU does not keep a log of how many requests for filming they receive per year, they estimate about 20 to 25 per year and accommodate one or two. With a set fee of $2,500 a day, a deposit of $5,000, and a number of other charges, SFU could be making plenty more for their general revenue if they accepted more offers and had the frequency of filming that UBC does, which allows on average 50 productions to film each year.

“It all worked [and] once we got in there for The Day the Earth Stood Still it was really quite good,” Ann Goobie said, explaining that she just wished the process could be a bit smoother. David Brisbin, who worked as the production designer for The Day the Earth Stood Still, was especially appreciative to have gotten the chance to showcase SFU.

At the very least, a dedicated SFU filming person or department could make filming revenue consistent instead of changing drastically from year to year, as was the case between 2010-11 and 2011-12 where filming revenues went from over $300K to a total of $424 respectively.

“I’m incredibly grateful when people who have [interesting spaces and extraordinary architecture] are willing to try and bend and twist a little to allow those of us who make films to make use of it, because it’s a way of allowing that architecture to resonate through media culture,” he explained, mentioning that he had also met Arthur Erickson before he passed away and was honoured to show SFU to the world. “I think it’s great for his good work to be propagated a little bit further, even beyond what’s propagated among the students who use it.”

While SFU, rightly, puts education first and sees their role as a film location as a favour to the film industry more than anything, having a single dedicated person in charge of filming at SFU and a little more flexibility to amend their Location Licence Agreement could go a long way in repairing their relationship with location managers and film studios, and earn some money for the school.

Although SFU’s relationship with filming is definitely not simple, despite the tension on both sides, ‘SFU: the film location’ is by no means dead. Just last year, the TV series iZombie filmed in the hallway of

Hollywood may always cast SFU as the villain — the ominous, scary building on a hill — but it doesn’t need to be that way off camera too.

“I’m

incredibly grateful when

people who have [extraordinary

architecture] are willing to try to bend and twist a little to allow [us to] make films.”

— David Brisbin, Production Designer

Photo Courtesy of Caryn Cameron, SFU Student Services (Copyright GWe2012)

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SFU FILMING TIMELINE 1972

1989

The Groundstar Conspiracy

AMERICAN

The X-Files

BOYFRIENDS

The Academic Quadrangle was intended to be Washington Park/Plaza in the tenth episode of the show’s first season “Fallen Angel”, in a scene where Deep Throat tells Section Chief McGrath of his decision to veto Mulder’s dismissal from the FBI.

This dystopian sci-fi thriller starring George Peppard, Michael Sarrazin, and Christine Belford shot almost exclusively at SFU in the summer of 1971 after Brave New World cancelled.

Sandy Wilson’s semi-autobiographical sequel to her breakout hit My American Cousin dressed up SFU to look like it was still under-construction, as the movie was meant to depict the school as it first opened in 1965.

1971 Brave New World A movie based on Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World made plans to film at SFU before deciding otherwise. According to The Peak they intended to use a lot of campus including the Mall for “crowd scenes”, the playing field “as a helicopter landing pad” and the pool for “a water polo sequence.”

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1993

1991 1989 The Fly ii The sequel to the remake of The Fly filmed some scenes at SFU, including the opening shot of a helicopter touching down in Convocation Mall.

I Still Dream of Jeannie Vancouver filled in for Houston, Texas and SFU plays the headquarters of NASA in a TV-movie reunion of “I Dream of Jeannie” which featured Barbara Eden reprising her classic role at 60-years old.

1999 Stargate SG-1 Goa’ulds were added in post-production to turn Convocation Mall into the planet Tollana for the first time in the Season three episode “Pretense”. SFU reprised its role in the fifth season episode “Between Two Fires” in 2001.

2000

2012

The 6th Day

Underworld: Awakening

SFU is introduced to the world as the Hopkins/Leung Conference & Research Centre when The 6th Day was released world-wide. The car chase scene that was filmed on campus for over a month lasted roughly 40 seconds on screen.

SFU made a suitably creepy location for the Underworld series’ fourth installment. The movie began shooting on campus in March 2011 and was SFU’s first 3D appearance.

2014 iZombie

2005

This CW show loosely based on the DC comic of the same name, turned Saywell Hall into a hospital, presumably to heal victims of Zombie attacks.

Battlestar Galactica The two-part season one finale of Battlestar Galactica, “Kobol’s Last Gleaming,” introduced SFU to yet another sci-fi television show audience. The campus returns in the season two episode “Epiphanies” and finally in the two-part season four finale “Daybreak.”

2003

2013

Agent Cody Banks

The Interview

SFU’s Transportation Centre was hardly recognizable in this Frankie Muniz action-comedy which spent approximately 50 days setting up to turn it into the interior of a CIA conference room among other scenes.

The producers of this controversial Seth Rogen movie contacted SFU with regards to filming on campus. After a long dispute over the Location License agreement, Rogen and co. choose to recreate North Korea elsewhere.

2001

2008

Antitrust

The Day the Earth Stood Still

This high-tech conspiracy thriller starring Ryan Phillipe created a confusing mash-up of location choices for the headquarters of the fictional NURV corporation. While it is supposedly located in Portland, Oregon, the exterior shots are of SFU and most of the interior is UBC.

SFU once again was transformed into some sort of secret compound thing when it became the Fort Linwood Military Academy in New Jersey in this alien invasion flick.

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THE bEST AND WOrST MOVIE By Jonathan Pabico

THE bEST The Fly 2

The film tells the story of Martin Brundle, a young man whose life changes when he mutates into a human-fly hybrid, a condition inherited from his father. The Burnaby campus shined as the ruthless Bartok Industries. The Convocation Mall, Freedom Square, and the inside of the AQ — specifically the corridor where IMAGES Theatre now resides — make up the cold, corporate facility where the young Brundle is treated like a lab rat. Out of the movies filmed at SFU, this is my favourite because of its practical effects, rather than relying on CGI to get things done.

H onora bl e M entions:

Pe rs on al Ef fe ct s An ti tr us t

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Underworld: Awakening

Kate Beckinsale, appearing as Selene, the good girl vampire, is awoken after a 12 year cryogenic sleep in Antigen’s (evil corporation alert!) laboratory — played by Burnaby Campus. Yes, once again, SFU plays an evil corporate science lab, with the Bennett Library portraying Antigen’s exterior. Unlike previous instalments, where Selene had only vampires and werewolves to deal with, now humans have evolved to bad guy status, and she has to kill them too. Other locations at Burnaby Campus that are featured include the Convocation Mall and Freedom Square, which give performances as a courtyard and security guard post for the main entrance into Antigen. Even the side of the AQ that faces Freedom Square and the Convocation Mall are featured as the outside of an elevator shaft that leads into Antigen’s main building. Watch this film for a gritty performance by SFU Burnaby and to watch Beckinsale kick both supernatural and natural butt.

The Day the Earth Stood Still

An alien traveller named Klaatu, played by Keanu Reeves, arrives on Earth to start a phenomenon that will ultimately destroy all of humanity, unless Dr. Helen Benson, a scientist, can convince him otherwise. In the remake of the 1951 sci-fi classic, Klaatu is yearning to understand what humanity is — while trying to destroy it to save the earth. The relationship between Benson and her stepson is quite touching, and Klaatu learns a bit of humanity (spoiler alert: humanity survives). Despite the convincing performance by Reeves as a largely emotionless alien, the best actor on screen is probably SFU — the Burnaby Campus makes an appearance as a military base. From what we’ve listed, it’s a deviation of sorts for the campus, instead of playing a cold, heartless evil corporation, it’s a cold heartless government base. Featured in the film are the Transportation Centre, Terry Fox Field, and Convocation Mall.

ES EVEr FIlMED ON CAMPUS THE WORST Agent Cody Banks

Cody Banks may appear to be an average school student, but he is really an operative for the CIA who is tasked with preventing the villainous plot of an evil and ambitious mastermind from taking shape. Unfortunately, he also appears in a below average movie filled with clichés and a cheesy villain, that can’t be saved by a solid comedic performance by Frankie Muniz as Banks. The one saving grace is, you guessed it, SFU. The transportation centre on Burnaby campus is featured as the CIA “War Room”, while the AQ Pond is featured as the exterior for the CIA headquarters — where we catch a glimpse of Bennett Library and Convocation Mall. Also there’s presumable CIA agents riding hover scooters over the pond, so that was kind of cool.

MVP: Most Valuable Primate

Jack is a smart and humorous chimpanzee that has lived in the confines of some university. When he finds out that he’s going to be sold to another university as a research subject, he flees and arrives in Nelson, BC, where he meets two siblings, named Steven and Tara. Surprisingly enough, Jack has impressive skill in hockey and is soon trained by Steven’s hockey team to become the first chimpanzee hockey player. I found the film’s humour weak and characters underdeveloped. Although the film was not to my liking, SFU once again cheered me up a bit. Though the “some university” mentioned wants us to believe it’s some generic American university — even using an establishing shot of a different school — the interior is clearly SFU. Jack and his janitor friend (a friendship I didn’t buy) wash the floors of the AQ hallway in rollerblades, while the bad guys scheme in the AQ stairwell. Also Jack lives on the SFU Theatre stage — I guess he has a knack for the theatre.

The 6 TH Day

When Adam Gibson (Arnold Schwarzenegger) realizes that he has been cloned without his knowledge, he is suddenly being pursued by the very company that caused this ordeal. Gibson must now find out how he got cloned in order to get to the truth. The film, like many Schwarzenegger vehicles, lacks character development, and has bad guys who seem only to exist to die by Schwarzenegger’s hands — and be conveniently cloned. Also the CGI sucked. But in what seems to be a recurring theme in these worst movies (and best), the one reason to watch is SFU — and it just might be worth it. In a brief scene, Schwarzenegger drives his car over the steps outside the AQ and through Convocation Mall. BONUS: Not SFU related, but look close at the end as the coliseum-like Vancouver Public Library is blown up, as it plays the bad guy’s headquarters.

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Oh, Maggie A look at the life of Maggie Benston: an activist, scholar, feminist, teacher, and friend

Written

Tessa Perkins Photo Courtesy of SFU Archives.

“I

think of her often still,” says local author Helen Potrebenko as she thumbs through her 1998 book, Letters to Maggie, an ode to her dear friend, sitting in the cafeteria of the building named after her friend — the Maggie Benston Centre. She describes the book, which was published seven years after Benston's death, as a collection of stories that Maggie would have enjoyed. “I still talk to her sometimes; tell her things she would have liked to hear.”

argaret Lowe Benston was born in 1937 along with her identical twin sister Marian Lowe in a small town south of Seattle. With a PhD in theoretical chemistry from the University of Washington she was hired in 1966 to teach chemistry at SFU. " She gradually shifted to teaching both chemistry and computing science, and in 1975 she helped to found the Department of Women's Studies.

ment and of the Women's Studies faculty at Boston University. Despite the distance between them, the twins remained close and took advantage of sabbaticals to visit each other. “I miss her all the time,” said Marian Lowe. “People used to ask us ‘what's it like to be a twin?,’ but you know your own reality, and that was ours. For the past twenty-odd years I've felt like part of me is missing.”

otrebenko, who remembers Maggie as an activist, scholar, feminist, teacher, and most importantly as a close friend, met Benston somewhat accidentally. Potrebenko was a mature student taking a course at SFU in the late '60s which was taught by Benston's partner. Potrebenko phoned him, but got Benston instead.

Every time I drive past the Maggie Benston Centre, I imagine her laughing hysterically at having a building named after her.” — Ellen Balka

Along with fellow professor Andrea Lebowitz, Benston presented her plan to the SFU senate who were skeptical of a program in women's studies. One even said that allowing women to have a women's studies program was “tantamount to allowing prisoners to create a prison education program,” wrote Diane Luckow in a 2006 issue of SFU News.

Luckily, Pauline Jewett, SFU's recently appointed president, was on their side and the vote passed. In January 1976, the first women's studies course ran with 40 students. Now the department offers a number of programs including a masters and PhD. In 2009, the senate approved a name change to the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies. After founding the department, Benston's academic appointment evolved to be a joint appointment in both women's studies and computing science. “Maggie loved to say that she was then in two fields for which she had no credentials,” remembered Marian Lowe on the phone from Seattle. Benston's influential and pioneering research was at the intersection of how technology affected women and work. She spent almost 24 years as an assistant professor at SFU, and was promoted to associate professor shortly before her death in 1991. Lowe shared a similar academic path as her sister and was for many years a member of the Chemistry Depart-

The two talked for quite a while and realized they had much in common. Thus began their long friendship and artistic collaboration through Benston's musical group the Euphoniously Feminist and Non-Performing Quintet. The quintet was a performing group that would sing at rallies, protests, and on picket lines to support the activists. When Benston became a Canadian citizen, Potrebenko was one of her sponsors, and she recalled the multitude of questions that the RCMP asked Benston to make sure she wasn't an extremist or a threat. Her reputation as an activist was well-known, and they had records of all her speeches and involvement in protests, recalled Potrebenko. For a time, Potrebenko and Benston both lived in a large house with many suites, and Potrebenko remembers her coming home with a guitar one day. “To my amazement she said, ‘I'm going to learn to play the guitar.’” Benston was never shy of a challenge, and took on new endeavours with a passion. She was the type of person who never said no to an opportunity or new experience.

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As one of her PhD students Ellen Balka reflected, “She was generous with her intellect and spirit.” As Potrebenko said, “She was a happy person, and satisfied – she liked stories and singing, and she was always doing 10 things at once and running late.” Potrebenko also reflected on Benston's contribution to the Women's Caucus that began at SFU, saying that Benston advocated for equal pay, childcare, labour rights, and various causes to improve the equality and the status of women. Although there has been some progress, and women's rights have improved, Potrebenko feels that women are now worse off than they were when Benston was alive. She cited the unacceptable levels of violence against women and the as yet unequal level of pay and positions of power granted to women. Marian Lowe agreed, saying that there has been progress, but in some ways things have slipped backward. She thinks there is a general complacency now and a sense that feminism is no longer relevant or necessary. “Women get to go to war now, but I'm not sure that's progress,” she continued. “Hilary Clinton's campaign has some sexism underlying it, but it's not acknowledged. I think it's seen as politically incorrect to be racist, but people still get away with saying sexist things.”

nlike many professors who focus primarily on their research, Benston felt that a university was for the students and that it should be involved in its community. It is very fitting that the student centre was named after her in 1996, but Balka finds it sad that Benston wasn't able to have that recognition during her life.

Photo Courtesy of Helen Potrebenko

Working Girl Blues Maggie and her singing group, The Euphoniously Feminist and Non-Performing Quintet, would hand out song sheets at picket lines and would belt out songs like "Working Girl Blues" in support of the striking workers. Here are the opening two verses: "Hey I got the early Monday morning working blues I put on my worn out working shoes Well the weekend was too short but I can choose When the lord made the working girl, he made the blues Well I'm tired of working my life way And givin someone else all of my pay While they get rich on the profits that I lose And leaving me here with the working girl blues"

“Every single time I drive past the Maggie Benston Centre, I imagine her laughing hysterically at having a building named after her,” laughed Balka. Benston's sister thinks Maggie would have loved having her name on the building and loved that her two favourite places on campus – the pub and the bookstore – were there. She also mentioned that Benston would have found it funny that, as a Marxist socialist, her building was directly across from the W.A.C. Bennett library, named after a conservative premier. Balka, who was near completion of her doctorate when Benston passed away, met her at a conference in Toronto when she was studying in another graduate program. Benston suggested that Balka apply to the new Women's Studies program at SFU, and even invited her to come to Vancouver for a visit. “She offered to have me stay overnight at her house,” remembered Balka. “But I was too shy.” After that initial visit, Balka was convinced and transferred to SFU. She would carpool up the hill with Benston and go for hikes with her on the weekend. She was much more than a professor to Balka, who described the way Benston would arrange dinners at her house to introduce Balka to influential figures such as Ursula Franklin, a physicist from the University of Toronto who wrote about the political and social effects of technology. “She was an absolutely delightful person,” remembered Balka. When Benston came out of remission and her cancer made her too ill to teach, Balka was asked to take over her teaching load. “That was one

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OH, MAGGIE

FEATURE

of the most difficult things,” she said, due to the emotional impact and the pressure of taking on her courses

very positive person, and Shreve said that through all of her cancer treatment, she handled it with dignity and never let her positivity fade.

uch of Benston's research studied the connection between socialism, feminism, and technology. Her first political paper, “The Political Economy of Women's Liberation,” published in 1969, was extremely influential and was read around the world.

Shreve wrote “Snow Sestina” for Benston shortly before she died, and explained that the poem is about the intersection of art and science that she felt Benston embodied: “The beauty of geometry in snow / is like a poem and the grin on your face / when I said I loved the math in words.”

Marian Lowe remembered traveling to Chile with her sister in 1973 and meeting feminists there who had heard of Benston and her article. They also learned that there were groups of feminists in various parts of the world calling themselves “Benstonistas.” It was clear that her work was having an impact, and her name was recognizable among feminists and those working for social change. Through all of this, Benston remained steadfastly against the idea of being a leader, and always worked to empower others, work collectively, and never do anything simply for recognition. As Marian Lowe wrote in an article in the journal Canadian Women's Studies, “Maggie believed strongly that an egalitarian, feminist, materially sustainable society was not possible without changing science and the way technology was developed and used.” Along with her scientific research, Benston was involved in many other endeavours. She was a social activist, a feminist, an author, a teacher, and a musician. On top of that she was a skilled horsewoman and she knew how to sail. She was also an ardent supporter and volunteer at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival. Sandy Shreve, a poet now living on Pender Island, was the Departmental Assistant in women's studies while Benston was at SFU. She remembers Benston as “one of those people who made everyone feel comfortable.” Shreve admired Benston's insight, relationship with the students, and ability to be involved in so many initiatives at once. She was a

Shreve wasn't the only poet to honour Benston through their work. Potrebenko wrote “A Song for Maggie,” an emotional ode to her close friend which was set to music by Phil Vernon and performed at her memorial service. Benston had a very close group of friends, and as they each took shifts at her bedside, they referred to themselves as Maggie Companions. “MCing” they called it, recalled Potrebenko. Benston's goal through all of her many projects and associations was to change the world. “It was all connected with her view of the world,” said Marian Lowe. “Maggie always said ‘you need to understand the world in order to change it.’” And that's exactly what she was doing through her research, activism, and teaching. “She was suffused with the idea that things were wrong and could be fixed,” said Potrebenko. Benston was full of hope and she had a vision; she felt that rebellion was essential. “You never really win,” Potrebenko reflected. “But the struggle and the fight makes you and society better.” Marian Lowe and Potrebenko both feel that times have changed and although Benston would have been continuing with her activism, it seems increasingly difficult to affect real change. “Things get harder and harder to find what to do in order to change things,” said Marian Lowe. “I think about Maggie when I think about what to do to change the world.”

think about Maggie when I think about what to do to change the world.” — Marian Lowe

Photo Courtesy of Helen Potrebenko

SFU’s Box in the Attic The Library’s Special Collections and the University’s Archives Repository hold keys to a past that most students will never take the time to unlock.

Written

Albert Kho

FU stands steadfast at the literal peak of a mountain, blessed with rain, wind, and occasional snowstorm. Despite having only just celebrated its 50th anniversary this academic year, it has grown well beyond its expected capacity, went through immense growing pains during its founding years, and has stood as a rebellious, radical campus with the only NCAA varsity sports system in all of Canada. It has also produced great minds and great research, and will undoubtedly continue to do so.

All of this is supported by a widely unseen system of document processing and handling. As big as SFU is as an organisation, with both academic and administrative offices, the documents produced by SFU can be a staggering amount. We, as students, never stop to consider how our administrative needs are met, but in order for the show to go on, someone must work tirelessly in the background. Much of this is done at two very necessary offices of SFU — Special Collections and the Archives — two important centres for document processing, handling, and storage at SFU. They work to ensure that SFU's special research needs and history are carefully recorded and maintained. Special Collections is up on the seventh floor of the W.A.C. Bennett Library, and despite the high volume of students moving in and out of the library, Special Collections has not received its fair share of attention. For most students, the library ceases to exist after the sixth floor, and even the sixth floor is used primarily for silent study spaces and some good sofa space to finish that paper due last week.

pecial Collections, officially called Special Collections and Rare Books, works under the mandate of the Library to collect, safely store, and make accessible special and unique collections, ranging from posters, books, manuscripts, and photographs. The main difference between Special Collections and the rest of the library's collections is that their collections do not circulate, meaning that they can only be viewed inside Special Collections and cannot be borrowed. Special Collections staff ensure that these collections are well maintained, catalogued, arranged, and stored for easy access. Despite being named “Special Collections”, access to Special Collections and its literal vault of collections is permitted to students, faculty, and the general population — nearly everyone — with a few exceptions due to privacy or preservation concerns. It also houses a great view, with the entire city sprawled out before your eyes and the North Shore Mountains and the slopes of Mount Seymour on the other side of the seventh floor. The overarching idea of the collections available in Special Collections is that they are either published material, such as books and posters, or they are unique records pertaining to a subject studied by SFU researchers. It contains both primary and secondary sources, allowing researchers to both see original pieces and secondary analysis or debates surrounding topics.

The process of acquiring and maintaining its collections is not a simple task, a task the acting head archivist Melanie Hardbattle and division staff tackle every day. The process can start in many different ways, ranging from a Library staff member identifying a suitable item or collection, a third-party approaching Special Collections pecial with a donation, or an SFU faculty member expressing a need for a specific item.

Despite being named “S Collections”, access is

Any acquisitions must be considered with relation to the current collection policy. They permitted to nearly everyone must ensure that both a standard of quality is met for all collections considered, and that the acquisition would play an obvious role for the SFU community. For many students, even less attention is given to the Archives, which is housed on the bottom floor of the Maggie While Special Collections has a small budget to purchase Benston Centre at the end of a long and winding hallway. pieces worthy of collection and that align with current colWhile the Archives is sometimes used by students as a relection policies, many pieces have arrived through generous search source for assignments, they've only recently been in donations. These donations are not just dusty old boxes being the spotlight with the TSSU strike action, when grades were dropped in front of the Library's doors, but require a series withheld and stored in the Archives. Their role as the official of meetings and considerations made for the role of Special repository of the university's records, however, is largely unCollections, the cost of maintaining the new collection, and seen, but is one of the most important administrative duties the space needed for it. If those conditions are met, then a needed for SFU to operate smoothly. formal donation agreement can be signed.

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A Closer Look Many collections have a theme of “BC/Western Canadian History,” and include many primary source materials. Some examples being the Doukhobor collection, containing photographs, documents, and newspaper articles regarding the settlement of the Russian minority group in British Columbia, and the collections on BC private presses like the Pie Tree Press. Western Canadian Social History is a theme of many collections, as they capture an active time in Canada’s labour and social protest history. Collections include the Canadian Farmworkers Union collection of pamphlets, newspaper articles, committee minutes, and photographs of their struggle for unionization and improved government support for farmers; the photographic archives of the Pacific Tribune, a labour newspaper very active during the latter portion of the 20th century; and collections of material relating to the Social Credit and New Democratic Parties in British Columbia. The Contemporary Literature collection consists of over 18,000 books, recordings, manuscript collections, and various other publications. Both published and unpublished material is collected, along with various works, anthologies, translations, correspondences, and experimental works. It focuses on, “expressing a basic and implicit faith in the quality, the integrity, and the significance of post-war experimental and avant-garde poetry,” according to their website. The Wordsworth Collection surrounds the works and analysis of the English poet William Wordsworth and his contemporaries, and includes two books from Wordsworth’s actual library. It is complemented by an extensive collection of history and guide books relating to the Lake District, and is one of the crowning jewels of Special Collections. The library has a large collection of manuscripts and ephemera. SFU’s collection includes the recently acquired medieval manuscript dating from 1269, the Esther and Robin Mathews posters and handbill collection of the 1968 protests in Paris, and World War I/ World War II propaganda posters.

Primary Sources Archives focuses on primary sources. Primary sources consist of letters, journals, original documents, photographs, and videos presenting an event or person. They can be a researcher’s private journals, an organization’s articles of incorporation, or a family photograph. Primary sources allow researchers to analyze an original source of information and formulate their own views, opinions, and analysis. They preserve the “voice” of those involved in the event or activity studied, and bring researchers as close to the past as possible.

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Once an agreement has been met, and financial considerations have been settled, the next step would be the accession of the new collection, which would see the collection be given a unique number as an identifier along with an overall description. After accession, a catalogue entry would be produced for the new collections. Like any Library collection, Special Collections ensures that a sense of order is maintained for its collections to ensure that similar items are grouped, and users can quickly look for desired collections. An archivist or Library staff member would examine the pieces to both write the entry and ensure that it is ready for use. The material is also rehoused, if necessary, to provide optimal storage conditions for preservation. In some cases a conservator would be consulted, and necessary steps would be taken to safeguard the collection, or to recommend restrictions to protect its fragile state. For example, Special Collections possesses an extremely rare page, or leaf, of the Gutenberg Bible. The Gutenberg Bible was the first bible to be printed with the movable type, the little wooden blocks with letters that can be rearranged — the start of the mass-production and popularization of books in Europe. It is sealed in a Mylar cover with the entry included with the binding to allow for observation while ensuring that the integrity of the very valuable piece is preserved. This process of acquisition, accession, and cataloguing can go without problems for many rounds, but as collections get larger and needs get specific, it may be necessary to split collections into numerous smaller but specific collections, all requiring new or modified entries and tags. For the foreseeable future, Special Collections will continue to expand their current collections. Many of their collections have been digitized and are available via the Library's Digital Collections page. One challenge they will face is the inevitable change to records in digital format, where entire documents may be published exclusively in bytes, and how to change the procedures in Special Collections to preserve these types of records.

fficially named Archives and Records Management, the SFU Archives hold SFU theses, financial documents, reels of film and VHS tapes, Peak newspaper publications, and many university-related documents.

SFU’S BOX IN THE ATTIC

Like Special Collections holdings, the collections do not circulate and cannot be borrowed. According to its website, the SFU Archives “[supports] teaching, research, and university administration by acquiring, protecting and enabling access to university and private records of historical value. Archivists at SFU spend their time filtering the regular inflow of documents and records for their potential value to the SFU community. Even though deposits by University offices are voluntary, and the fact that offices retain some of their records for continued business purposes, the department receives piles and piles of documents and a constant stream of requests for access and information. They ensure that important documents are kept, while unnecessary ones are disposed of confidentially, and that collections are updated and expanded to fit the needs of the SFU community. Generally, the Archives will accept three classes of material — those created at SFU, material created by the SFU community (representing organisations like the Student Society, the TSSU, and other registered clubs), and those related to current SFU research exploits. Special Collections has a more liberal mandate of acquisitions that allow them to collect around subjects without a direct SFU relationship. The Archives has a strong focus on SFU members, SFU history, and SFU research exploits, with a focus on primary sources. Special Collections and the Archives may seem to have different, sometimes opposing roles, but during the early years of SFU, the Archives worked under the umbrella of the Library, and librarians carried out archival duties. It was not until 1978 that the Archives was administratively separated from the Library, and not until the 1990s when the Archives settled into the new Maggie Benston Centre.

ll deposits — whether it is a donation from a third party, or a record transferred from administrative offices — must first be examined to determine if they are fit to be handled by the Archives. Some documents may be more suitable for Special Collections, while others simply may not fit with SFU Archives' acquisition mandate.

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Records Retention Schedules and Disposal Authorities (RRSDAs) guide archivists to determine which university records should be archived, and which should be confidentially destroyed. Some records can be retained for short periods of time, until they are disposed of at the end of their useful life cycle. Records deemed suitable for archiving are assessed in a separate process for classification in the holdings. New archival holdings can enter the system in two ways. The first method would be under the Records Management Program, and this path is taken by documents produced within the “walls” of SFU — administrative offices, department offices, and individual faculty members. Common records transferred to Archives from an SFU department include a semester's set of course outlines, which serve to represent a department's cycle of classes — a keepsake of that time. The second method would be through private third-party donors. The main point of consideration with private entries would be if it is applicable under the acquisition mandate — a good example would be donations from a faculty member's family, perhaps pertaining to research conducted at SFU. If the conditions have been met, then a donation agreement can be discussed and signed between the Archives and the third-party, finalizing the donation. The discussion between the two is a very important step in the acquisition, as it will ensure that both parties understand the origins, future plans, and any privacy concerns for the donated material. After accepting a new set of records, archivists can either create a new collection or fonds, or in the case of accruals — collections that already exist — add the new records to one that already exists. Regardless of how entries arrived in the system, archivists must ensure university records that are no longer needed are confidentially shredded according to retention schedules and disposal authorities. This ensures that documents are examined on a systematic basis, and that only the necessary documents are held. Usually certain classes of documents, such as financial documents, can be disposed of based on a “lifecycle” — they are automatically disposed of at the end of a predetermined time period. Maintaining the balance between functional public access and privacy laws is a crucial overarching idea to Archival holdings, so much so that a Freedom of Information Privacy Officer is responsible for managing the balance and to accommodate applications for access to certain collections. Because of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act in BC, many of the holdings in both the Archives and Special Collections are partially or wholly restricted.

t this point, it may have crossed your mind why SFU even needs a Special Collections or an Archives. Why not just go without the two and re-allocate that funding elsewhere? This is an important question that needs to be considered, especially since through student fees, every single SFU student has contributed to sustain and continue to grow its collections. Special Collections has this extremely rare page of the Gutenberg Bible in its possession.

As a student of the sciences, one may never need to take a trip up to Special Collections or down to the Archives as part of any course, and even the Humanities is limited to short trips, perhaps for a research paper.

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A Closer Look According to the SFU Archives Record Management website, “an archival fonds is made up of the records naturally created and kept by a person or an organization in the course of their day-to-day activities. By contrast, a collection is just an artificial assembly of materials brought together on a subject.” Under a collection, pieces do not have to be produced by the donor of the collection. For example, the Dr. Mark Winston fonds contains original research documents and journals pertaining to his research on bees. Dr. Winston, a Professor in the Biological Sciences and the Semester in Dialogue program, has donated his personal papers to the Archives, and further accruals are expected. Donations of private records and subsequent accruals are negotiated through Donation Agreements. This kind of relationship is not uncommon, as it serves both the Archives, by increasing their collection, and the giver, as it ensures that his/her privacy is preserved while the necessary documents reflecting their lives and career will be archived. An example of a collection would be the Apiculture (beekeeping) collection, containing material donated by a number of individuals, including John Corner, a former British Columbia Provincial Apiarist, specialists including Dr. Mark Winston, and some of the British Columbia Honey Producers Association’s members.

The costs to maintain a Special Collections may be higher than the equivalent amount in books and research papers, especially with special acquisitions like the Gutenberg Bible, and the enormous climate-controlled vault to carefully maintain these collections. But Special Collections and Archives are more important than its holdings. Special Collections serves to facilitate the more unique needs of researchers through its acquisitions, and for students, it serves to provide a physical existence to the material taught. There is a difference between going on Google to look up the Gutenberg Bible and its significance in the history and development of publication, and physically seeing an original leaf of the Gutenberg Bible. It also serves as a single office for the correct handling and care of unique and valuable pieces, saving costs for individual departments. With the Archives, one must recognize that like any group of likeminded individuals, SFU is a unique society, serving as a microcosm within our society. It is not the actions and decisions of one body or person that makes SFU unique, but the collective actions and decisions taken on a daily basis throughout the decades that give SFU its “voice” — its place in history. As much as the Archives is the functional arm of document preservation and privacy protection, it serves to be its voice in time— to preserve SFU's heart and soul. It serves to personify these cold concrete walls we attend. Like the box of Polaroids, old yearbooks, and vinyl records (or

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whatever you may collect) we all have somewhere, it serves to show snapshots of SFU's past. Any collection of buildings can be a university, any group of students can be a student society, and whatever events and research conducted can be done and published, but as a repository of those events and memories, the Archives captures SFU through its holdings, and must continue to do so. Just like the box in our attics, or the photos we have framed in our living rooms, they can represent the public face of us, the moments we can share with everyone. But the photos in that box show a more intimate picture of who we are. It shows the memories we carry with us from house to house, as we progress and continue to change through time. It serves as a place of static calm in our ever-changing and rapidly-moving world, where we can take a moment to look back. The SFU Archives is the metaphorical box in our attics, showing SFU in snapshots from the inside, an intimate history of SFU's conception. We see everything from its growing pains to its current state as a school. Even though Special Collections and the Archives may not be a direct part of our day-to-day lives up at SFU, their roles at SFU are undeniably a part of what makes our university unique. Ever since the doors of SFU opened to the public, Special Collections and Rare Books have been acquiring, preserving, and making accessible, valuable pieces to aid our research needs. Their collections range from local event posters, unique manuscripts, all the way to pieces of global significance. The Archives and Records Management, originally working under the mandate of the library, continues to accrue new holdings, showing among other topics, the history of SFU, unique snapshots of research and activities that have taken place at SFU, and SFU's research exploits and topics of interest. They also temporarily hold and confidentially destroy important documents, maintaining the balance between privacy and public access. Whether for simple documentation, research, or for the chance to look back in the past, the two departments are not only the gears that help SFU with valuable document processing, but are important resources for anyone at SFU. Like a box in the attic, you never know what you're going to find.

A Culture of Detachment SFU’s

poor labour relations are a symptom of a changing university

Written

Tamara Connor

alfway through this past fall semester, there was one morning where I shuffled into class a few minutes late. I literally had to climb over my classmates to get a seat, in what can only be described as a shoebox of a classroom. I didn’t want to be there – and I doubt anyone else did either. Lately I have had a lot of difficulty getting inspired about my studies at SFU. This was hard for me to admit and even harder for me to tackle. When I came to SFU in 2012, I was bright-eyed and ready to learn everything underneath the liberal arts umbrella. So why was I in a slump?

At first I thought it was a mid-youth crisis – that I was having second thoughts about my major in Political Science. But anyone who spends more than five minutes with me will quickly learn that I’m not short of any passion in that department. So why was I having so much trouble engaging with my work? What I didn’t realize then, on that rainy fall day – as I sat in my chair, which was bolted to the ground, which was one of many in my row, tightly pressed up against the people sitting near me – was that SFU was not the engaging, progressive school it marketed itself as. Rather, in recent years, SFU has actually become an institution rooted in detachment. Students growing detached from their studies, the faculty from their students, and the administration from SFU’s educators … slowly, on all fronts, SFU is dividing. When I began my research for this article, I didn’t know this would be the conclusion I would reach. Initially, I envisioned writing a detailed history of organized labour at SFU – but the interviews I conducted pushed me to evolve that theme.

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o amount of throwback stories from SFU’s archives can replace the testimony I collected from students and educators. These conversations helped me understand why I felt so detached from my studies, and opened my eyes to ways in which SFU has become detached from us. Writing this piece was a cleansing process for me, and I hope that anyone else who has experienced a slump during their degree can find some closure in this article as well.

smaller, more collaborative, discussion based settings foster intellectual growth.

Some of the most interesting conversations I had while doing research for this piece were with SFU students. None of them labour specialists, none of them involved personally with the issue, all of them just undergraduate students trying to get by.

While the Education department may be on the right track, others are becoming out of sync with the tutorial-based model that SFU had prided itself on. And frankly, as a student, I was quite upset to hear this. As Melissa Roth, a trustee for the TSSU confirms, this is one area where SFU is letting students down.

This conversation stood out to me because as it turns out, SFU doesn't always practice what it preaches. In the interviews I conducted after this, I learned that in several departments, it seems tutorials are being scrapped from first year courses and lecture halls are getting larger. Other than this one woman, students were worried that their lectures were going to keep getting larger.

I felt that relying on my opinion alone would simply not be enough; so I spent a day roaming the AQ, the MBC cafeteria and “Undergrad enrolment is going up, and graduate student enconvocation mall, approaching strangers, hoping they would rolments and the number of professors are staying the same — give me five minutes of their time. I didn't ask for their names or that can only mean bigger class sizes,” Roth told me. their faculties, I wanted them to be anonymous, so they would fter speaking to SFU feel comfortable talking students, I wanted to — and for the most part, talk with people from witheveryone was willing to in the labour movement “I n recent years, the TSSU has had talk and speak frankly on campus. Roth was one to fight to get someone on the other about their experiences. of the TSSU members who “Do you know what side of the table who actually knows reached out and let me ask the TSSU is?,” was the her some questions about what we’re talking about.” first question I asked evhow labour relations has ery student I approached. evolved on campus, and — Karen Dean, TSSU Grievance Officer And the responses I what it all means for students. got from SFU students From the moment Roth ranged from “Nope, I sat down at the table across have no idea,” to some who knew exactly who they were and all from me, I could tell she was proud to be a part of organized about the latest bargaining update. This diversity was present in labour at SFU – she wore a black TSSU button on a white blouse, nearly all the questions I asked – all but one. she was not afraid to let the world see that part of her. She told

When I asked SFU students how they felt about the recent labour dispute between the TSSU (Teaching Support Staff Union) and SFU Administration on campus, and subsequent temporary disruption we were experiencing as students, not a single person expressed any contempt, anger or frustration. I was taken aback by this. I was expecting public opinion to be much more divided. Especially since the exchanges between students happening on public social media pages made this topic seem much more polarized. So while detachment seems to be present in many parts of the institution, as I will get into shortly, the disconnect between students and TAs seems to be quite minimal. There was one conversation in particular that stood out to me during this process. During one of my interviews with an SFU student, I asked if growing class sizes was something they were worried about. One woman said that in her department, which was Education, large class sizes goes against their pedagogy, so she had no reason to be worried about becoming one in 250. She told me about how she has been taught that

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me about her history with the union, and what her experiences have been since getting involved. The question I wanted answered the most desperately was simple, since her getting involved with the TSSU, did she feel that the relationship between the university and the union had evolved. I wanted to know how she describes labour relations at SFU. “It depends what level of administration you are dealing with. On the whole, when we talk with just departments, overwhelmingly it is comfortable and easy. The vast majority of issues that are brought up are solved informally over emails and a single meeting,” Roth answered. “So, excellent.” I will admit that wasn't the answer I was expecting. The TSSU was, after all, just coming to the end of a 19 month long labour dispute. I think she must have been able to tell from the lost expression on my face, that wasn't the response I was predicting. She continued, “The thing that people hear the most about is bargaining.”

A CULTURE OF DETACHMENT

And she had a point. Unless we're hearing whispers of picket lines, students don't seem too enthralled by labour relations at SFU. But as Roth pointed out, day-to-day relations with faculty members is simply not comparable to the union's dealings with the administration. “They are professors, they are staff [who work] with our members on a day to day basis,” she explained. “They see our members as ‘Melissa’ or as ‘George’, not as a bottom line. They see that having an issue with let's say, the classroom, directly relates with the quality of education, that it's not some sort of arbitrary demand.” But then we moved away from just faculty, and we started talking about the administration as a whole, and she added, “I've been in situations with people from higher levels, and it does start getting detached, their understanding and perspective is different.”

fter speaking with Roth, I knew that I wanted to go further back into SFU's past. After looking into SFU's history with unions, I knew that this story would be told very differently by someone who lived it. And that's when I decided I had to sit down with Karen Dean, the TSSU's grievance officer, who was also a student at SFU during the early 70's. She was brought on to the union's payroll in 2008 – she is the first, and only, employee that isn't of the union's own rank and file. Up until 2008, the TSSU was run entirely by its own members – they never needed a bargaining professional. So Dean's hire reflects a massive change at SFU. After 2008, the TSSU felt they were no longer able to effectively negotiate with the university themselves. When I first sat down in her office on the fifth floor of the AQ, the first thing I noticed (other than the enormous photocopier) was a massive wall of binders. From floor to ceiling, all of them filled with the TSSU's past agreements, and history. It was then I knew I was in the right place. Dean's relationship with labour on campus is a truly unique one. She told about how she was a part of the team who bargained the first collective agreement between the student society and the university, and that some of the original elements that she had bargained for are still in place today. Dean compared those early days to “growing pains”. The university was expanding rapidly, it was growing in size, student population and of course, staff. So the labour disputes then, according to Dean, were more a by-product of an institution trying to keep up with a university that was quickly beginning to sprawl over Burnaby Mountain. But now SFU is 50, and is expected to have the systems put in place to effectively communicate and negotiate with unions. Yet, according to Dean, labour relations on campus today, are actually worse than in SFU's early years, and this is most evident in who SFU is putting at the other side of the bargaining table. “When I came to work here, one of the things I had to do is research the history of the articles in the collective agreement

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[…] and when you go back, what you see is a real change in how the university has been working with the TSSU,” Dean continued. “I pulled down an old bargaining binder, it was the ‘98 round [of bargaining], to check on an article, and I realized while I was looking at it, when we were at the table in 1998, the associate VP of academic was across from us, on their committee.” In this last dispute, the TSSU didn't see the same kind of people meeting them at the table. Instead of letting those who come from the world of academia – and those who understand the issues that the union wants to negotiate, like protection from overwork and underpay – SFU's bargaining team was comprised largely of staff from Human Resources. “In this round of bargaining, and in the last one, one of the things we realized is how difficult it is to bargain with people who don't know what it is that you do,” Dean added. “How does one successfully get language in your collective agreement that reflects your work, if no one on the other side of the table has ever done the work?” While SFU has every right to send HR representatives to the bargaining table, as it was being explained to me, in doing so they are decreasing the likelihood of a quick and fair resolution. “In recent years, the TSSU has had to fight to get someone on the other side of the table who actually knows what we're talking about,” and by this what Dean meant is that the TSSU had to initiate job action in order to be guaranteed that at least one professor would be a part of the university's bargaining team. Since the early 2000s, every time the TSSU has gone to the bargaining table, they feel that they have gotten stuck there. Dean told me about how in this most recent round of bargaining, they rejected her description of a TA as someone who is there to bridge the material for students, to help them engage with it and understand it, and that they are not subject specialists or lecturers, that being a TA is as much a learning opportunity for the graduate students as it is for the undergrad student. Anyone who has ever taken a tutorial at SFU knows that's exactly what a TA is. And yet the people bargaining on behalf of SFU, on behalf of us, didn't agree with the TSSU's interpretation of a TA’s role. It's this shift, according to Dean, in labour relations that has led to long and truncated bargaining sessions.

nd long bargaining sessions aren't the only red flag.

According to Dean, TAs aren't been given enough paid working hours to attend lecture, meaning a lot of them are working several hours every week for free. And that blew me away. How could we ask any TA to put in unpaid hours? Guaranteeing that all TAs are paid for all working hours is at the forefront of the TSSU requests, but SFU hasn't been willing to negotiate this issue. And according to Dean this is because the administration knows that any TA who wants to run a good tutorial will go to the lecture regardless if they are paid or not.

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A CULTURE OF DETACHMENT

“If a TA begins to feel exploited, the only thing they can do is not go to the lecture, and then students are impacted,” said Dean. I believe SFU's changing relationship with unions and employees on campus will begin seeping into the quality of our education. And this is what I mean by detachment. The administration is looking at SFU through an HR and corporate lens and either can't or won't put themselves in the student’s or TA’s shoes. No matter what side you are bargaining for, everyone at the table needs to understand the other's perspective. So clearly things at SFU are changing, whether we want to admit it or not. I see corporatization slowly eroding the university that I have loved and called my own. This culture of detachment is popping up all over campus. SFU is becoming all gloss, and no substance. Next time you are walking past our new and shiny observatory, that's less than a year old, take a look at that sidewalk — it's already cracking. The brand new cracking cement is the perfect metaphor to sum this all up. It's just gloss, slowly we are losing our substance. I believe that this evolution, or rather devolution, can also be tied to the arrival of Andrew Petter. I mean no disrespect to our president, but from the outside looking in, he appears to be more concerned with aesthetics than substance. “The president used to be a hands-on, ‘chair’ if you will. Like the chair of a department but on a much bigger scale. Their job was to help find solutions […] but now we have a president who raises us money and who does the PR piece,” Dean noted when I asked her what role Petter played in this corporatization of our university. And Dean wasn't the only one who had something to say about how we've used marketing to cover up the changes happening on campus. I sat down with Derek Sahota, spokesperson for the TSSU, who affirmed this idea that SFU is selling an image that doesn't correspond with the reality on campus.

The larger a class gets, the harder it is to have discussion, and these iClickers become the only way of finding out who's been paying at least an ounce of attention. As Dean puts it, “you may get some information in your head while sitting in a lecture, but you don't own it until you've done something with it, until you discussed it and thought about it”. And she is spot on. In my opinion, the way in which we address participation issues should not be introducing a piece of new technology that replaces conversation, rather the solution is to offer two sections of the course so that students can work in more appropriate sized groups. This culture exists on a small scale, like iClickers, but it's also making some appearance in SFU's bigger picture. I spoke with three people from the labour movement on campus and all three of them at one point mentioned Guard.me as a classic example of how detached SFU is from its students.

or anyone who wasn't around when this issue first surfaced, Guard.me is an insurance plan initiated by SFU administration in which every international student is automatically enrolled. On February 25, 2015, concerned members of the TSSU presented a petition against Guard.me to SFU administration with approximately 600 signatures from international students and community members. The TSSU's biggest concern was that Guard.me automatically enrolled students in the plan, which would in turn cost students money they didnt have.

“There is a lot of fakery,” Sahota said. Looking at events such as SFU's 50th anniversary celebration and the slogan of “from radical roots to engaged university,” it appears as if SFU is building a façade rather than actually tackling growing issues on campus like class sizes and opportunities for graduate students.

As Sahota was explaining it to me, when the TSSU questioned SFU about Guard.me, there seemed to be little concern on their part on how students were going to afford the insurance plan that he described as being packed with unneeded services. Having met, and having been a student abroad, the assumption that international students will have no issues paying an extra few hundred dollars is a troublesome one. The fact of the matter is most students today live from hand to mouth. But as Sahota remembers the Guard.me controversy, SFU didn't share his concerns of affordability.

And I find this disheartening. We were once a truly progressive institution, but we have built a culture of detachment over top of that past.

As Dean pointed out, SFU's interest in this health insurance contract seemed to be entirely rooted in the 5% kick back the university was receiving.

Everywhere you look you will find traces of this detached culture. I personally have noticed a rise of iClickers and a similar product called TopHat in my classes, both being devices used to track classroom participation. And at first I didn't think much of their presence, but this article has forced me to think more critically about this technology.

The TSSU believes that there were much cheaper options than Guard.me, and as Roth told The Peak in 2014, “[SFU was] using it to fund the basic budget”.

When you get right down to it, what these tools have done is replace thoughtful, in-depth conversation with multiple choice quizzes. So I ask you, is that really engaging for students? Is any-

one truly gaining anything from that experience? Or is it, rather, a way of artificially creating participation in a class of 100 people?

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When I asked Dean about the controversial insurance plan she chuckled and told me that even now they aren't sure what problem SFU was trying to solve since, to her knowledge, no international students expressed any interest in the private insurance. After speaking with members of the TSSU about their opposition to the Guard.me program, I asked Tim Rahilly, Associate

SFU

is now

years old, and

is expected to have the systems in place

effectively

communicate

and negotiate with unions.

Vice-President of students, how SFU choose Guard.me, and what sort of consultation the university did with students before they made their final selection. According to Rahilly, there had been a long history of international students choosing not to purchase any sort of medical coverage before their MSP kicked in. This was an issue for the university as they require all students to buy into a health coverage plan. So in Rahilly's recollection, SFU saw Guard.me as a way of making sure that all students were adhering to the university's conditions. When I asked how SFU consulted its students before choosing the Guard.me option, Rahilly said that there were many openhouses and surveys done before the final selection was made, and that this insurance plan was reflective of students' needs — SFU observed an increase in students seeking out mental health and councilling services through the school, and in his mind, this suggests that Gaurd.me was a necessity.

o while Rahilly supports the insurance plan, sighting its long list of benefits as a positive for students, there is still a strong opposition to the insurance plan. The Guard.me controversy even today remains a sticky subject. In my eyes, however, forcing students to be locked into a certain medical plan is another example of the corporatization of the university experience. So you've stuck with me this long, but before I end this piece I want to take you back to that cold and dreary day in the fall for just a moment — over 20 of us sat packed into a room that was meant for 10 or 15 students. SFU removed the desks and replaced them with those rows of chairs where a table only big enough to hold a cup of coffee folds out from the side. These chairs, that are glued to the ground and

squish students together, without a doubt restrict conversation and erode that collaborative environment tutorials are meant to be. If you ask me, these seats were installed so that they could fit more bodies into a classroom and make class sizes just a little bit bigger. They are in my mind, the perfect representation of how SFU has started to change. And this, to me, is the corporatization of our education. Our degrees are no longer about us finding our passions and becoming better educated and more driven people – it's about using us to meet someone else's bottom line. And I believe that this will devalue the degree we are all working towards. SFU, in my mind, hides behind great marketing. We pump out flashy ads, throw parties on campus and brand ourselves as “the radical campus” who leads in research and engagement – but I think it's a scam that will cost me, and probably most of you, over $30,000 by the end of our time here. When I began looking closely at SFU's labour relations, I didn't know this was the direction the article would take me in. However, poor labour relations on campus appears to be a symptom of a much larger problem – SFU is going down the corporate path. I fear that they will sell out my education (and yours) to save some money. I see the university's relationship with our TAs as a reflection of the university's relationship with the students, and things are not looking good for the future. I'm not going to sit idly by and let this corporatization of SFU detach me from my studies. My mid-youth crisis was a byproduct of what I believe is the culture SFU is creating on campus, and there are probably many of you who have had similar experiences. Our slumps are not necessarily rooted in a lack of drive, motivation or campus life, but I believe that they stem entirely from the environment SFU is creating for us in the classroom.

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Renaissance Man Parminder Parhar

f you’re like most students, a morning’s cup of coffee is as much a necessity for functioning as going to bed the night before. For 19 years — since opening the first Renaissance Coffee location in February 1996, initially as a six month trial — Parminder Parhar has made himself an integral part of the SFU community. Along with providing us our caffeine fix, he’s also a dedicated philanthropist, raising money for the Parhar Endowment Fund, which he aims to grow to $1 million to support students in years to come. Here, we talk to the Mumbai born and raised businessman about the coffee shop he named for “rebirth”:

When and why did you come to Canada? “I came to Canada on August 10th, 1990. My father passed away and my family became lonely without him and my brother who was a father figure had moved to Canada [. . .] I started working at 7/11 as a Manager to gain managerial experience — this was the first opportunity I found in Canada.” Why did you explore SFU of all places and schools? “When I came to Canada I explored many different places including UBC and other schools. When I come to a new country I always explore. When I came to SFU in 1990, I could feel a sense of community was missing and I wanted to change that.” What’s something people might not know about Renaissance Coffee? “My wife and I are both owners of Renaissance Coffee. My wife came with me from India and then we got married in Canada. [. . .] Renaissance Coffee was first located in the corner of the AQ and only three staff members people could fit in the workplace.”

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Written

Michelle Hickey

‘Do you know someone like you?’ as I value their opinion. I look for people to work at Renaissance who can fit into my philosophy, to treat everyone how you want to be treated, to be happy at work, as customers may be stressed and we want them to have a soothing moment at Renaissance Coffee and we want to spread happiness.” When you are not busy creating your community coffee shop, what do you enjoy doing? “Learning, I read a lot of books. I also learn when I am at Renaissance Coffee. I look at people and learn from them without them knowing it. I see students and professors working hard and are truly motivated and I say, if they can do it, so can I! It is not easy being a student or a professor and their strength motivates me.” How would you describe Renaissance Coffee?

Why are you fascinated by coffee? “I have no idea [. . .] it is was something that came natural to me right when I was growing up [. . .] it just came to my heart. My hunch is, I was attracted to coffee because it was part of my destiny and it certainly did become my career and ultimately, my destiny.” Are there any childhood stories that began your passion for coffee or business? “My passion for business came to me at a young age and it was something I was 100% certain of from the get go. When I was studying for my Business Degree, I never applied for a job because I knew I was going to become a business owner.” Who was or is your mentor that inspired you to start your own business? “I read the book ‘Think and Grow Rich’ by Dr. Napoleon Hill and this became the essence of my life and my business operations. The key element I took from the book was, in order for success you need to create your own unique idea. My idea was not to just create a coffee shop but to create a little community where people could come together to connect, relax and exchange ideas.” What is important to you? “An important thing I have learned in my life, is to treat everyone the way you would like to be treated and not with a double standard. When we don’t have the same standard in giving that is when we have big problems.” Tell me about your staff, how did you decide to recruit members on your team? “I have a great team of staff. They know my expectations and I often hire from their recommendations as I ask them,

“I would describe Renaissance Coffee as a community coffee shop, to get people together, to stop and chat with friends, a warm comforting meeting stop — a kickstarter to your day or an afternoon refresher.” Why does RC sell Fair Trade coffee? “17 years ago, an SFU student brought to my attention the importance of Fair Trade coffee and how it changed lives and this is how Fair Trade coffee at Renaissance Coffee was launched.” Why is supporting SFU’s education important to you? “I see students working hard everyday here to achieve their dreams. I know the student life is not an easy life and I would like to help them out [. . .] Julie was one of my everyday customers and became my friend and educated me on the importance of an endowment fund. Renaissance Coffee has already given out five $1000 bursaries to SFU students who excel in their academics and also contribute to their community.” What is your favourite order at Renaissance Coffee? “My favourite order at Renaissance Coffee is a Cafe Latte which is my days' award when I go home. I am the kind of guy who could live on coffee for a few days but if I am hungry, I also enjoy Renaissance Coffee's veggie wrap.” Any last thoughts? “In this big corporate world, I am happy there is still a place for a little guy like me and a community coffee shop. This is not my coffee shop, this is SFU's community coffee shop and let's continue together to build a stronger sense of community at SFU.”

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A History of Art

A Look at the Experimental B eginnings Future of the SFU G alleries

Written

Oscar Lira Sanchez

and

Exciting

Photo by Jonathan VanElslander

alfway down the South Concourse of the Academic Quadrangle, there are a pair of indescript glass doors distinct from the sea of wood paneling. Over it, a sign says SFU Gallery — admittedly not a particularly imposing entrance.

A relatively small space, it exhibits both contemporary art created primarily but not exclusively from Canadian artists. As the only dedicated Art space on the Burnaby Mountain campus, you’re more likely to stumble inside between classes, than to actually seek it out. The small space doesn't do justice to the long and dynamic relationship between the arts and Simon Fraser. The current SFU Gallery system consists of three spaces: the SFU Gallery in Burnaby, the Audain at Woodwards, and the Teck at Harbour Center. The SFU Gallery runs semesterly programming, and tries to connect an undergraduate population from diverse backgrounds and disciplines with Contemporary Art. The Audain is a public Contemporary art space with diverse programing, it includes a spring and summer exhibition, undergraduate and graduate shows, and a fall artist-in-residence program, balancing the School for the Contemporary Arts with a city wide public audience. Meanwhile, the Teck functions as a short term public art space with year long projects in a multi-purpose function and study space in the Harbour Center Atrium. The arts at SFU and the SFU Gallery have a longer history that predates this current set-up.

ur University opened its doors in 1965. At the time, its approach to education was unique in many ways, along these lines was the potential for interdisciplinary exchange in the liberal arts and sciences. Those founding years were filled with excitement about the potential in that approach. The Centre for Communication and the Arts was one of the initial bodies to be created. Formed under the Education program, it is the predecessor to the School for Contemporary Arts and the SFU Galleries. The Centre was an incubator for the arts that existed as a non-credit hive for programs, workshops and events open to the entire University community. It fostered artists and performances with a nationally recognized faculty in an environment with few boundaries and barriers. Many of SFU's initial experiments in education did not survive long. The Centre was no different, and it was restructured. Eventually, the Centre for Communications and the Arts shifted away from the radical freedom of its early years and eventually transitioned into the credit based program we know today as the School of Contemporary Arts. This reflected broader trends at the university for a return towards the entrenchment of long established ways of thinking and working.

Artist Iain Baxter& — who at the time was simply Iain Baxter, adding an ampersand to his name in 2005 — founded SFU's visual arts program and was the creator of SFU's original logo. He was responsible for fostering a lot of that initial freedom and experimentation at the Centre for Communications and the Arts. One of his notable attempts was when he taught what was supposed to be a semester long class — 13 two-hour lectures — as a 26 hour marathon session instead, an experiment born out of the free-wheeling mentality of artists at the time and the freedoms afforded in a Centre running on a non-credit system. Without a dedicated gallery space, this was an environment where art could, and did, happen all over campus. 1969's Catalog for the Exhibition, organized by Seth Siegelaub is one such project. It included participatory and durational pieces by artists like Sol Lewitt and Lawrence Weiner, which were situated around the campus. Jan Dibbet's “Perspective Correction” for instance, involved the cutting and removal of a perfect square of grass in perspective from the lawn next to the theatre. This was then photographed and made into postcards available in the theatre.

ne of the Centre's key figures in the early years of SFU was James Felter, a visual artist and curator who joined the Centre in 1968. He advocated strongly for a gallery space at SFU — a goal he achieved in 1970 when then President Ken Strand established the Simon Fraser Gallery and named Felter as its first director, a position Felter would hold for sixteen years. Under Felter, the gallery would exhibit and work with many renowned artists and curators, while simultaneously developing the young, but strong collection of artworks by Canadian artists that the University started in 1965. It was a prolific time in the gallery's history, with 127 exhibitions being held in the first ten years, an impressive rate of an arts exhibition per month. Felter also developed a program of circulating exhibits that could be sent on tour to other public galleries in Western Canada and beyond, venturing into the traditional territory of much larger galleries with expansive collections. This was an initiative cut short by the University's growing budgetary crisis in the 80s.

n the years following James Felter, the Gallery would be separated from the successor to the Centre, the Department of Fine and Performing Arts. With this new found independence, the gallery would no longer be run by Visual Arts faculty. Now under one of the University’s vice-presidents, the appointment for Gallery director would draw from other faculties and departments. With this administrative separation of the gallery came an ideological one as well. As the gallery took a more conservative approach to art, and as the Visual arts faculty continued to develop and experiment within a contemporary environment, their direction would diverge considerably.

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A HISTORY OF ART

The openness to public art and experimentation that existed prior to the gallery was partially fed by the shifting ideas on the purpose of galleries in general. Contemporary artistic discourse was exploring the idea that art didn't need to be relegated to a devoted gallery space. The thought was that it could, and should, be part and parcel with the world and the public sphere. The idea of the ‘white-cube’ as a meaningful mode of explanation, with the gallery as a blank slate for the exhibition of work also came under fire. This was a period where the gallery and institution were criticized for their role and conservatism, creating a generation of artists that would question the role and exhibition of art. The movement in this direction by artists and faculty contrasted with the direction of the gallery under non-art directors. Though the conversation around public art would continually develop and change, the familiarity between the university community and public art would continue, through permanent works installed around campus, but also through temporary exhibitions and programs. One notable example is the first year campus project — a project where first year students develop and create a site-specific public art piece at the end of their second semester. Until the completion of the Woodwards complex and the final movement of the School for Contemporary Arts downtown, this was a project that formed a regular part of the Burnaby Campus. A lasting tradition of taking art outside the gallery space, that met with the mixed results of first year students developing their nascent artistic practices. Another particular moment in the development of art came in the 80s, when Jeff Wall, a rising and soon to be leading artist of photoconceptualism in Vancouver, began giving classes in his studio on the 100 Block of West Hastings. With time, Wall would join the Visual Arts faculty, and the program would move into the same building. This arrangement included a gallery space that showed a variety of artists, not restricting itself to students or graduates. It was a gallery space in line with the developing artist-run centre culture of the time. With the moving of the Visual Arts program to its current location at 611 Alexander Street in 1993, this location of the gallery would cease to exist. However, this didn't leave the University without a downtown exhibition presence — a gallery space came with the 1989 opening of SFU Harbour Centre in the renovated Spencer’s department store building. This is the Teck Gallery space at the far end of the Harbour Centre atrium, and it would be joined in 2010 by the Audain Gallery on the ground Floor of SFU's Goldcorp Centre for the Arts. Throughout the years, despite the shifting locations, administration and nature of the arts, SFU's various gallery spaces provided an important opportunity for students and members of the public to be exposed to art, and its development in the city and beyond.

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eyond exhibiting work, the SFU Galleries are also responsible for the SFU Art Collection, an important collection of local and regional artwork. This collection covers work of historical and contemporary value and stands at over 5,500 pieces. Large parts of this collection are either hidden away in short term storage in the AQ, or long term storage under Strand Hall. Though occasional portions of the collection that are in storage occasionally come out as part of exhibitions, the majority of those remain largely unseen. However, a substantial portion of this collection is displayed around SFU's various campuses, this includes over 1000 public sculptures, murals, large format paintings, and prints. The original two pieces of the Art Collection are amongst those found on display — Gordon Smith's mosaic murals, commissioned in 1964 and installed in 1965, form a permanent part of the Academic Quadrangle. Located atop the monumental staircase that rises from the Mall to the AQ, they face each other across the central east-west pedestrian axis that defines the university's design. Their commissioning for the new university, and prominent site make them a fitting start for the Art Collection. The murals are amongst the best known works in the collection, frequently used for photo-ops, and promotional photos. They have presided over the Quadrangle and Mall throughout SFU's history, and frame the yearly processions of students who graduate having successfully slogged it through years of a university education to make it to their convocation ceremony. Their visibility is one utilized for SFU's 50th anniversary campaign, as the murals found themselves used as the backdrop for signage and promotional material across printed and digital media. On the western side of SFU's Burnaby Campus, on the opposite end of the spectrum, sits the most recent acquisition. This is the large Damian Moppett sculpture Large Painting and Caryatid Maquette in Studio at Night (Sculpture Version), that was installed over the Residence Dining Hall Building. It was originally commissioned for the Vancouver Art Gallery's offsite public art space on West Georgia, and was on display from November 2012 to April 2013. Here at SFU it joins a long-running tradition of public sculpture that began with Gordon Smith. Adding to the many examples of public art permanently located around the AQ and throughout campus. Donated by the artist, the Caryatid Maquette took two years to prepare and install. As it had been commissioned for a different site — a specific site — relocating it meant finding the right site on campus and also adapting the work to meet it, all while following the procedures and considerations of the University. According to the current director and curator of the SFU Galleries, Melanie O'Brian, “It was a process unique to working in the arts within a large comprehensive institution.”

Photo Courtesy of SFU Archives

Bringing the Caryatid Maquette to SFU was a long process that sometimes had to take a step backwards in order to continue. The initial approval, was followed by site selection, and consultation with facilities to seismically test the site, and engineer it for safe installation, a process that had to be repeated when the site was changed. Compared to a free standing sculpture like that of Terry Fox, or Mahatma Ghandi, this process was considerably more complicated since the sculpture was to be installed onto a building. As well, the previously free-standing sculpture was originally a layered three dimensional array that referenced the artist's studio as a stage set. To fit its new home, it had to be flattened and welded back together into a new unique arrangement that didn't interfere with the original vision. Despite the long process, it's one that O'Brian would like to do again. As projects like it set the tone for her desire to “bring Contemporary Art up to campus and contribute to a culture of vibrancy,” something that can happen through paintings like those in the AQ concourse, “but sometimes requires bigger statements.”

nyone entering the SFU Gallery in the Fall of 2013 would have encountered Samuel Roy-Bois' Not a new world, just an old trick. It was a large white construction, whose exterior could be used to study, or to lounge and sit amongst cushions and blankets. In the interior, were two small rooms that held a selection of the work from the SFU Art Collection that Roy-Bois curated as part of his installation. These works included such diverse things as photographs, drawings, paintings, sculptures and some silverware that would not have felt out of place in the proverbial North American home of our grandparents, or in a period piece on HBO. As Christina Hedlund, the collections manager with SFU Galleries, put it, “No collection is perfect, all collections will have weird and unusual works.” Developed over the years from purchases and donations, it has grown in an organic and uncontrolled fashion.

Keeping Up With The Joneses With the work up on display spread out across the campus and the bulk of the SFU Art Collection in storage, it can be difficult to comprehend the extent and size of the collection, especially if one is used to only seeing the small gallery space in the AQ. It is nonetheless a well sized collection that fits well along the spectrum of University Art Collections. For comparison, the collection of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at UBC consists of 3,250 works, while that of the Vancouver Art Gallery covers over 10,000. It’s difficult to draw direct comparisons between Gallery collections on the basis of numbers alone because collections can contain varieties of work as a result of history and different Gallery mandates. The collection at the Emily Carr University of Art Design, for example, is very different from the SFU Art Collection. It has a strong core of original art prints, but doesn’t hold much in the way of paintings or sculptures. Their library, meanwhile, holds an important and robust archival collection of artist’s books, exhibition catalogs and other materials. Some of these materials overlap with those held by the SFU Art Collection, while others don’t. Moreover, some collections focus on contemporary art, while others can have a more historical focus. Others include ethnographic components, or even biological specimens as part of their holdings. Some universities contain their collections within a single entity, while others spread out their holdings across many different departments, bodies, galleries and museums.

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A HISTORY OF ART

The SFU Art Collection has a variety that includes grandmother's silverware, but only has a limited amount of contemporary photography or SFU talent — an absence important in our local context due to the recognition of Vancouver as an important place for the development of conceptual photography. This is curious considering SFU has a strong arts tradition tracing back to the Centre for Communications and the Arts, that focuses on contemporary art and critical thinking, and has always had a strong cohort of alumni, professors and students. These kind of gaps are amongst the issues the Gallery seeks to address, to the extent of its ability with limited options for space and storage. In this context, small steps are being made when they can, such as the handful of works from SFU artists joining our collection following last summer's exhibit, Through a Window: Visual Art and SFU 1965-2015. In the past three years, Melanie O'Brian has focused on both small, and large movements. Improving things behind the scenes, silently reinforcing the Gallery's status as a professionally recognized art space, while simultaneously making big statements. This work includes curatorial experiments such as last Spring's Geometry of Knowing Series, and last Summer's Through a Window. The former consisted of four interrelated exhibits held at both the Audain and SFU Galleries throughout the spring semester. Three of the exhibits were curated by SFU Galleries, with a fourth curated by a third year School of Contemporary Arts Visual Art Core Studio cohort. The setup allowed for the development of dialogue around related themes across the two galleries.

Through a Window consisted of concurrent exhibits at all three SFU gallery spaces providing a particular historical summation of the arts at SFU. This approach to exhibiting stems from O'Brian's desire to think about programming together across the Gallery spaces, exploring the potential crossover between ideas and audiences in the process. The focus on combined programming started with the rebranding of SFU Galleries as a coherent three gallery system, beginning with a new logo, a new website and a single program guide. It continues through programming that bridges the physical distances between the galleries, and through the Gallery's foray into publications. This reassertion, and heightening of the visibility for SFU Galleries, within and outside the university is a continuing and multifaceted process, that they have to do while maintaining the socio-politically involved contemporary artwork that the University and the Gallery are known for. Despite attempts to bring them together in new and interesting ways, the three gallery system presents challenges. “They can have distinct audiences and distinct shows, and operate with their own sense of conditions,” said O'Brian. It is fitting that the three gallery system reflects the structure of SFU itself, split into three different campuses, each with their own ways of thinking. Bridging this structure presents unique opportunities to create, in the spirit of that initial freedom and experimentation that started with the Centre for Communications and the Arts.

The SFU Art Collection

has a

variety that includes grandmother’s silverware, but only has a limited

amount of contemporary photography or

SFU

talent.

Photo by Jonathan VanElslander

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I CAN ’T GET INTO MY CLASSES AGAIN!? ” “

An investigation into SFU’s frustrating course enrolment system Flip the page and read about it

Written

Adam VanderZwan

“C

ourse enrolment pisses me off. If seats are full we should have the option to either stand or bring our own stool to class,” read a recent comment posted on the SFU Confessions Facebook page.

After 20 minutes, the comments had received 40 likes; after an hour it had over 100. By the next day, it had garnered almost 1,000 likes, making it one of the most popular comments on the group in the last while, by far. The message conveys a distinct frustration that students experience while registering for courses each semester. In surveys, SFU undergraduates routinely report encountering full courses, scheduling conflicts, courses not offered frequently enough, students’ late scheduling dates, and courses reserved for other students. These frustrations have students — predominantly from the Arts and Social Sciences, the Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology, and the Beedie School of Business — pulling their hair out in anger. “The course selection process is extremely difficult and frustrating,” claimed third year Criminology major Yvonne Hanson in a video by The Peak. “I’ve been struggling with it the whole time. If you haven’t declared your major yet, you can’t get into any classes you need. So you wind up with the most bullshit little courses.” “I had a horrible time with enrolment this year,” said second year IAT and Business major Gabriel Yeung. “I wasn't able to get into most of my [IAT] major courses [. . .] I tried for eight courses, and I didn't get into them. Now I've ended up with a semester of electives.” “When I get [an enrolment] date I can already tell that I'm going to have a disadvantage,” responded yet another student. “I'm looking at the availability of courses, and then once my [enrolment date] reaches, the majority of them are already closed.” These negative sentiments are reiterated in last year's SFU Undergraduate Survey “course availability” section. Popular comments including “offer more courses,” and “better class availability,” further confirm student frustrations. Issues with course enrolment have affected SFU students for years, as indicated in the 1998 Undergraduate Student Survey highlights, which convey that only 60 per cent of undergraduates were able to register for the courses they wanted. Since then, student satisfaction with registration in the courses they want to complete their degree has not improved. In Fall 2005, only 56 per cent could enrol in the courses that interested them; in 2008, it was 54 per cent; most recently, in 2014, it was 58 per cent. Furthermore, in 2005, just over half (53 per cent) of the undergrad population found they were taking longer than expected to complete their degrees — a number that hovered around 57 per cent until 2013, before jumping to 64 per cent in 2014.

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SFU’s 2010 Degree Completion Experience Survey shows that students complete their degrees on average 2.1 years past the traditional four-year time frame, a number which must come as a surprise to the 70 per cent of students in the same survey, who said they expected to complete their education in explicitly four years, and the 85 per cent from the Fall 2013 Undergraduate Student Survey who claimed graduating within their expected timeframe is important. SFU’s Institutional Research and Planning (IRP) office conducts an annual undergraduate student satisfaction survey to “provid[e] essential feedback on academic experiences and concerns,” which usually garners a 20 to 30 per cent student response rate. They also prepared a variety of in-depth studies specifically into resolving course availability issues from 2007 to 2011. The 2007 study states on its first page that “SFU’s course availability has been deteriorating,” and that “compared with other British Columbia universities, students at SFU experience considerably more problems with course availability and timely degree completion.” And despite several reports, surveys, and recommendations, the statistics in student satisfaction have more or less remained the same since the first online report was posted in 1998. Many students at SFU clearly have trouble enrolling in many of the courses they want — an issue that is caused by multiple facets of the university system, and which could ultimately increase student attrition rates and damage the school’s reputation.

“W

e're working on it,” Gordon Meyers, SFU's Associate Vice President Academic, explained in regards to students' enrolment concerns. “We know that course access is a serious issue.”. Meyers directly oversees all enrolment planning at SFU, and keeps in contact with SFU’s IRP office for patterns in course access research findings. He sits on a Senate Committee for Strategic Enrolment Management — which reports to SFU’s Senate with findings and proposals regarding course registration. SFU’s course registration issues are caused by a variety of interconnected problems, all of which are related first and foremost to the ever-looming budgetary constraints that every university faces. Meyers mentioned that once government funding (which decreased another two per cent for the 2015 fiscal year) has made its way to SFU, the money is then dispersed among the faculties in accordance with how many enrolments each faculty receives. “It’s a student-centred budget,” stated Meyers. “If a faculty gets more students choosing courses from that faculty, they’ll receive a bigger budget [. . .] This gives [faculties] the resources to solve course access problems because it gives them the money to put on those extra courses.” The problem seems to lie not in the allocation of government funding but an overall lack of it. In fact, the most recent five-year

I CAN’T GET INTO MY CLASS AGAIN!?

academic plan Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences states as one of its weaknesses that “insufficient base funding has [. . .] created significant and sustained losses in research expertise in a number of our departments and schools” and that “these losses threaten the quality of [its] undergraduate programs, [. . .] graduate programs and [. . .] international reputation.

major factor contributing to SFU’s budgetary constraints is its unique trimester system, a way of operating that Meyers acknowledges is more expensive than the traditional semester system, but one that is not without benefits. “The trimester system was [established] so that we'd use our buildings for the full year, and we can therefore save resources,” Meyers explained. “We don't need as many buildings to educate the same number of students if we're running all year round. It also provides additional flexibility for students, for example you can start any semester.”

FEATURE

Back when the trimester system was implemented, the idea was that schools operating year-round would be more deserving of additional government funding, but SFU is given more or less the same amount as its comparator universities who operate on a traditional academic calendar. SFU received a grand total of $293.5 million in government funding for its roughly 35,000 students in 2015, around $8,400 per student. Similarly-sized schools such as Ryerson received a close-figured $7,500 per student, while the University of Victoria, a smaller school, received roughly $12,250 per student.

This means that while students at UVic or Ryerson have access to all academic resources during the fall and spring semesters, many students at SFU — especially the 35 per cent who currently attend the school only during the fall and spring semesters — do not have access to the school’s full range of resources during While these facthese periods. The tors have merit, SFU's significant difference trimester system was is stretched over to mired in controversy operate the third se — Yvonne Hanson, 3rd Year Student from its very origins. mester while keeping Hugh Johnston deall expensive facilitails, in his 2005 book ties fully operative. Radical Campus, that during the university's construction, Johnston also states that Baker incorrectly assumed the trihigher-education was being given an infusion of public monmester system’s advantages for students, as “he calculated a ey while members of the public and politicians alike criticized decided financial gain for students heading into professional universities for expecting this increased funding and yet opercareers if they decided to forgo summer jobs so they could start ating only on a semesterly (fall and spring) basis. their careers a year earlier.” Johnston suggests that taking three While university presidents tried to explain that summers full course loads per year isn’t practical for most students, who were coveted by professors to keep their research current, SFU take part-time jobs to support themselves while in school. delegated academic planner Ron Baker — who would soon As it stands today, a significant population of students work grow to dislike teaching within the trimester system himself — part-time while attending SFU. According to the Fall 2015 unto examine the question of whether or not to open the school dergraduate enrolment report, SFU enrolled 13,160 full-time year-round. undergraduates along with a striking 12,161 part-time. MoreAccording to Johnston, while extensive evidence from over, the previous summer semester saw 4,163 full-timers American universities proclaimed a year-round system to be dwarfed by over 12,000 part-timers. more expensive than the traditional route, Baker hurriedly The Canadian University Survey Consortium (CUSC) states calculated SFU would save costs within the trimester system. that 37 per cent of SFU’s first-year students in 2013 worked Radical Campus conveys that “after the university had been off-campus while attending school as compared with the avrunning for a few years, [Baker] could see that the savings erage 25 per cent from comparator universities, while midwere not there,” and in fact “[by] 1972 a management condle-years from 2014 and graduates from 2015 work 46 and 49 sultant firm calculated that the trimester system was costing per cent respectively, compared with the 40 and 41 per cent SFU an extra 19 per cent per full-time student.” But by this comparator averages. Hence, there are more undergraduates at time the system was so ingrained in the school's culture that SFU who are employed while completing their educations, than the administration “expect[ed] that SFU would lose students there are at any comparator universities. without it.”

“The course selection process is extremely difficult and frustrating.”

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I CAN’T GET INTO MY CLASS AGAIN!?

While SFU may provide educational flexibility for students who work part-time, the trimester system may actually be influencing students to find a means to finance their own education while they attend school. SFU’s 2010 Degree Completion Experience Survey confirms one third of delayed graduates actually reduced their course load because of course availability issues, and not because of part-time work, thus prolonging a degree that becomes more expensive as the trimesters add up. As such, SFU’s administration faces difficulties of scheduling classes in accordance with the times students are available and not at work, thus further limiting the quality and diversity of course options during registration. This is especially tough for students interested in co-op, and frustrates their schedules further if they choose a co-op term that conflicts with preferred or required courses. Difficulties also arise for students who have yet to declare a major, and thus aren’t given priority registration dates.

hen it was adopted, the trimester system was supposed to use classroom space more efficiently than a semester system since the university was in operation year-round. But not only has the overall growth of enrolment at SFU outpaced the creation of teaching space, the year-round system causes special problems for building maintenance. According to Rella Ng, the Associate Registrar at SFU, spatial constraints play a large factor in whether or not courses are offered. Ng works at Student Services and makes sure that the course schedules submitted by the faculties can be properly implemented into the scheduling system in a way that allows for the class capacities to be assigned to the appropriate rooms on campus. “We only have a certain number of large classrooms and theatres,” Ng said. Ng is not the only SFU employee to vocalize spatial problems. Aoife Mac Namara, Dean of the Faculty of Communications, Art and Technology (FCAT), expressed her concerns that “probably the biggest resource we don’t have is space. So even if we had 10 faculties and whoever to teach the course, there wouldn’t be any room for it.” SFU has also grown in population over the past few years, and the school’s most recent five-year Capital Plan released last year indicates that total full-time undergraduate enrolment “has grown by 59% during the period from 2001/02 - 2012/13,” and that “space inventory during this time has not kept pace, increasing by only approximately 47%.” SFU is especially struggling to accommodate the exponential student growth at its Surrey Campus which places further constraints on courses offered due to increased competition at this location. “Surrey’s [full-time enrolment] (FTE) is over capacity by a long shot,” explained Elizabeth Starr, development planner at SFU Facilities and Services, and co-writer of the five-year Capital Plan. “FTE capacity in Surrey is 2500 [. . .] And we know we’re incredibly underserviced in Surrey.”

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SFU’s most recent Surrey enrolment report confirms that FTE enrolment for Fall 2015 was at 3,380 — placing SFU Surrey’s population at 35 per cent over capacity. Currently, SFU plans to expand the Surrey campus to allow for 5,000 FTE students, but this project has yet to be officially approved. In addition to spatial constraints, SFU also has maintenance problems which affect the number of course offerings. As an associate registrar, Ng said she “quite often” removes classes from the registration system entirely, due to the abundance of deferred maintenance issues plaguing this half-century old university. The five-year plan states that out of SFU Burnaby’s 35 academic buildings, only 10 are in “good” condition, while 13 are in “fair,” and 12 are labelled as “poor.” Because of this, the Plan has made restoring the school a priority. Ng said that because there are fewer courses offered during the summer, SFU can make efficient use of this time to take classrooms offline in order to make the necessary repairs, but many times this isn’t the case. “In Fall and Spring we get calls from Campus Planning and Facilities who say, ‘this room needs to be taken offline because it’s leaking,’” Ng explained. “Then we struggle to find [new] classrooms, and sometimes we [visit the departments] to discuss moving these classes around.” SFU relies on government funding for the major maintenance repairs it needs and while it would take an estimated $532 million to make all the necessary upgrades to SFU Burnaby’s “poor condition” buildings, in an email, Associate Vice-President of Finance, Alison Blair, stated only “$3.9 million [was given] earlier this year, and $3.3 million more recently.” Mac Namara does claim that a “big deferred maintenance [deposit]” from the provincial government is likely heading toward SFU, which “will be the first in line given the state of [the] facility.” An email message from the Associate VP Academic did not indulge in the rumour, stating that while there are “indications that the sector will receive additional deferred maintenance funds [. . .] there is currently no certainty.”

espite the web of interconnected systemic factors contributing to SFU’s less-than-satisfactory course enrolment system, the Dean of FCAT feels that the issue really isn’t that difficult to solve, just one that requires a culture change in student course planning advising. Mac Namara stated that FCAT’s course enrolment is the top priority issue she’s currently working to resolve, and that she has a threepronged plan. The first prong is to have the university uniformly understand what constitutes a full course load. SFU currently labels a minimum of nine credits (three courses) as “full time,” a number which MacNamara alludes is too low. “What I hear all the time is that students can take only three [courses] because the workload is too high, and that shouldn’t be the case [. . .] Ideally, we should be able to tell students that if you come and do a full

“We know that

course access is

a serious issue.” — Gordon Meyers, Associate Vice President Academic Photo Courtesy of SFU Archives

course load the whole way through, then you should be able to finish [a degree] in four years or five with co-op [. . .] When you don’t have a full course load it’s much harder to predict how many people are going through at what time.” “The first thing we need to look at is what workload is involved in our courses, and then we need to ask students and advisors why we keep encouraging people to take fewer courses.” The second prong would require first-year students to sit with an advisor and fill out a planning sheet for their entire four to five-year degrees. This will force them to understand from the beginning that there’s a relationship from one course to another, which will give them a better understanding of the hurdle-prerequisites they’ll have to meet to take what they’re really interested in. Mac Namara believes that “there has to be a social contract between the students and the administration [stating] that we’ll both work together to help the student progress in a timely way.” The third prong is to construct better networks between the advisors and different faculties in order to broaden faculty knowledge of similar course offerings. “For example, if you wanted to do a course and it got cancelled there [will] often [be] courses [in other faculties] that are similar,” she explained in reference to better networks. “[They probably won’t be] the same — but they might give you something from another faculty [to substitute].” Executive Mark Roman, who took his position as SFU’s Chief Information Officer (CIO) in September 2015, echoes Mac Namara’s notion of strengthening administrative relations, and reveals that there is large disconnect between the faculties. Each currently uses their own computer systems to plan and manage only their sectors. “For example, Beedie School of Business has a system called Tracs, which [allows] them to see the faculty visually, to see what course they’re teaching and in what term, and they can start to plan for faculty workload.

De-bunking the athletes Although some may be shocked to learn that SFU athletes can be given priority registration even while on academic probation, this seemingly unfair process is not quite what some students who are outside SFU athletics believe it to be. Peg Johnsen, Acting Director of Athletics and Recreation, and Kelly Weber, NCAA Compliance Manager, clarified that student athletes are still given priority access due to the fact that they receive their current semester’s grades after they enrol for next semester’s classes, in the same fashion as all students at SFU. “It’s a timing issue. That’s all it is,” Weber explained. “It doesn’t happen very often. We probably run maybe one student a year who is not eligible to compete. [. . .] We can’t risk that a student [not] get their classes just because they can’t pass the ones they’re currently in.” Johnsen spoke to the fact that student athletes are challenged in that they must meet strict NCAA eligibility requirements, they must be students in good standing, they must take 24 credit hours per year with the intent of achieving their degree requirements within four years. When questioned as to whether student athletes could easily register in their preferred or required courses at SFU, Weber responded, “Not always — especially the upper division courses. They’re not able to get into what they need. This NCAA progress towards degree rule states that students need to be in those classes after two full-time years [. . .] and it’s still very difficult [for them].”

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There’s a number of systems out there and they’re all different [. . .] Once faculties receive a system they have to change large percentages of the system’s code to adapt to their own particular needs.”

tem — it's difficult to learn, analyze and provide resources for student educational preferences when courses are selected on a term by term basis.

Roman currently has a vision for “one Information System” in that SFU’s systems behave cohesively and the people work more collaboratively. He relays that SFU will soon be receiving $75 million dollars from the Canadian government to set up one of Canada’s four high computing data centers.

At a university with a two-semester system — such as UBC — students plan and lock-in their courses a year in advance, which allows the institution to effectively schedule and resource those courses, and to predict future course offerings, thus leaving students far more satisfied overall.

Integrating SFU into one system will take at least a couple of years, but Roman hopes that a unified information system will allow the administration to work cohesively, and that SFU “can start to do more integrative planning with (this) data” in terms of not only smoothing out course access issues, but all facets of administrative systems.

ordon Meyers, along with Rummana Khan Hemani, Director of Student Success and Strategic Support who also sits on a Senate Committee for Strategic Enrolment Management, are also reportedly attempting to determine ways to improve course access and are “constantly looking at survey data” from the IRP office. “We look at which classes are full at the end of week one during class registration [and] one of the first things Rummana and I did was we simply sent a list of courses that were full to the deans and associate deans to have them tell us what the deal was,” said Meyers. Meyers said that through the process of relaying course statistics to the faculties, they feel they’ve recently noticed some improvements in course registration data. “[We’re] leading a joint project where we’re studying the question of course access,” Meyers continued. “A year ago, the former registrar and I went to talk to the Chairs and Directors, and asked them questions. [Because] we got some sense in the last couple years that things have been improving [. . .] we’ve decided to sit down and see if that’s actually correct by doing another study, rather than just being satisfied with the one from five years ago.” This study reportedly involves a new data capture method. Hemani stated that along with examining course enrolment data from students with undeclared majors in order to better understand what students are interested in, Student Services has begun to capture data from students’ course planners, located on the Student Information System, which allows students to place potential courses in lists for future semesters, as a means of helping them plan their degrees. Hemani said, “Students are actually starting to tell us through the system [. . .] ‘well I want to take this in the Spring [for example].’ [. . .] We’re not using the data right now, but we’re starting to capture it. There’s a lot more I think we can do just through mining our own data and actually using it a bit more effectively. We have the capacity now with the system to do that sort of thing. It’s just [a matter of] figuring out the best way to do it.”

O 42

ne of the most prominent challenges SFU's administration currently faces lies hidden behind the obstacles of the trimester sys-

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SFU does not currently have this advantage and is left navigating other less concrete or effective routes to understanding what students want. To further complicate matters, it could be said that many SFU students themselves don’t exactly know what they want because they have no idea when their preferred classes will be scheduled, thus further influencing constant switching and dropping of courses — combine this with part-time employment, and SFU is left with a steady cycle of confusion, frustration, and inefficient planning. Hemani indicated the possibility that administration would consider allowing students to schedule two or three semesters in advance. “We’ve talked about it a number of times [. . .] Departments are actually scheduling a year in advance. They know what to offer, and they adjust and adapt [. . .] But what is preventing us from allowing students to enroll for the year? I don’t know the answer to that. It’s an important perspective, and we can probably start to gather that information from students in terms of asking whether that would be helpful.” But what if SFU were to rid itself of the trimester system entirely to potentially alleviate many of SFU’s problems including course enrolment frustrations? “My personal view is that [the trimester system] is likely something that needs a study to know whether it’s a smart idea or not,” said Meyers. “I hear discussion about it with the faculties, but the building thing is big and there is a loss of flexibility. People don’t really take a full course load so [a student] ends up taking more than four years. It’s been a long time — 50 years since we’ve adopted it.”

he numerous studies that SFU's IRP has conducted over the last decade or so clearly indicate that this university has long had a major course availability problem that threatens the integrity and efficiency of the institution. This university seems to be an anomaly within a society that has distinct cultural and financial expectations when it comes to post-secondary education. A trimester education, as opposed to the semesterly one, defies the cultural standard, inconveniences students, and ultimately burdens the administration — a notion enhanced by the fact that SFU only allows its students to pick courses one semester in advance. It might be best for this university to consider switching to a semester system, which would ultimately save resources, provide students with access to more courses and professors, and provide the institution with concrete knowledge on students’ preferences. Structurally, SFU’s internal operations could indeed run more efficiently. As Dean Mac Namara expressed, faculties should consider

I CAN’T GET INTO MY CLASS AGAIN!?

FEATURE

establishing consistent, detailed communication with each other and the rest of SFU regarding what they’re doing to improve courses access within their faculties and departments. Faculties could further be encouraged to make publicly transparent their actions; while many of the faculties cite course access improvements in their academic plans published every five years, perhaps preparing a yearly public report on course access improvements within their sector would further enlighten and ensure the public that actions are being taken.

has “been largely ineffective in communicating its [. . .] needs to develop an effective communication strategy with clear goals for success,” and that “inadequate [. . .] communication with Student Services has resulted in errors and frustration for students and advisors.” Because course access is a such a multi-faceted issue, it’s crucial that all components of the administration, and the students alike, work together to improve the student experience as much as possible within the unique constraints of this institution.

In the short term, it may be in students’ best interests to login to the SIS and add prospective classes to their course planners. If SFU is truly beginning to capture and analyze this data, then apart from visiting an advisor directly, this could prove a useful option to help administration. Conversely, SFU could seriously consider allowing students to enrol multiple semesters in advance, given that departments are reportedly churning out their schedules as such.

If we continue to make academic life as much of an inconvenience, then SFU will continue to be a dissatisfied ‘radical campus.’

“What I hear all the time is that students can take only

While it may be perceived to have taken far too long, it’s refreshing to see that the Executive has this complex problem on its priority list, and perhaps if SFU’s developing system technology proves itself, as Hemani expressed, progress just may move at a swifter pace. Therefore, in order to capture the data they need, the executive should increase their efforts to encourage the faculties and departments to make the SIS course planner more transparent. Additionally, executives should make their specific actions and progress more transparent altogether — perhaps through more frequent meetings and reports from the Senate Committee on Enrolment Management and Planning.

three courses because the

workload is too high, and that shouldn’t be the case.” — Aoife Mac Namara, Dean of FCAT

And in order for the school to establish much-needed consistent relationships with students, the executive should expand departmental advising staff, and request that advisors work longer hours during the high-demand periods of the semester, as the current FCAT five-year academic plan cites “inadequate advising” as one of its internal weaknesses. In the end, communication and understanding is key; the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences has transparently recognized in its academic plan that it

Photo Courtesy of SFU Archives

An Artwalk to Remember Uncovering one of the best kept secrets on Burnaby Mountain

Written

Hannah Urquhart

and

Jasdeep Gakhal

Photo Courtesy of Site Photography

side from the breathtaking mountain views, and the occasional flourishes of nature, beauty and Simon Fraser are two words that people generally don’t put side by side. Most people have probably heard an SFU prison joke — with the brutalist, concrete design of the Burnaby campus — and certainly, it can be gloomy in the winter months. And it seems almost everyday someone complains about the school’s commuter culture — SFU is not known for its culture or art. That’s why Artwalk may just be one of the university’s best kept secrets.

What is Artwalk? Well, it is a public art initiative located in UniverCity which began in 2006 by the SFU Community Trust, starting with the piece Concrete Tree Imprint. The art initiative is composed of eight pieces that are so subtle and integrated into the buildings and area it resides in, that most people have probably walked by without even realizing that they were witnessing art pieces. “The artist is trying to integrate art into the community as opposed to being in your face,” said Angela Nielsen, Director of Communications for the SFU Community Trust. Jesse Galicz, the manager of development for UniverCity and the program manager for the Public Art program adds that there is a recent trend in public art towards integrating art into the environment so that it feels like it is natural to the community. Public art is important for a budding community, because it creates social sustainability, and a sense of community culture. When there is art and culture in a community such as UniverCity, it creates a community spirit — this was the intent of Artwalk. When nurturing the public art installation, Galicz and Nielsen said they wanted to be “builder[s] of community, not just buildings.” Their belief is that public art should not just be aesthetically pleasing, but it should also “give people something to care about, [ . . . and] foster [a] sense of community.” Artwalk is so embedded into its community that many of its residents don’t even realize that they are a part of this walking art display.

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EcoSoMo by Matthew Soules Photos Courtesy of SFU Creative Services

This piece is the most recent addition to Artwalk and was unveiled June 16, 2015. The art project consists of thirteen pieces, essentially smaller sculptural clusters comprised of concrete. Matthew Soules, the leader of the project, is an artist and architect from West Vancouver. EcoSoMo may seem like a strange title, but that’s because it’s really an abbreviation for Ecological Social Modules. The series of sculptures are spread out on the path from University High Street to Tower and Crescent. On their own, the sculptures may at first glance look like individual puzzle pieces, but when given a closer look the pieces work together and symbolize the exchange between people, the environment and reflect the passage of time. Fun fact: each concrete sculpture has information about Burnaby Mountain engraved on it in the Roman alphabet, braille and pictographic lettering. Furthermore, these pieces have a practical use — some have places to sit while waiting for friends, and one piece functions as a place to leave trinkets or share objects. Now it has become an unofficial lost and found for the residents of UniverCity.

Nest with Chrome Eggs by Bruce Voyce The title of this piece gives the mystery away — it’s a nest with chrome eggs. The Nest is unique in that it was commissioned by the city of Burnaby. In fact, this piece was installed before the public art initiative at SFU began. This goes to show that the community that Artwalk belongs to encompasses a much larger community and local history beyond the boundaries of the UniverCity community. Bruce Voyce, the artist of the Nest, is also famous for being the artist that did the Guardian Eagles piece on Marine Way in Burnaby. The piece is supposed to be a celebration of life as seen with the eggs who are in a prebirth stage. It gives off a sense of possibility of life and presents beauty in something familiar — eggs in a nest — a sight we may have walked by on our way to school or work and not really given too much thought about. The piece consists of a metal bird’s nest that is placed into an already existing tree stump, and highlights the importance of embedding public art into the natural environment.

Near As Far As Near by Devon Knowles Photos Courtesy of SFU Creative Services

Devon Knowles is the recipient of a Mayor’s art award and this piece was one of the works she was judged on. Near as Far as Near consists of a series of banners that appear slightly different in colour depending on the direction the viewer is coming from. The banners feature different perspectives of SFU and use a colour contrast to show that difference. The colours of these banners not only change as one moves up or down High Street but also with the seasons. The banners are green in the cold of winter and bright blue and purple in the heat of summer. The green of the winter banners juxtaposes with the gloomy winter landscape, while the purple and blue banners are a reminder of the cool-toned winter weather during the summer months.

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Nightswimming by Brent Comers Photos Courtesy of SFU Creative Services

The title gives off an image like no other. Named after a childhood memory the artist had, Nightswimming is conveniently situated in front of the University Childcare Center and functions as a bench for people to wait for their children. But it isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t just any ordinary wooden bench, as the wood taken for its artistic use was repurposed. Additionally, a staircase design is hewn into the heavy wood to facilitate its use by children who may not have legs long enough to comfortably sit otherwise. Just the simple idea of taking wood in itself and reimagining it into something that can be used for practical purposes and be visually appealing has an air of childlike creativity and imagination to it. To a child it may not even be a bench, but a tightrope and they are the tightrope walker suspended high above the ground. In this way, this piece of art serves to foster the imagination of the children in the community.

Rootwad Cellar Climber by Warren Brubacher This piece is a massive repurposed driftwood stump which the artist has smoothed out to show where the roots pushed through the rock and hard soil. In essence, the history of the massive stump is revealed in the marks it carries from its life as a living tree before the logging of the Squamish rainforest.

Concrete Tree Imprint by Amelia Epp and Kevin Sandgren Photos Courtesy of SFU Creative Services

Concrete Tree Imprint was installed in 2006 and gets the honorary title of being the first piece of public art that was initiated by the SFU Community Trust. The piece was created by then-SFU undergraduates, Amelia Epp and Kevin Sandgren, who studied Fine Arts and Humanities respectively. The tree at the centre of this piece was felled for the development of UniverCity, and the students created a cement mold of it to preserve it as artwork. Slowly, forest developed around it, and it will eventually be overwhelmed by nature. It symbolizes the birth and growth of UniverCity along with the natural cycles of Burnaby Mountain.

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AN ARTWALK TO REMEMBER

FEATURE

Yellow Fence by Erica Stocking Photos Courtesy of SFU Creative Services

This piece is found incorporated into the UniverCity complex itself. Each of the gates are slightly different, starting out fairly simply at one end of the complex, but as you progress down the lane, the design of the gates becomes more abstract. Out of the entire lane of gates, only one is painted bright yellow. This piece is deeply embedded in the UniverCity complex, as the gates have actual use for the residents. Additionally, the name Yellow Fence shares its name with the company that provides fencing for construction sites, creating a link to the construction of UniverCity itself. While UniverCity was being built, the artist went for a stroll on one of Simon Fraser’s characteristically foggy days, and was guided by the length of yellow fence which surrounded the construction area, giving her the inspiration for Yellow Fence.

Woven Huts by Alastair Heseltine Photos Courtesy of SFU Creative Services

Made from repurposed cedar branches cast off by logging corporations, this interactive piece of art is striking. Alastair Heseltine has taken these scraps and woven them — a type of construction known as wattling — in order to create striking huts reaching up to eight feet in height. These huts are accessible and have enough space to accommodate several individuals. Furthermore, these huts are reinforced by a metal foundation, so these structures can support the weight of people on top of them, swinging from them as well as withstand the weather. Truly, this piece is an exploration of the potential of ancient cedar.

Future Installation: Cosmic Chandelier The Artwalk initiative is one that is far from done. “The public art project will continue with the ongoing development of Univercity, [. . .] what I hope to see is a maturation of the public art program itself and the art it facilitates on Burnaby Mountain,” said Galicz. Here’s one piece that’s coming soon: Cosmic Chandelier. This piece is an exciting new entry into the already lively public art display. It will use lighting and steel structures to build a chandelier in an open space of the plaza. Interesting enough, the piece will actually mimic the Orion constellation. It is looking at a summer 2016 installation. So look out for it and who knows, maybe you’ll be allowed to swing from it!

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GET WITH THE PROGRAM! Profiles of what it means to be in different faculties at SFU Ever wonder what life would be like if you had chosen to study a different subject — maybe business instead of communications, or even visual arts instead of molecular biology? Well, we interviewed some students and tried to get a sense of what these programs are like. As there are a lot of ways to move through a program, this is just a small window into those potential experiences. Maybe we can all find some small way to relate:

Written

Oscar Lira Sanchez

VISUAL ART With Duchamp you learned, ‘Anything can be art.’ Now explain it to your family. Everyone knows someone in art school and many would study it if they had the time. You made the time. Learn from others, then be different. Figure out how to talk about your work, distinguish Artspeak from English and develop fluency in both. Look at the material choices, define the subject, be critical, be inspired . . . Now discuss work, learn from each other and organize a group show. Considering every choice, constantly stuck between being subtle, and being obvious, it isn't obvious how to get funding. Who doesn't want to know what you're doing after you graduate? Make a gesture, hang something, paint a surface, create a noise, release a shutter, and do it all over again, looking for an answer. Admit the truth, It was never really going to be finished was it? Solving things and improvisation become second nature. You're not sure what you're doing. You've got an idea.

COMMUNICATIONS Be critical of the outside world, in your head and on the page. Get accustomed to writing, reading, researching, and condensing ideas. It’s not a one way street, be creative and approach things from your own unique angle. Find a focus. Look at what’s new and developing, what’s familiar, what’s passing, and figure out how to understand it. Live with being second hand in new media, writing, and business, but appreciate that you bring them all together. You’ve heard anyone can do it, but know it takes more than open mouths to communicate ideas across mediums and forms of thinking. It’s not what you expected, is it? Step back and view the whole picture, recognize conflicts, problematics and avoid pessimism along the way. Learn to reconcile economics, sociology, psychology and culture, and decide how we can relate to each other in a meaningful way. Use that critical lens, and look at the public sphere, at Marx, at capitalism. Supplement the theory with practical learning, supplement with another program. Be critical, get a job, and ask yourself what you’re doing. You’re unsure, but you try, you learn.

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HISTORY You went from figures, numbers and names to cause and effect, then entered a realm of complicated interrelated events, ideas and agents. You read, in an attempt to understand and make sense of how we impact each other, read more. Along the way, learn to distinguish between primary and secondary sources. Now incorporate photographs, oral recollections, and consider the environment and its non-human subjects. Research and ask the right questions. Weave sources into a narrative, and find a thesis along the way. You know objectivity is out of date, and have come to terms with thinking critically about everything. Read some more, revisiting literature and taking it apart. Recognize who benefits from a particular narrative, and identify subjectivity. Reconcile all this while explaining there’s more to what you do than museums, or conspiracy theories. Discover the line between history and current affairs. Look at things differently, find an untold perspective, then ask, why?

CRIMINOLOGY Learn to approach your subject from multiple viewpoints and perspectives, building your interpretation on the theories of crime. Figure out how to reconcile theories and beliefs along the way. Do it over, and over, and over. Grow frustrated with opinions based on assumptions, biases and misunderstandings — everyone has one they’d like to share. Then move that struggle to the realm of public policy and the media. Get used to reading, growing familiar with legal jargon, reports, proceedings, and law codes. Revisit the theories, go back to reading, and write it all out. Progress or punishment, social development or isolation, restoration or revenge? Remember the theories, then develop and describe the terms of justice. There’s more to your future than just lawyer, police officer or criminal, though apparently not everyone got that memo. Figure out how to listen to the silent, to the victims, tearing down barriers rather than tearing down people.

GEOGRAPHY It’s more than just a drawing, more than just a map. You’re in a mixed field with lots of approaches, bridging society, science, and economics. Be interdisciplinary, then focus on something, deciding between humans, landforms, spatial data, or our environment. Learn how to interpret information and adapt to it, making plans and proposing ideas for moving forward. Look forward to that post-exam learning trip, what’s the destination this time around? Read and write, incorporating various ways of thinking. Recognize potential mistakes in an attempt to understand the structure of cities, how they work, how they move, how they lie still. Follow the water, look through the soil, and explore the ecology. Analyze the land underlying our existence and infrastructure, through its timeless process of change. Collate large amounts of information along the way, then visualize the data in an accessible way. Manage it and present it, growing your skills with each passing attempt. Understand where you stand, where you want to go, then figure out how make it there.

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GET WITH THE PROGRAM

BUSINESS

FEATURE

Everyone’s always impressed with your degree choice, from a financial standpoint at least. Thought the focus on money, value, productivity, and investment return doesn’t always make friends. Get excited about the opportunities to be involved, to grow. How do you plan and where do you begin? Learn to prioritize, learn to say no. Love the bell curve, or at least learn to live with it. Jump from concentration to concentration, orphaning spare courses and doubling concentrations in the process of figuring out where to commit. Compete and differentiate yourself along the way. Exist in an incubator, very integrated to the outside world and the business community; a part of and apart from the University. Get some experience presenting and working as part of a team. Be pressured into co-op, into competitions, and get used to comparisons and being judged against your peers. Be ambitious, be realistic, compete. Are you sure you did enough networking?

ENGINEERING SCIENCE Build around problem solving. It’s assumed you’re smart, but those 2:00 AM nights at the lab where you’re stuck with no solution make you doubt. Apply numbers as part of a larger framework, it’s not arbitrary when it’s part of a system. Though there’s an imbalance and the odds might be good for everyone, they can often be odd. Geekiness goes around, but there’s unacknowledged diversity underneath it all. Figure out how to be social in large groups or small groups, where you fit in and where you don’t. Learn to know your lounge, your lingo and your E triple S, then feel the pressure for co-op, knowing there’s no option. Can you write? It’ll get you places ahead. Ask for exemptions, wait for approvals, then do your 12 credit minimum anyways. It’s all or nothing in your field, when you commit your soul there’s no space for electives. You know the frustration, but you also know that feeling of epiphany when things finally come together. Work together — you’re not in it alone.

MOLECULAR BIOLOGY AND BIOCHEMISTRY You work at small scales, trying to comprehend the processes of life. The laboratory takes you hostage. Time spent in it, time spent preparing for it, learning back material for it, agonizing over it, and putting it all together. Don’t just learn to live with the lab, learn to live it. Perceive subtle social cues when you talk about your work, from suspicion, to admiration, to confusion. If general science is removed from society, you’re one step further. Understand ethics, and learn to follow through on every detail through to perfection. You will fail, it will hurt. You move on.There’s more to your aspirations than just white coats and fancy titles, but there’s also a lot of pressure in the way. It’s a personal journey, but also part of a bigger picture. You’re not alone in trying to unwrap secrets and attempting to finding solutions. Can you publish? Understand research papers before nurturing cell cultures and tending to your equipment. Develop new knowledge, and then cross reference it for potential. Now replicate results.

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Fiction

Photo by Jonathan VanElslander

FICTION

Rattrap Stephanie Hefti

o there I am, trying to balance four vintage tennis rackets, as many badminton rackets, the used skates, the amazing rollerblades, AND all the crap that Benji needs for pond hockey. You’d never believe how many pads they need to strap on — I had to get at least five random people to advise me as I sorted through the heaps of body armour (he’s going to look like the Michelin man) — when what do I see in the corner? Drumroll. BICYCLES. But not like a ton of them; I see three — no, four, and I see at least as many people milling about them like sharks on a misplaced diver. Move it or lose it.

So you know I'm over there so fast and I don't drop a thing and I'm scanning the remnants. Kid's bike = too small. Mountain bike = not bad. Oh! — too slow, there it goes. Two down, two to go. And here comes Mrs. Hockey pad advisor number three or four (sorry lady, all is fair in love and thrift shopping), and we make eye contact and we look at the bikes and she reaches for the really really shiny yellow one and so I reach for the other one (my bicycle!!!). Well, I reach for it with a sort of full body lean as my arms are still loaded up with all the other precious stuff I'm protecting — but my position is clear and I've claimed the bike. I glance over at her shiny bike, envious for only a moment, until I hear her partner school her that that bike is like a complete diva of bikes and that it will basically burst into flames if it touches a bit of gravel off-road. It is so fancy, a racing bike for cyclists. Well I am not a cyclist, and plus hubby just told her it's still two hundred bucks—ha! That's what she gets for lunging at the shiny one. She's not taking the yellow one but lingers around and I know she's just waiting for me to walk away or go to put my stuff down. (Where the hell is Benji?!) Well, no way is that gonna happen. And so I'm trying to lower my treasures to the ground like some cartoon character with a leaning tower of Pisa stack of objects, leaning first one way then the other, and I lower it and myself all to the ground, landing in something resembling a contortionist yoga pose. But now I've got my hands on the bike I've cornered and I scramble up, not letting go, and that's when I see it: the price tag: $20. Twenty dollars!! For a BICYCLE! I know! Feeling almost criminal I hand over only $95 for all my loot; thus the cashier has no problem upselling me with two $5 hotdog for charity specials. For the amount of sports equipment — including my bicycle! — that I fit into my hatchback, there should be a prize. By the time I get it all in I barely know where I'm supposed to put Benji, but with the help of some passers-by and creative use of the camping bungees, we make it home. By the time I get it all unloaded at the other end, and pack up and ship off Benji to Jack's for the night, all I want is a nice, strong, smoke. Stepping onto my patio square, having lit a gross herbal cigarette (super gross), I exhale and admire my purchase. Tires, sufficient air; brakes, only one working; chain, not too rusty; seat, hard as hell. I want to take it out for a spin. Do I need to get changed first? Should I not be wearing flips? Fuck it. I'm just going to get on this bicycle and ride it. Stopping only long enough to throw my wallet in my mini-backpack and lock the sliding glass doors behind me, I hop onto a bicycle for the first time in more than twenty years. The handwritten price sticker of $20 is still firmly planted in between the two handlebars and since it makes me smile, it stays.

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It turns out that that whole cliché about not forgetting how to ride a bike is true. Except maybe with regards to riding without hands. Feeling no urge at all to try that. And to think I used to be able to turn corners like that! With a few aimless laps around my block it becomes clear to me that the first order of business will be to purchase a bike lock; can't go anywhere else without one of those. And I should probably get someone to check the bike over, get the left brake cable replaced. Maybe I can ask about a kickstand—and a rattrap!!

A few blocks along I see that same lady in her car, still squawking away, and she is stuck at another red light. But this time I don't wait, I don't have to. There are no cars coming so I just keep on riding, and the impatient grimace on her face as she taps her steering wheel is imprinted on my mind's eye, and I know how she feels. Because every other day, I am her. It's my board meeting, my 5am conference call. My son whom I wish I could hug one more time because I was such a bitch on the way to school. I am in a hurry. I am stuck in

“...EVERY OTHER DAY, I AM HER. IT’S MY BOARD M WHOM I WISH I COULD HUG ONE MORE TIME BECAU Elated, I kick off in the general direction of stripmall-land. I'm happily engaging my pedaling muscles, clicking through the gears to find the right one, the winds of youth and freedom billowing through my flapping mane. Breathing comes easier riding into the wind, and I think that I haven't taken a true deep breath in a very long time. Making my way across town, seeing it for the first time, everything seems more real than from the car window. It's like I am a part of each moment, connected to each aspect of the setting. A cute house here, a yappy dog there, here a punchbuggy, there a yard sale, everywhere a community alive! I swear I know all of two Queen songs but suddenly the lyrics “Biiii-cycle— Biiii-cycle” start playing through my head and my grin grows bigger and the song plays louder. “I want to ride my bii-cycle…” At a red light I come up next to a car that catches my attention because I'm on the sidewalk and not in the car lane next to her—a totally different perspective. The driver is a woman of roughly as many years as me, dressed in business casual with a Bluetooth cable dangling alongside her hoop earring. She makes eye contact with me, all the while yapping animatedly to whoever is on the other end of her call. As the light turns green, I kick off again as she accelerates, leaving me to inhale the lingering scent of her exhaust before becoming nothing but a speck in the distance. But I am not in a hurry. I have somehow managed to circumvent the rat race, merely by mounting this very bicycle. (Biiii-cycle, biii-cycle.) Every block I become younger, freer, lighter, more present. The smell of the sun on tarmac. The rhythm of skateboards as they travel across the grooves between sidewalk squares. The aroma of onions frying, wafting through an open window. The wind, the blessed wind, filling my nostrils and lungs and hair and soul.

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traffic. I am late, so late. I have to be somewhere, dress some way, multi-task. Time always seems to be running away from me, leaving me to chase, but never catch it. But here on my bicycle, time has slowed down; I am in time, and time is in me. And we are not late. The lady in her car has gained on me again, yet I am convinced that we have not spent the same ten minutes at all. Totally emancipated, I pull up at the local bike shop, except it's not really a “local bike shop” as I'd hoped, but instead a big-box bike superstore. Spotting a rack marked “Bicycle Parking,” I dismount my sexy beast and take a few tentative steps on two legs again, casting a worried glance back at the bike rack before entering the store. Surely no one will steal a $20 beater in this company. “Hello, can I help you today?” The voice seems disembodied at first as I am so overwhelmed by the shininess and rubber-ness and fanciness of this bike store. “Yes,” I reply, my big smile and goals returning to me. “I'd like someone to take a quick look at my bike to make sure it's safe, and I also think I need a new brake cable if they have time for that. Oh! — and I need a bike lock.” “Did you want to make an appointment for a full service bicycle tune-up?” he asks. “If you leave your bicycle here today, it would be ready for pick up by next Thursday.” I don't like this guy, something artificial about him. I think he blow-dries his bangs. “Umm, no,” I say. “I don't think I need anything that fancy. I'd just like someone to take a quick look at my bicycle. It's parked outside. I can't leave it here because well, I need it to ride home.” He looks perplexed, like what I've asked of him cannot be answered on the flip chart that he's had to mem-

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orize in order to work here. “Our bicycle technicians are all busy right now. You will have to leave your bike here if you need it serviced.” I feel my frustration growing, and the stress level of the lady in the car and mine are surely approaching each other. “I can hold off on the cable,” I say, attempting to speak slowly and clearly enough for him to comprehend the simplicity of my request, “but I just want to make sure everything seems attached where it should be!” I finish with a forced laugh, trying to break down

FICTION

“Well like I said, I wouldn't ride that bicycle if I were you, but I can certainly show you our selection of bicycle locks. Right this way...” He leads us back into the store, with its superbikes—pricetags of over a thousand on some of them—and over to the locks section. “Were you looking for a D-Bolt or something with a combination?” My eyes scan the selection and either I'm seeing double or they all cost upwards of forty dollars. “Where are the simple chain locks?” I ask innocently.

MEETING, MY 5AM CONFERENCE CALL. MY SON USE I WAS SUCH A BITCH ON THE WAY TO SCHOOL.” this guy's artificial glazed expression. “Perhaps,” I add, “you could take a quick look for me?” Pride in his expertise and discomfort in breaking protocol are vying for victory over his features, but in the end he nods and we exit the cool shop back into the blazing sun. I point to my bicycle lovingly, as his expression switches to something less appreciative. “How long have you had this bicycle?” he asks me, distaste curling the far edges of his lips. “About four hours,” I reply, grinning, but in less pure form than before. Defense is worming its way into my posture as well. “Figured for twenty dollars I couldn't go wrong.” His beady black eyes tracing my poor bicycle's features—“And you rode this here?” “Well of course I rode it,” I snap, losing patience fast. An inexperienced zitty kid I can tolerate, but not a pompous asshole prick. “Well, you're lucky you made it here in one piece,” he continues, pressing on the tire seams. “Both of these tires need to be replaced, and probably the wheel rims as well. Your left brake is shot, the right one is close behind, and it looks to me like the gear cables are loose. Would you like me to show you the selection of discounted new bicycles we have in stock?” Dis-counted? Does he think I can't afford a new bicycle? Who does this little shit think he is? “No,” I say, with forced calmness, as my blood pressure begins to elevate and I start to feel all tingly. “I do not want to look at new bikes. I just want to fix up the bare minimum on this one to make it ridable—that is all.” I crack my knuckles and tuck my windblown hair behind my ears, trying to retain my composure. “And I need a bike lock,” I add curtly.

He lets out a little laugh and says: “Chain locks? Oh, we don't carry those.” In answer to my raised eyebrows he adds: “Thieves cut right through those.” “I see. Well I think I'll just hold off for now. I can't see myself spending more on a lock than I did for the bike,” I say, attempting to return to good humor but he doesn't seem to get the joke. “I noticed you're not carrying a helmet,” he says. “Would you like me to show you our most popular models?” he asks, determined to make a sale yet. “No thanks,” I reply easily. “There's no way I'm wearing one of those. Although I haven't figured out yet how I'm supposed to justify that to my kid who absolutely has to wear one, even in the driveway.” Another joke over his head. Does this guy have a personality at all? “It's my generation,” I continue. “We didn't wear helmets skiing either. I mean, what's the point if I can't feel the wind through my hair, you know?” No, obviously, he doesn't. “Well you better hope you make it home without a fine,” he says, clearly with judgment. “A fine?” “Yes, it's mandatory to wear a helmet.” “Mandatory? What? Since when?” I can't help but to show my genuine surprise. “Since '96, mandatory for everyone riding a bicycle on roads and bikeways.” He sounds like he's spouting right from the book of bylaws. “Well that's okay,” I say. “I don't plan to ride on roads or bikeways, I'm a sidewalk kind of girl.” “You do know that bicycles are not allowed on the sidewalk, right?” he asks.

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And I really don't have an answer for this. No, I didn't know that. But for all I've just learned, I somehow feel like I know even less now, than I did ever before. I don't need to compare myself to a kid whose puppy just got kicked, because I am now that girl who just got told that her bicycle is basically a death trap, which if it doesn't throw me into the street will probably get me thrown into jail. Which I think is pretty much not in need of further metaphor. Biiii-cycle? Sniff. I mumble something to the effect of I'll just keep browsing, and duck out of the store before the marbles in my throat become too painful to disguise. By the time the tears well up in my eyes I'm already riding and it could just be the wind. I ride slowly, so slowly, afraid that my bike will implode into a dozen pieces. I stay off the main roads, so that if it does, I'll just crash and not fall into oncoming traffic. By the time I reach my driveway I am so heavy, my shoulders so dejected. Consumerism and bureaucracy have found me even here, on my bicycle. I stop here, straddling the seat in my driveway, reluctant to park it just yet. Then an idea lands: The Dollar Store. Maybe they will have a regular bike lock. I decide it is worth checking. No matter what that clerk jerk said, I still think a shitty lock will at least detract from the easy steal. I ride over to the local dollar store, low-traffic back roads all the way, and quickly duck into the shop, with my bike leaning on the storefront window. There for two dollars is a bike lock with two keys, a chain link covered in blue plastic tubing. Two dollars. I buy the lock and an awesome

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retro silver bell for another two dollars. Brring-brring!! Take that, zitface. Needing an excuse to try out the lock, I figure I'll grab a couple dinner items from Coopers. Maybe some lunch materials for Monday. I'm locking up my bike with great care at the rack as a familial caravan pulls up on their bikes, resplendent with two parents and the full set of them in matching aerodynamic head cages. A niggling reminder that when I dropped Benji at his dad's earlier, he warned that I need a helmet so I don't fall and hit my head. My sweet child. I hope that he can feel the wind in his core, even with all the restrictions I place on him. Perhaps I will need to purchase a helmet for me, and be a little freer with him. Nutella for Benji…bread. The refrigerated aisles already feel like Monday's sealed vault of office cubes. What shall I have—spreadsheets and salad? Profit margins and macaroni? I charge the groceries on my Gold card, wondering if we have almost enough travel points for our next trip to Florida. When I return to my bike, a hint of stubborn pride returns to me as I unlock it. But what to do with the groceries? Must still invest in a rattrap—make that two. Two matching rattraps to remind us not to fall into one. I take the long way home, stopping to pick blackberries into my shopping bags for over an hour. I realize they've escaped the GDP, and they don't even have a single carbon footprint. Unaccounted for, wild and so sweet. I pick two bulging bags full, which dangle one from each of the handlebars, staining my knees with dripping blackberry juice all the way home.

FICTION

The New Denny’s Ryan Hoben

lan looked out the small, greasy window at the new Denny’s, across the early traffic of Cluff Crossing Road. His eyes scanned the fractured pavement that the city should have patched, past the manhole slightly raised due to Salem’s harsh winters. He followed the small gravel road that led to the full parking lot of the new Denny’s. The brick symmetry of the building was pleasing. The late morning was cool and as sweet as a turkey leg, one of those days that just seemed to imply greatness. Before the cold snap that kills off the onions, before rain and sleet pressed down on you, before you felt the Earth’s gravity and the heaviness of snow. It was September and a good month to be alive, to feel the crisp air being sucked in through your nose and into your lungs, mixing with your capillaries and feeding your brain beautiful nutrients. It was a smart location for the new Denny’s because that’s where the last body was found and the Gulliver’s got a good price on the land. The plot overlooked the Stonehenge and from the furthest booth, you could clearly make out the slight edges of Canobie Lake. You could really appreciate Salem from the plastic seats of the new Denny’s. They found the body of the Agnew girl, the nurse, down by the edge of the property and that was that. Whoever had done the killings had stopped, moved on or died, whatever the kinds of people who do those things do when they are done. The town breathed a sigh of relief when the bodies stopped showing up and although the killer was never found, the people of Salem felt a release. Like the families of the dead, they moved on but remembered. The parking lot of the new Denny's was starting to fill up with old model cars and newer, cheaper, foreign makes while at Jim's, the hamburgers steamed and frizzled and fried. The blackened flat top grill was packed with sweating brown meat and Alan turned them over every now and then. Eventually he slid them into a large metal pan full of beef stock to keep them warm and moist. Alan was fascinated by the patterns the congealed grease left on the over-sized spatula as the beef and pork mixture dipped into the slime. That was the process for cooking the daily hamburger special at Jim's. The patties would swim around in the broth like hippos in some African swamp, grinding into each other and milling around, until their number was drawn, then Alan would toss it on a bun with a pile of fries and hand it across the counter to a dwindling amount of fairly unimpressed customers. “That fucking new fucking Denny's man. That fucking pousti Gulliver man. Fucking killing me.” Jim calmly said, pointing with a long knife, dripping with the guts of a deceased, over-ripe tomato. Jim's name wasn't really Jim, Alan knew that, everyone in Salem knew that, but it was easier than trying to pronounce a mystifying string of vowels with a few consonants mixed in, so everyone started calling him Jim. Jim was part of the only Greek family in town, which made him kind of famous. That's why he opened up Jim's. His business consisted of a ramshackle, tiny framed trailer that had been converted to accommodate a seating area, a marvel of city bi-law infractions. You could squeeze in about twenty-five people if they didn't mind touching each other, serving up homemade slaw, burgers, fries and a few other classic Greek dishes. The place had been bumping with tourists all summer long, but as the season waned, the khakied folk withdrew, taking their beige dogs and light brown children with them. Then it was all regulars, until the winter broke, and most of Jim's regulars were dying. The

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younger, hipper folks preferred some place a little younger and hipper, like the new Denny’s, which attracted a veritable who’s who of local Salem celebrities and city officials. Across Cluff, a toddler tripped and fell face first on the grass. A young mother grabbed the crying child and cradled it, flailing, in her arms as he wailed. Alan laughed, which he usually did when kids fell down, not a vindictive thing, just his natural response to life’s little failures. “What the fuck are you laughing about Al? You want to be over there, hanging out at that new fucking Denny’s,” Jim screamed, spitting bits of old tobacco and ash everywhere. “Don’t forget who butters your bread.” It was Alan who actually buttered Jim’s bread, but he thought wiser about bringing that up, so he continued to admire the field of meat in front of him, dreaming of Flanders Field and the fallen cows that made Jim’s possible. Better days will come, he thought, when the heat of the restaurant made his flesh scream and his rash flair up. He had to think that way. He was young and broke and had nothing to look forward to, so the only option was optimism.

hands and chanting ancient Druid texts, other times sitting in silence, just feeling the dilapidated power of the place, pleading and begging for a sign that they weren’t alone in the world, weren’t just made up of atoms and molecules, floating around, occasionally bumping into other bags of atoms, hoping for a mystical message, telling them that everything will be alright and that something, somehow, meant something. Alan enjoyed those quiet afternoons, the smell of burnt toast in the air mingling with Jim’s cigarette smoke. He relished silent contemplation on the utter silliness of life. The girl must have been hungry, she really plowed the food into her and had a little bit of mayo on the corner of her mouth as she turned and walked out the door and Alan wanted to grab her and turn her around and kiss off the mixture of soybean oil and vinegar, but he just watched her go. He watched the back of her head, her almost grey hair, her exposed black bra strap and smooth round butt shimmy out the door and at that moment, all he wanted

“YOU COULD REALLY APPRECIATE SALEM FROM THE PLASTIC SEATS OF THE NEW DENNY’S.” Around 11:45 a woman walked in, more like a girl, maybe fourteen. She had a ragged Death To The Pixies black t-shirt on that reminded Alan of the one his sister Cora used to wear when he was young. Before she disappeared. “Look at that nigger,” Jim whispered, more to himself than to anyone, motioning towards the girl, who was clearly white and just a little tanned from the passing summer. Jim didn’t like black people. “They just look so funny,” he would say on one of his more insightful days. He didn’t really like Mexicans or Indians either. Jim only really liked white people and went out of his way to try and only be around white people. This, Alan thought, was quite odd because most people in Salem didn’t think of Jim as white at all. More like an off-white or mauve. The girl ordered a hamburger, fries, and Coke and handed Alan over a crumpled ten dollar bill which he slipped into his pocket while Jim wasn’t looking. Alan watched the girl sit down. She took the best seat in the joint, the one that overlooks the old Stonehenge. Occasionally, after a mid-summer afternoon rush, Alan would sit in that same seat and watch all the outsiders and visitors and tourists, people that weren’t from around Salem, all gather around the beat up pile of rocks that constituted America’s Stonehenge, sometimes holding

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was for her to turn back to him and say, “Come with me. Wherever I’m going, come with me” and he would have left and maybe he could feel normal again and escape the days that lie ahead and fast forward all the shitty parts, stopping where he was happy and content and alive with pleasure, like a Newport menthol cigarette. After the tourists had gone back to their normal lives and their shitty jobs, after all Alan’s friends went back to school, working on building something that could be mistaken for a life if you squinted, the true personality of Alan’s hometown would settle back over Salem, like a cloud of mustard gas descending upon sleeping GI’s. “But you’ll never leave” a voice kept saying from way back inside of his mind, from the swampy depths of the deepest fissures of his brain. It was his Father, Burt Crawford’s voice and his Cub Scout leader, Freddy Barber’s voice and his high school football coach Donnie Davis’s voice (go Blue Devils!). Alan shook these bad thoughts away physically shaking his head from side to side, as if the actual movement would help him clear his head. It was Friday and nearly noon. The regulars would show up soon. Alan held his breath as long as he could and waited for the onslaught of customers to replace one craving with another.

“AS THE AFTERNOON WORE ON, SOMETH Sometimes when Alan would get off work, he’d go for a long walk out around the lake. Past the cabins and camps, past the rental properties that most of Salem couldn’t afford, through the trails where Jane Boroski was attacked, down the long path towards the beach. He would sit and listen to the thick Boston accents, the strange Quebec and Canadian ones and even some European sounds, but not usually. He’d sit down on the old bench, the one dedicated to George Swinnerton Parker of Parker Brothers fame. He’d roll a joint and watch girls run around and swim and flirt with the life guard, Buck Ewan. Alan would pick out which girls he’d like to fuck and which girl he’d like to marry and which girl he’d eventually get caught cheating with, breaking up the new marriage and crushing his young bride. Sometimes he’d see a girl he really liked and if he was stoned enough, he’d walk up to her and ask her some stupid question like “where’d you get that burrito from?” or “do you think the Sox have what it takes this year?” Alan was an Orioles fan. Sometimes the girls bit and talked for a while until it got awkward. Sometimes it got awkward really fast and he took off. Once in a while, before his bike got stolen, Alan would ride out past the Boys and Girls Club and down to Wheeler Ave, by the Massachusetts border. He’d blast down the little hill on Haverpoint Road, through Smoker’s Path, by his old school and look at the neighbourhood. Everyone was gone, moved out or on. His parents left for Concord a few years ago. They didn’t expect him to go with them, so he stayed. There was nothing else to do. 160 Plaisted Circle was where his old Dobie house stood. It was originally made for the GI’s coming home from World War 2. It was cramped but nice for a family of four. There was a big back yard that led out through a damp area into a little park with a swimming pool. Alan would bring his two Doberman Pinchers over to the pool and let kids go wild over the dogs. The town seemed endless then. Things changed when his family was cut by a quarter. Then the backyard seemed too big for one boy. Around dusk Alan would get tired and walk his bike back up the hill to the Grainery, a little rooming house run by a nice old lady named May. Her back was really bent and he had to tie her shoes for

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her, but she didn’t charge him too much for rent and sometimes she made his bed for him. He’d go up the creaky, old stairs, through the musty hallway, past Gray, who’d always try to sell him old plaid suits. Alan would fall into his bed and dream about work or sex or magnets. Sometimes he’d stay up late, smoking hash and watching videos produced by paranoid old white men who were scared of the future and worried about the technological enslavement of humanity and computer chips being implanted underneath people’s skin. He always found it comforting that people believed that stuff because if people believed that stuff, there was a chance of it actually happening and Alan thought that maybe taking emotion out of the equation could work for humans. Maybe a bit of clinical robotics was what the world needed to get back on its feet. The lineup at Jim’s was really a spectacle that Friday afternoon, a microcosm of Salem. Older white people who loved wet hamburgers. Also Cary Villa, Bob Villa’s nephew: strawberry milkshake and onion rings. There was Sandra Wilson, whose daughter Lara worked at the Rink: chicken fingers basket, there was Glen Fitzsimmonds, who once went to jail for killing his neighbour’s cat: two pogos and a large glass of milk. The cat deserved it. Then there was Eddie Fisher: Two piece cod and chips. Alan didn’t think Eddie was crazy. Eddie was always talking about what happened to him on his way to Boston in the winter of ‘67, driving his grey AMC Rambler Wagon with the wooden panels down the 101 towards Newton. His cousin, Charlie got called up to play with the Bruins and he got Eddie a ticket. The Bruins were riddled with injury that season. Centermen, Ted Green was hurt, so Charlie was in. That was months before the big Phil Esposito trade, so the Bruins needed some scoring. Eddie had his foot heavy on the pedal and was navigating the dark corners of the 101 like a champion, weaving in and out, passing cars on the shoulder, throwing empty cans of Pabsts at the Gordon Lightfoots, a term Eddie invented for slow drivers. He was making pretty good time to until around 6:13pm when his car stopped. The exact number of curse words that spewed forth from the man could never have been calculated, although, when

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HING STARTED TO FESTER INSIDE ALAN.” drunk enough, Eddie would try to repeat the barrage. That’s why he can’t go into the new Denny’s anymore. Eddie scampered out of his ride and popped the hood of the AMC. It was still in fine shape. He examined the American craftsmanship. Everything was in place. He removed the dip stick, checked the oil, wiped his oil covered hands on the back of his jeans, and looked angrily to the sky. His body felt electrified and numb as a bright flash of blue light destroyed the heavens. He smoothly levitated up into a shiny metallic disc, and Eddie slowly shit his pants. The last thing he remembered was thinking that they’d never let him through the gates at the Gardens. When Eddie came to, he was sitting front row center, watching the Bruins get walloped by the Montreal Canadiens, 6-2. He had a full beer in his hands, was missing both pinky fingers and his pants were mysteriously free from both shit and motor oil. The Bruins would later go on to be eliminated by the Canadians in the sixth game of the Conference Finals. The score would be 6-2. Eddie handed Alan a twenty with three fingers and Alan slid the twenty into his pocket “New Denny’s man. Don’t like that. Not one bit” Eddie Fisher said. Alan smiled and motioned for another customer to take his place. He had about seventy dollars in his pocket. Whenever the lineups would get too big at the new Denny’s, Jim’s got the spill over. This usually happened on Sundays or holidays. The crowd would shuffle in, disappointed that they couldn’t order a Grand Slam Breakfast or a Moon Over My Hammy or an Ultimate Skillet. As the afternoon wore on, something started to fester inside Alan. He didn’t know why he was stealing from Jim, who, although a racist and a homophobe, a sexist and a dimwit, hadn’t really treated him that poorly. Even though Alan was only allowed one fifteen minute break during an eight hour shift, Jim wasn’t an actual slave driver. Alan could have had it worse if he was born in Nigeria or Algeria or probably any country the ended in geria. He was allowed to think and dream of change. Still, something was eating at his stomach, and his back. Something was creeping up his spine.

The line of customers petered out, and Alan had the counter to himself. The sound of chewing had ceased and the slurping of sugary syrups had relented. The bills were paid and the ten percent tips were collected, half of which went to Alan. Jim started to break down the kitchen and the sound of scouring and scrubbing broke the peace. Jim was muttering under his breath about the UN and terrorism and different propositions. The sound was getting louder and louder, the scraping of metal Brillo pads on filthy pans increased second by second. There was a cloud of flat top cleaner steam that flooded out of the kitchen and into Alan’s nostrils and he just stared at the new Denny’s, with the polished cutlery and clean, freshly pressed linens that were such a mystery to him. Slowly, all the noise started to fade, to drift off to some place where outside stimuli goes when no one is paying attention to it and Alan’s legs began to vibrate. At first he thought there was an earthquake or he was having a seizure, the kind where your brain gets fried, but he was still aware that he was aware. His legs started walking on their own and his arms began swaying as he walked out from behind the counter and towards the door. He was being pulled towards the new Denny’s, with its lovely, brightly lit bits of flair and large yellow sign and sweet young servers. Alan heard Jim yell. His hands mechanically undid the knot of his apron. He watched as the dirty thing arced across the air and hit Jim in the face. The welcome bells clanged as he left Jim’s for the last time, welcoming Alan out into the cool September air. The bells seemed to signify something of importance. Alan walked across Cluff Crossing, his feet were careful to not trip over the fractured pavement and slightly raised manhole. He felt the cold metal of the door handle on his hands as his pinky fingers dissolved. Something slipped Alan a menu and as he was guided towards a swelling large booth, he slowly shit his pants.

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Thank You For Understanding (If I listened closely I could hear the sky falling) J esse Gotfrit

here are those who are included, and those who are not. Those who are included feel the seriousness and possibility of life everyday. They venerate everything silently. They are the nurses who work double shifts in emergency wards. They are the social workers that bring first aid kits to unconscious abusers on cold evenings. They carry on tired without praise. Their humbleness is what allows them to see the subtlety of God’s glory in the nuances of personality that come from the beaten and bruised, that arise when the human spirit is tested with adversity. In my early life I felt as if I were one of those who is un-included.

That evening I had that same, familiar sensation, and was scared like a child. I was nervous like when I was a pre-teen, when girls would look at me and I’d feel strange. It wasn’t entirely nervousness and strangeness, but a type of misunderstood and disturbing solidarity. I remember those days being ripe with warmth and undiscovered emotion, as well as coloured with guilt and derision. I remember derisive laughter, and feeling confusion emanate through my body like a sickness. Then years later, in that cold, small room, walled mostly with large windows, and dying trees and parked cars laying in a layer of mist outside, I began to exhale this fever. It began with affection. I was drunk and I stroked his hair and I didn’t even realize for a few minutes that I was doing it. He didn’t react in those early moments. ‘Why are you brushing my hair back?’ he finally said. I quickly withdrew my hand when I understood what I was doing. A flush of regrets reddened my body. I became silent and little and felt threatened. He then got up, to make eggs he said. I could tell he was slightly disturbed from his original temperament, which was tranquil as we lay, sharing a single bed, watching a movie. It was there that I had committed my presumptuous act, and I then slid onto the floor, legs outstretched, looking remorseful. I awaited more reaction intently, to see if I had done wrong. Rather, I knew I had done something wrong, and was anticipating the impending consequences. We hadn’t known each other for that long. I was sure he was straight. Before going into the kitchen he looked at me, stretching his arm, and said casually, ‘I guess that’s what faggots do’, in a manner that was indistinguishable between snide and accepting. Nothing very drastic changed, however, when we both entered the kitchen. I watched him make eggs and we talked as we normally did. I put my feet up on the table. I could not tell if what I had done was taboo for him, nevertheless I felt like I was beneath a shadow. ‘Sometimes when I look at people,’ he said, ‘even friends and acquaintances, I feel I can see through them, their outer appearance, their face and body, that at other times occupy me entirely and make me forget there is a soul beneath the body. Then sometimes I am deeply shallow. I judge everyone superficially, and feel as if everyone’s appearance in some way informs who they really are.’

TARTAN

FICTION

THANK YOU FOR UNDERSTANDING

I felt as if I was being x-rayed, but listened carefully all the same. ‘Does this make you lose any love or affection for your friends?’ ‘Yes completely.’ ‘That’s a shame’ I said. ‘Not really’ he said sheepishly, and I knew that he was viewing me in the simplest terms. But I didn’t mind. I kept on thinking about acceptance, and the feeling of being a ghost inhabiting a body without a real connection to its surroundings. As well about what I had, as a child, bitterly thought of as God’s exclusivity, and came to think that perhaps this form of love that I was feeling was something God is simply not able to bestow. ‘Thank you for understanding’ I said. He looked at me sharply and did not respond, but then nodded with a tepid smile and pretended to be distracted by his cooking. I wondered if at any moment he would tell

that varies slightly each time. It involves him and I, close, barely clothed, underneath white sheets, warm, always at the peak of daytime, under sunlight. We are practically in a cocoon, motioning over each other’s skin steadily with deliberation. There is gripping of sheets and also body, and squeezing and pressing, so that our skin twists and whitens, and folds in undulations like the kneading of bread, channeling euphoric pinches of sensitivity through our nervous systems, creating chills of hot and cold, making us close our eyes and fall into each other; our fingertips and lips burning. Feeling our pleasure grow over matter. We cover ourselves completely with sheets so that the sunlight dims and becomes shallow, and our breathing becomes more noticeable and hot. During the days after these dreams he continues to run my mind constantly, making it difficult to concentrate or even sit still. At the worst I experience an ugly mixture of envy and possessiveness at the thought of him. At the best

“...I BEGAN TO EXHALE THIS FEVER.” me to leave, or make a more extensive remark, but he remained in weightless silence, while I felt like I was balancing on a bridge between two voids, trying to decide which fall would be deeper. Then we ate together, sitting across from each other silently. All the while I wondered if the soul is gendered, and decided it is not. I thought also of the covenant, of how sacred marriage is meant to be between a man and a woman, and understood this to be an incomplete picture if it is incompatible with the desires of the soul. I was still unsure, however, if my love was anything other than a product of some repugnant perversion that occurred during my formative years, or worse still a punitive act of repulsion towards my self; or contrarily, if it is a purer love, being without the intricate differences of the opposite sex. For even the most inseparable bond between a male and female has to navigate the inherent divisions of gender, which infringe upon what could be an indivisible unity of spirit, mind, and flesh. I think of a reoccurring dream, which I’ve had only twice,

TARTAN

of times he is goodness, and a testament to the harshness of life. I looked across at him and thought of my life as a contradiction, a fringe in the seams, which has, I suppose, allowed me to see the traces of blackish gray importance in the periphery of our vision, that to the untrained eye look merely like absences of light. He got up and took my plate to the sink, whistling to himself. I started to smoke a cigarette, flicking the ash out the window into the wind. Outside it was damp and cold, and still foggy. I could hear cars driving on the highway a block away from the house, and saw the occasional porch light flicker on. If I listened closely I could hear the sky falling. ‘I think I’m in love with you’ I said. He turned around. ‘You don’t want to be in love with me’ he said sincerely, and returned to washing dishes.

POETRY

Nebula III Lukas G rajauskas We lie in each other’s arms. Love stained sheets around us whorled, like a galaxy seen from a distant eye. The searing heat from your skin pours into mine each cell burning, like a microscopic star —a furnace of life. Metabolism and creation. The dark and the cold fills the room around us, tries to creep into our skin —death and emptiness. A cold destruction that my cells ceaselessly fight. Your arms, your stars, burn beside me. As we lay silent, motionless in each other’s embrace, our cells rage and burn ceaselessly, in an endless battle against death and the night.

TARTAN

Illustration by Zach Chan

Who's Afraid of Thomas Wolfe?

FICTION

Sam Fraser

homas Wolfe once said, “You can’t go home again.” To wit: once you’ve been out into the great wide world and seen what it has to offer, it’s always going to be a disappointment going back to the place you grew up. It’ll always feel smaller and more lacklustre than you remember.

Take me for example: my name is Hannah Hastings, and the home I can never go back to is the town of Northfield, British Columbia. It’s a pretty small place in the Southern Interior – about five or six thousand people altogether, and not a whole lot goes on from day to day. After my fiancé (then boyfriend) Bruce and I graduated high school, the first thing we did was head out for Metro Vancouver. We enroled at Simon Fraser University together and lived in residence on the mountain, working to support ourselves: I waited tables at a restaurant on Commercial Drive, and he worked in a sporting goods store in Kitsilano. Unfortunately, things took a turn for the worse when we got our degrees. We had to find a new place to live, which took a few months on its own, and when we did we had to save every penny we had just to afford it. We scrimped and saved for eight months to keep our heads above water, and even so we still had to go to my parents for help twice. And then, just a couple weeks ago, Bruce lost his job when a development firm bought the store he worked at so they could tear it down and put up condos. We did the math about a half dozen times, but there was only one option: if we wanted to make things work, we would have to move back home. As I write this, we’re driving into Northfield. On the outskirts of town, there’s a large wooden sign standing in a grass field to the right of the road. It’s got big, bold, capital letters on it in that proudly exclaim, “WELCOME TO NORTHFIELD!” Below that, in less proud, less bold letters, it says, “Using the Gregorian calendar since 1998.” Gee, it’s good to be home. I’d talked things over with my mom a few days before we left Vancouver, and she was more than willing to let me and Bruce stay at the house until we got things sorted out. She even fixed up my old bedroom the way I’d left it. When Bruce and I got to the house, my whole family was out in the front yard waiting to greet us. I hadn’t been home since Christmas, and seeing them all in such a good mood made me wonder why I didn’t visit more often. They all helped carry Bruce’s and my stuff into the house and then we spent the next three hours in the living room, catching up and just having a great time. But then... my dad came home… and I remembered why. ***

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Before I go any further, dear reader, you need to understand a few things about my family. Firstly, and most importantly, we Hastings come from some seriously old money. See, Northfield (and most of the surrounding area) began life as a fur-trading post in the 1830s. My greatgreat-great-great uncle was a wealthy merchant from Britain who came over to Canada with the HBC to help get the establishment on its feet (and supposedly get out of paying a gambling debt to the Duke of Wellington) and our family’s been here ever since. My grandfather owns half the news media in this part of the province and my dad’s been the Mayor of Northfield for about as long as I’ve been alive. My family’s name carries a lot of weight in this area, and my dad is the kind of guy who will never fail to remind people of that fact. And that’s the big problem: my name comes packaged with a lot of hoity-toity aristocratic BS, and I’ve always wanted to keep my distance from that. That’s the main reason why Bruce and I worked so hard to support ourselves when we lived in the city. I wanted to prove to myself that I could live a successful life without leeching off my family’s money.

Martini! Here! Now!” Our butler Hawkins (remember what I said about hoity-toity aristocratic BS?) nodded wearily and rose from the chair where he was sitting. He walked through to the kitchen, where there was a small liquor cabinet, and began preparing my dad a drink. My dad sank lower on the couch and groaned. “On second thought, Hawkins, I’m in no mood to wait! Just come in here and pour the gin and vermouth right in my mouth! I’ll gargle a bit and hopefully that’ll have the desired effect!” He paused and then added, “Better yet, just inject it right into my veins! I don’t even care at this point! I am just...” He groaned again and ran a hand through his hair. “I am done with this day!” My dad has a bad habit of acting like he’s the only person on Earth, and it sometimes takes a lot of effort to remind him that he’s not. I sat up straight in the hope that he’d notice me and waved to him. “Um... Dad?” “I mean first the school board’s begging for funds to renovate the gym at Northfield Elementary, and I have to tell them we don’t have the funds because we still have to fix all those bloody potholes on Main Street...”

***

“I WANTED TO PROVE TO MYSELF THAT I COULD LIVE A SUCC I distinctly remember it was about 5:30 in the afternoon when I heard the front door slam. My sister Jane was telling me about her postsecondary plans for next year when Dad came stomping into the living room. He was muttering and swearing under his breath, and his face was a much darker, more dangerous shade of red than it normally is. My mom got up to greet him, but Dad just shut his eyes and winced, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Please, Fiona, not now,” he grumbled. “I’ve had an utterly ghastly day!” Then he stomped over to the couch and threw himself down upon it, stretching across its entire length. I don’t think he even realized Bruce and my brothers had been sitting there, but they all jumped out of the way as he collapsed. Dad threw his hands up toward the ceiling and bellowed, “WHO WILL RID ME OF THIS TURBULENT DEPUTY MAYOR?!”

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“Dad?” “And then Deputy bloody Mayor bloody Stanford somehow twists that around and accuses me of ‘not being invested in our children’s education’, whatever the hell that means!” “Dad? Hellooo?” “And then somehow he convinces half the City Council that I have to do more to uphold this town’s educational infrastructure, all the while the other half is whining about the potholes, and now I’ve got one group of idiots dragging me in one direction, another group of idiots dragging me in the other direction... I swear to God, I feel like Damocles sometimes! Only instead of a sword dangling above my head, it’s a bunch of idiots!” I clapped my hands loudly and shouted, “DAD!”

Mom went over to the couch and tried to get his attention. “Sam? Honey? Aren’t you going to say ‘Hi’ to-”

Dad gave me a deer-in-the-headlights look and said, “Where the hell did you come from?”

Without looking away from the ceiling, Dad put a finger to Mom’s lips and shook his head. “Up-bup-bup-bup-bupbup! Fiona, you know the rules: no personal business until I’ve had at least one drink.” With the same hand, he then snapped his fingers and shouted at the ceiling, “Hawkins!

Bruce replied that we’d been here all afternoon, but Dad just looked completely lost. My mom tried to walk him through it in the most patient tone she could manage, and reminded him that they’d already discussed this arrangement between them.

WHO’S AFRAID OF THOMAS WOLFE?

Dad sat up and looked at her incredulously. “When did we discuss that?! I have absolutely no recollection of such a conversation ever occurring!” “It occurred three times!” Mom replied hotly. “Are you absolutely positive I was in the room for those conversations?” Dad asked. “Yes! You nodded your head and said it would be fine!” Dad shot to his feet and spluttered, “Well, for God’s sake, woman! Just because I nod my head when others are speaking to me doesn’t mean I’m listening! I would think you would have learned that by now!” Somewhere across the room, my brother Jamie smirked. “Yes, clearly this is all Mom’s fault for thinking you would give more than two seconds of thought to someone other than yourself...” “See?” Dad bellowed. “He gets it!” Then he turned and pointed at me. “You. My study. Now.” Without another word, Dad turned and marched out of the living room. I followed him at a safe distance, because I knew that he was dangerously close to ‘going off on one’, as my grandfather would say. We walked upstairs to the second floor and Dad directed me into the study, closing

FICTION

options for yourself! Pick yourself up and tell the system it answers to you!” I started to ask him what that meant, but before I’d even finished the sentence he snapped, “It means get out there and pull your own bloody weight! Your mother and I aren’t going to be here forever, so you need to realize you won’t always have a cushion to land on when you fall! You’ve already come back for money twice since you graduated. I was willing to help you then because you are my daughter. But this? No, I’m sorry, this is just too much! For God’s sake, you’re 23! You should at least be able to live on your own!” And that’s when I snapped. The hypocrisy of that statement was positively blinding. My dad had inherited everything he’d ever had. He’d gone to one of the best schools in the country on a trust fund, he had used his dad’s media pull to secure a cushy job at City Hall, and then he had used a combination of family money and that same media pull to launch a full-on political coup. All of his power and influence was a direct result of his winning the genetic lottery, and the only reason he’d gotten to where he was today was because other people had given him a leg up. And, in the midst of this white-hot fury, there came a

CESSFUL LIFE WITHOUT LEECHING OFF MY FAMILY’S MONEY.” the door behind him. He sat in a large burgundy armchair in the corner and gestured to a chair across from him, motioning for me to sit. I did so, and waited patiently for him to speak, like the calm before the storm. After what seemed like an uncomfortably long silence, he finally said, “So. Hannah. Walk me through this once. Slowly, if you please.” As patiently as I could, I explained how Bruce and I had hit a financial rough patch and couldn’t afford to keep living in the city. I laid out all the grisly details and I told him the arrangement was only temporary. “I would certainly hope so,” he interrupted curtly. I tried to keep my voice level. “Believe me, this isn’t easy for me either, but it’s not like Bruce and I have a whole lot of options.” Dad scoffed and shook his head. “‘Not a lot of options’? For God’s sake, listen to yourself! You are a Hastings, young lady, and a Hastings does not settle for ‘not a lot of options’! We do not let the system knock us down, alright? We are the system! We do not play by the rules, we make the rules! So I don’t want to hear how you’re out of options! I want you to go out there and make some new

revelation. Ever since I left home, I had been busting my ass to pay for school and keep my head above water, and having to go to my parents for financial help had been like chewing off my own arm. At the time, I hadn’t been able to figure out why that was, but now I knew. I didn’t want my mom and dad’s help. I didn’t want to end up like my dad, or my granddad, or any of the generations of Hastings before them. I didn’t want to be one of those arrogant, conceited snobs who coasts through life without a care in the world, who steps absentmindedly over the broken backs of the working classes that keep the ones at the top afloat on a sea of blood, sweat, and tears. It took me longer than I would care to admit to notice that I was on my feet, screaming all of this and more, hurling a scathing tirade at my dad while he sat watching me in haughty, wrathful silence. “You want to know something?” I finished. “I did everything in my power to not end up a Hastings except change my damn name. And now that Bruce and I are getting married, I may just do that anyway.” While my dad sat and glowered at me, I turned on my heels and marched toward the door of the study. “Where do you think you’re going?” he asked finally.

TARTAN

Without turning to look at him, I said, “I’m going to type up some resumés so I can go job hunting tomorrow. Then, as soon as I’ve done that, I’m packing up and I’m leaving. There are tons of people in this town who would be glad to put me and Bruce up for a while.” Before Dad could respond, I slammed the door on him. Then I smiled to myself. I’d gotten the last word. Dad hates when someone else has the last word. *** Two weeks since my big fight with Dad. Two goddamn weeks, and not once has the man called to apologize. To his credit, my uncle Teddy has been super chill about letting us stay with him, and he even helped set me up for a couple of interviews when I started my job hunt. Nothing came of them, but at least he tried, which is more than can be said of some people. The problem with a place like Northfield is that there’s only so many summer jobs to go around in the first place, and most of those usually get snapped up by the local high school kids within the first couple weeks of June. It was already July by the time Bruce and I returned to Northfield, so I was pretty SOL on that front. Eventually, I got so damn desperate for work that I applied for and got a job at a fast-food restaurant in the nearby town of Cedar Falls. This was pretty much rock bottom for me: I’ve been a vegetarian since I was 11, and some of the practices this particular chain engages in are... well, my spellchecker doesn’t recognize “Mengele-esque” as a word, but let’s just say it’s pretty appalling how these people treat animals (it’s also worth noting that, according to their corporate line, customers and employees also fall under the heading of “animals”). But what’s worse is that the job is in Cedar Falls. That probably won’t mean anything to you, but then you didn’t grow up around here. See, Northfield and Cedar Falls have always had a bitter – and I mean capital ‘B’ bitter – cross-town rivalry. You think there’s a strong divide between Pepsi and Coke fans, or console gamers and PC gamers, or the Canucks and the Flames? Brother, you ain’t seen nothing until you’ve locked a Northfieldian and a Cedar Fallsian in a room together. Quite frankly, you’d best count yourself lucky if they both come out of that room with all their teeth. And remember what I said earlier about my family’s position in Northfield? Well, as far as a lot of people around here are concerned, the Hastings family’s wealth and influence basically means we are Northfield, in the same way that the royal family is the UK or the US President is America. For a born-and-bred Northfieldian vegetarian with a serious public profile to apply for a McJob in a town with a massive hate-boner for my home and my family is like cutting off my own arm with a rusty paring knife and dressing the wound in battery acid, barbed wire, lemon juice,

TARTAN

and rock salt. But hey, it’s still easier than trying to reason with my dad. *** I’m in hell. I am literally in hell. I’ve been up to my eyeballs in fryer grease, toddler puke, and God knows what else for the past three weeks, and I’m already sick of it. I’ve been working double shifts the last five days straight. I think I’ve had about six hours of sleep in the past week. When I’m not being insulted by customers because they can, quote, “smell the stink of Northfield on me,” I’m getting a lot of really inappropriate sexual comments from the 17-year-old assistant manager, even though I’VE TOLD YOU ABOUT EIGHTEEN TIMES I’M ENGAGED, RICKY! My second day here I spent about an hour in the ladies’ room throwing up because of all the stress I’m under, and lately I’ve taken to crying in the shower when I get home because oh dear God how is this my life?! I am violating every principle I believe in just by being here, and I am legitimately starting to wonder if homelessness would not be a preferable option to working one more day here. I mean, some of the overpasses in Northfield are pretty nice, and if you throw down a tarp or a nice piece of cardboard, you could make a decent living space for yourself... Somewhere around lunchtime today, I got stuck cleaning out the children’s play area. A young kid had had an “accident” in the ball pit, and the smell had caused another kid to throw up onto a third kid, and that kid had started crying, which started all the other kids crying, which killed the cat that ate the rat that lived in the house that Hannah built... I really thought things couldn’t get much worse than that. And then... Dad walked in. He was with Jane. She was leading him by the hand and had a very weary expression on her face, while he had his eyes shut tight and was clutching a large wooden crucifix to his chest. Now that’s weird, even for him, but it was nothing compared to the garlic bulbs hanging around his neck and the crucifix sticking out his back pocket. Dad was murmuring a silent prayer under his breath, so Jane snapped her fingers to get his attention and told him to open his eyes. As soon as he saw me, Dad did a double take and stared at me like I’d grown a second head. He couldn’t believe it was me. I just gave him a weak wave with one hand while I tried to stifle a yawn with the other. Jane explained that she and I had talked on the phone the other day, she’d told Dad how completely miserable I was. She had then twisted his arm until he’d agreed to talk with me, and was determined that none of us would leave this restaurant until we’d come to some kind of understanding. I dropped what I was doing and walked with Dad and Jane to

WHO’S AFRAID OF THOMAS WOLFE?

a table at the very back of the restaurant. Jane sat beside Dad on one side and I sat on the other, looking warily at him. We just sat there in silence for a few minutes and glared at each other, and then I said, “So... you’re looking well...” (Hey, I had to break the ice somehow, alright?) After another minute, Dad replied, “Yes, and you look... well, to put it frankly, completely bloody awful.” “Well, what do you expect? This is what life looks like when you actually have to work for a living.” He groaned. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Hannah, what do you want me to say? That I was wrong?! That I should give you free rein to just sponge off family money whenever it suits your fancy?” “No, but it wouldn’t kill you to offer a small helping hand now and then!” “Hasn’t it occurred to you by now that I’m doing this for your benefit?” “Oh, really?! Please, enlighten me, Father, how is any of this to my benefit?” “BECAUSE YOU WERE RIGHT, OKAY?!” “Wait,” I said, a bit shocked, “what did you say?” He sighed and slumped back in his seat. “You were right. What you said that day you stormed out was absolutely true. About how I’ve won the genetic lottery and had everything handed to me and blah blah blah. You’re right. I am quite possibly the luckiest sonofabitch for fifty clicks in any direction.” “And so what does this have to do with me?” “Think about it, Hannah! I have pretty much everything a man could ever want in life and more! And look at what a grade ‘A’ basket case I am! I mean I drink, I smoke, I gamble, I burn people in effigy... hell, I’m pretty sure I’ve actually engaged in cannibalism at one point in my life!” Jane looked at him in shock and said, “Wait, what?!” Dad shrugged bashfully. “Yeah, what can I say...? I was at a dinner party with these East Asian dignitaries about six years ago and I wasn’t fully up to speed on the language and customs, but I definitely heard the words ‘long pig’ getting tossed about when they were serving the entrées...” He shook his head and said, “Look, my accidental consumption of human flesh is not the issue! The point is you’re a bright kid, Hannah. There is no doubt in my mind that you could do great things if you applied yourself. But that’s the key: if you apply yourself. I didn’t even start putting any effort into my life until I was in university, but by that time I was already well on my way to being the man I am now.” “The raving, crucifix-wielding, garlic-wearing lunatic?” I asked slyly. Dad chuckled and shook his head. “OK, A: I completely deserve that, and B: yes. Your grandfather’s the same way as was his dad

FICTION

before him and his dad before him. And that’s where you come in, Hannah. You’re different from us. When you went off to school under your own steam, I was secretly kind of impressed. You had the option to coast like so many generations of your ancestors, and you didn’t take it. But then you came back for help and I started to panic. I didn’t... I guess I didn’t want you to turn into me.” I didn’t say anything for nearly a full minute. My dad always acted like he was the king of the world, the most perfect and amazing person in the room. He had an ego the size of Texas and he never second-guessed himself. I think this was the most humility he’d ever shown before another person. I put my hand on his and looked in his eyes. “Dad, I’m not going to be that. I’m not going to be you. I think all this that I’ve been doing for the last six weeks proves pretty well that I don’t want to coast. If I have an option between the easy way and the hard way, I’m going to take the hard way. But sometimes, when the hard way gets too hard, it doesn’t hurt to have someone who’s got your back. When Bruce and I were living in the city, we knew tons of people who either moved back in with their parents or never left in the first place because they couldn’t afford anything else. And most of them are still working their asses off to make a future for themselves that’s just a tiny bit brighter. That’s all I really need is that little boost. I mean, there’s no shame in throwing a drowning woman a life preserver, right?” Dad thought about this for a minute and then nodded his head slowly. “Alright. I suppose that’s fair. I’m not going to hand you everything on a silver platter, but I guess it couldn’t hurt to pass you the salt once in a while.” I smiled and said, “I have absolutely no idea what that means.” He smiled back and said, “To be perfectly honest, neither do I. It’s just you had such a good speech there that I wanted to punctuate it with something deep and poetic. I think it kind of got away from me.” I held out my hand and said, “Truce?” He shook my hand with an approving nod and said, “Truce. And for what it’s worth, I am sorry for the things I said.”

“Me too.” ***

I quit my job in Cedar Falls that same day and Bruce and I returned home. About six weeks later, the comic book store in Northfield started looking for a new assistant manager and I got the job. Now I’m working five days a week and making almost four times what I made before. We still can’t quite afford to move back to Vancouver, but maybe we don’t need to. There are some really nice apartments going cheap over in Brewerton, about forty minutes south of here... You know, maybe Wolfe had it wrong... Maybe you can go home again...

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POETRY

Consortium Sam Weselowski The leaves are as red as rosary. I look as though you were moving your hand in your hair like a child absently at an abacus. Some trees trace themselves above us, drifting their arms into each other with their fists blown open to touch. We are at the margin of the forest beside the sea. I think the days are performed in full, meeting us where we are, each agreeing with the next, with you, with myself. Illustration by Momo Lin

Atlantis

and

You

Anisa Dhanji You are not the sea to me anymore. You are a tsunami, and I, an island. You kiss my shores gently, and then all at once. Your hands curve around this green body, your eyelids line the waters that our moon perpetuates, your breath pushes my rivers forward. But the thought of your fingers touching another island, your words embracing unfamiliar shores and hugging other archipelagos, it gives me shivers; I quake. And my ancient city bones fall.

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Illustration by Ariel Mitchell

Illustration by Zach Chan

POETRY

145 Rachel Wong

It’s the most mundane task To wait your turn Shuffle your feet to the front of the line You step aboard Tap in and slowly look around As someone once infamously said Which seat should I take? But there’s nothing left so you decide to stand You tower over Macbooks and Herschel backpacks Wisps of gossip and the sound of snoring backed by Someone’s electronica thudding through their headphones Sighs of impatience as you run through the laundry list of tasks to do today Procrastination sandwiched in between “studying” Wishing you had had coffee or breakfast this morning until Someone shifts their position and knocks you out of your concentration You bite your tongue from saying something and roll your eyes Slipping into your daydream, eyes closing You get comfortable until You feel yourself falling forward Eyes open, arrived at destination Let your day begin

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POETRY

Blason

for a

Stranger

Kyle Michels

your mirror lips extend my own riddles i mouth you deftly decode and sweetly spit back into me key swap gold your seaweed hair captures sight locks bait and hook and fasten light and strands corral in pulsing sea net fish tight your chocolate eyes are toffee chew liquorice lashes drip candies through yummy chunks of honey rubies stick drip glue your ivory limbs tug blood from skin suck watery soil draw spoils within and soothe the ground with dewed leaves seed blown wind your opal mind is treasure massed galactic depth and gravity grasped in its nuance the holy glean full rich cache your dominion meets my own perfumed valleys greet the glow of warm eves sweating ripe cherries star crown home

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Here Iker Zarebski

POETRY

I’m sitting here {on this thorny chair} reading Neruda and Bukowski, actually no, I’m not reading {I tried and got tired of it} but I am listening to Lana Del Rey, to her dripping voice {so wet, so embellished} while I also write and think. But none of that matters {I don’t write to talk about such things} what I want to say is this: I’m afraid {I feel this fear deep inside} it unrolls on my conscience as waves of pungent stone, cold stone, {as darkened snow over that mountain, over my soul}. I feel this fear {that one that nearly seduces you} that fear made of a warm mirror {that melts and spills} that is thick and speaks to you. I am afraid but I’m still here {I still breathe and beat} and I read Neruda, Bukowski, {I listen to Lana} and I write {I write it with a pen and ink} with a lively hand, a hand that sees everything {almost all} but that has not seen fear.

Illustration by Serena Chan

TARTAN

POETRY

Run River

Rajdeep K. G rewal

Run is agile, moves earth, strides capture the length of land follow expansive pace; spirals into pools of crystal transparent hair string shape together, into light mass granules of fluid enter extremities, she screams rapid with mist, and fuses with debris woodland poking at her curves, roots bury their struggle in her liquid constitution, ground revels in her violence she thrashes with indifference yet, her heart pumps shape into landscape without asking young foraging water wants to pound, fluid body make new paths, an aggressive maker is the inconsiderate elegance of moving, and she speaks sounds when streaming low lying river thrust enmesh with gapping rock-bed, push water muscle foam and cuss persist like mad living vein a passage water chiseling images of time, be an ongoing picture before you blend with ocean and no longer sit in mind, Run is a river, liberating herself in action, calm are her finger tips as she gestures life in,

TARTAN

films of fluid glaze pebbles, and invite a young girl to look down into aquatic stone the girl’s body is flat with youth, dressed neatly, all she’s ever known is city. Her body aches from what seems like Run’s journey her name is River, named by her unusual parents she left home searching name her title left dead, hanging on school paper arbitrarily, teachers repeatedly call “River” forward and in their repetition she asked, “what is my name, what is my title?” River’s eyes fill with mosaic colour, from the aquatic stone. Run has ran her distance; River met her at her stillness Run’s water power exerted and, youth that lies beyond water feels Run’s quiet hurting, both bodies pain in desire, Run & River hear each other’s call, River peels off socks tip toes into shallow water, curls feet to pebbles absorbs jagged experience, palms squeeze erosion, and she is able to feel Run’s journey. River strums at her reflection, and submerges in shallow water.

Photo by Jonathan VanElslander