November 2011

OCCUPIED

NOV 11

NEWS Postal workers occupy TD Bank on Bay Street

By Mick Sweetman An estimated 900 union and community protesters occupied the intersection of King and Bay Streets in the heart of Toronto’s financial district on the afternoon of October 28.

Carrying a banner stating, “Capitalism doesn’t work for workers. CUPW-STTP” and signs reading “Postal workers are part of the 99 per cent,” protesters marched up Bay Street from the Westin Harbour Castle hotel where postal workers from across the country are attending their union’s national convention.

Denis Lemelin, national president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) said, “That’s why we’re all here today, we came with a message for the one per cent. Regarding the centre of power in the financial district, we came with a message and we say it loud, ‘You are wrong!’”

A group of five postal workers staged an impromptu occupation inside the TD Bank where the Occupy Toronto protest started on October 15.

“There’s some postal workers occupying the Toronto Dominion Bank because they’re so pissed off at the banks they couldn’t help themselves,” CUPW national union representative Dave Bleakney announced to the crowd.

“No one, no politician, no police, and no capitalist pig in an ivory tower will ever deny us what is ours. We’re here to say if you don’t give it to us, we shall take it and this rotten system will be no more!” said Bleakney as workers chanted, “So-So-So-Solidarity!” outside to support the sit-down protesters.

After being escorted out of the bank by police, one of the sit-down protesters, who only gave his first name – Darcy – related how people inside the bank reacted, “We had people telling us that they understood exactly why we were there. They actually gave us new targets, they told us we should go talk to the Hydro companies because their charges are ridiculous. They told us we should go talk to the government about what’s been happening. I think ordinary Canadians are fed up.”

When asked the reason for the sit-in Darcy said, “We just wanted to make sure that people realize that the Occupy movement is alive and well here in Canada and that it’s continuing to grow.”

Sid Ryan, president of the Ontario Federation of Labour, took on reports that the Mayor of Toronto wants to evict Occupy Toronto: “Rob Ford you’ve said that you’re going to go in and dismantle the occupation in St James park. Let me tell you Rob Ford, you’ve got a fight with the labour movement in Ontario if you do.”

After waiting for the cheering crowd to subside Ryan continued, “If you move against the occupation. If you try to destroy the ability of the citizens of this community to voice their opinions against the banks, against the financial sector and against the greedy one per cent, then you’ve got a major fight on your hands with the labour movement and with Occupy Toronto.”

The crowd answered Ryan’s remarks with loud chants of “General strike! General strike!” referring to a strike by all workers in a city, province or country that echoes a call for a general strike in Oakland, California in the wake of the violent eviction of Occupy Oakland by police on

October 26.

Steelworker Fernando Silva, a worker at Infinity Rubber who has been on strike for 23 months, spoke passionately in Spanish through a translator, “We have been on strike for almost two years. You know why we’re [still] in a strike? Because the government is allowing agency workers, scabs, to replace us. What the strike means to us is brothers have had to sell their houses and return their cars. People like me are in court because we cannot pay what we have to pay. I am really proud to be here and I look at all of you and I know our fight will be successful.”

Across the street from Silva stood the flagship branch of the Bank of Montreal, which granted a $7.5 million loan to Infinity Rubber at five per cent interest to replace an 18 per cent interest loan from another lender. Union members point to this loan as a key reason their strike has dragged on to become one of the longest in the history of Toronto.

Liisa Schofield from the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty took aim at the provincial government lack of responsibility.

“Last year, under Dalton McGuinty’s provincial Liberal government, we saw the gutting of the special diet allowance. That’s a food benefit for people on social assistance rates that are despicably low. A single person on welfare in Ontario is trying to survive on just $592 a month.

At the same time that this government cut the special diet and gutted that program they gave a $4.5 billion tax break to corporations over the next three years.”

“We just wanted to make sure that people realize that the Occupy movement is alive and well here in Canada and that it’s continuing to grow.”

Originally published at rabble.ca.

Thousands Occupy Toronto in October

By Mai Habib United without one single cause, the Occupy movement swept the streets of downtown Toronto on Saturday October 17 and Sunday October 18 united by their distaste for corporate greed and social injustice – and of course, unity with the rest of the world’s Occupy movements.

Marching down Bay St. and chanting, “We are the 99 per cent” a few thousand people in Toronto united to express their frustration with corporate Canada and the capitalist slope this country is heading down with a Conservative majority.

Occupy Toronto joined protesters in most major North American cities and on every continent to protest the current global crisis of capitalism. Occupy Protesters in America were protesting job cuts, while European occupiers protested austerity measures and debt crises.

In Toronto, protesters were also standing in solidarity with others around the globe.

Vandad Kardar was a young protester at the rally. He said that, “after watching a summer of massive change, it’s hard to sit back and be docile. Canadians have had enough and they don’t want to sit back and watch the rest of the world change.”

Many protesters were also standing in solidarity with the Arab Spring countries, the Palestinian bid for statehood, and the unemployed.

Kardar explained that the Anti-Apartheid banners and the 99 per cent chants were Toronto’s way of “standing in solidarity with the whole world.”

Canadian journalist and activist Judy Rebick said that she’s not surprised at the outcry

2 ryersonfreepress.ca

from the youth. “Since proroguing of parliament and the Facebook organized protest from that, there has been a huge social media shift and activist shift in youth.” Rebick explained that we are witnessing the newest generation of social activism based on social media.

17-year-old Jonathan Brown Gilbert was at Occupy Toronto to standing in unity. When questioned why he was there, Jonathan explained that he knows Canada isn’t like the U.S. with unemployment. He said, “this isn’t Protest Wall Street but Canada is slipping closer and closer [to that point] with the disappearance of social welfare and lower corporate taxes.”

Michele Duquet, a green-product store owner, came out to protest corporate greed as well.

She said that, “the message here is a message of hope.” Her eco-friendly approach to business is much different than corporations she says, “when corporations make their decisions, they cater to the bottom line… and this isn’t good for us as a whole.”

Immigrants who wanted better wages, advocates of green businesses, youth who feel suppressed by the Conservative government, young adults who want to go back to school but can’t afford to. All of these people came, held together and camped in a downtown park in unity.

Toronto’s Occupy protest was one that found the doors open for people to talk and interact. A weekend of protest and a small glimpse into the lives of everyone else that lives in this city, seemingly unnoticed.

These protesters are still at St. James Park in downtown Toronto. There are over 200 people in sturdy tents and many are preparing for the winter.

Ryerson Free Press The monthly newspaper for continuing education, distance education and part-time students at Ryerson Address Suite SCC-301 Ryerson Student Centre 55 Gould Street Toronto, ON CANADA M5B 1E9

Phone (416) 979.5000 x7715

Fax (416) 979.5223

Email ryersonfreepress@gmail.com

Website WWW.ryersonfreepress.ca

Editor-In-Chief Nora Loreto

News Editor James burrows

Features and Opinions Editor Nora Loreto

Layout and Photo Editor Andrea Yeomans

Culture Editor manori ravindran

Cover Photo MARTIN REIS/FLICKR

Contributors Brian Boudreau James Burrows Mai Habib iftekhar kabir Alex Kerner Anastasiya Komkova Joseph Lee Peter Lewicki Samantha Lui Joyce MacDonald Haseena Manek Jesse McLaren Max Mertens Kate Mills Hafsa Mulla Kelsey Rolfe Adriana Rolston Mick Sweetman Amy Ward Don Weitz

Publisher CESAR The opinions expressed in the Ryerson Free Press are not necessarily those of the editors or publisher.

Advertising Ryerson Free Press’ advertising rates are as follows. All prices are for single insertions.

Discounts apply for Ryerson groups and departments.

Full page—$750 Half page—$375 Quarter page—$195 Eighth page—$95

PHOTOS: IFTEKHAR KABIR

Ryerson Free Press November 2011 3

“Just like being in a cell”

Residential school survivors share stories of violence and abuse in Nova Scotia

By Joyce MacDonald Truth can be an ugly thing.

It was to hear some ugly truths that people gathered in Eskasoni, Nova Scotia on Friday, October 14 for a session of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. The commission is holding hearings on Indian Residential Schools across Canada. The Canadian government supported more than 130 such schools for over a century, during which they were run by a variety of Christian churches. These schools took children from their parents at a young age for the explicit purpose of destroying First Nations cultures, languages and ways of life.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission invited anyone involved in or affected by the residential schools to make a presentation. Most of the speakers were survivors who attended the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School, which was the only such school in Atlantic Canada. It was in operation from 1923 to 1967.

Benji Lafford, a survivor from Eskasoni, spoke about being taken to the train station by uniformed government officials at the age of six.

“I was an ordinary child,” he said. “I went to school in Eskasoni for a while. I didn’t understand anything about the English language at the time. Mostly we were speaking Mi’kmaq. When my dad was alive, he taught us in Mi’kmaq.

We chopped wood, we would get water, we would make sure everything would be okay for the next day so we wouldn’t be hungry or cold for the winter. As a young boy, I didn’t understand why they took me away from my homeland and from parents.”

Lafford and his brothers and sisters were all sent to the residential school. He said that as a child he wondered what he did wrong.

“I know now that we didn’t do anything wrong because we were innocent,” he said. “We stopped at almost every train station. We saw a lot of Native children standing on the side of platform. There were no families, no relatives, no uncles, grandfathers, nobody to say goodbye to them. No hugs. There were a lot of children crying.”

Upon arrival at the school, the children were met by the nuns and priests who ran it. The boys and girls were separated.

They had their clothes taken away and their heads shaved.

“They scrubbed us so hard, trying to take the Indian away from us,” he said. “They said, you have no parents to come and help you. You have no grandparents to help you.”

He said he recalls, in later years, little boys crying as they approached the big red school, and as an older boy, he knew there was no way to help them.

“Once we got locked up behind those closed doors, no turning back. No turning back at all. You can’t run away because they always bring you back,” he said.

The children were not allowed to speak the Mi’kmaq language. Any violations of the rules were punished harshly.

“If you said a word wrong, you were going to get hit on the head, boom! Say your prayers right. Kneel down right,” he said. “We’d get hit on the head when we were saying the rosary at night. After an hour, our kneecaps would get sore.”

One rule was that children were not allowed to go to the bathroom after 10:00 p.m. Lafford said he became a bedwetter as a result, and was forced to carry his soiled bedclothes on his head through the cafeteria at breakfast time every time it happened.

“They strapped us almost every night,” he said. “Bend down and touch your toes. Take your pants off.”

He described it as “just like being in a cell.” Punishments also included being locked in cupboards. He described being slapped for speaking Mi’kmaq. His mother died while he was at the school, and he remembers being yelled at for crying in bed after he found out.

“Life went by, days went by, years went by,” he said. “I hope to my creator that things like that will never happen to anybody else. It was hard to let go of things that you loved. It’s not easy to be a child and to grow up in a different world. It’s not easy to walk with your head up when your head is down.”

Lafford attended the residential school until it closed in 1967. He finished his schooling in Toronto, and considered staying there, but decided to return to Cape Breton.

“I went back to my community, where I belong, where I can speak my language, to be with my family, my uncles, my aunties, my cousins, my friends,” he said. ‘That’s where I wanted to be.”

However his experiences at the residential school continued to affect him. He said he drank and used drugs when he got older, often ending up in jail. He had difficulty with jobs

4 ryersonfreepress.ca

and relationships. He said he thought about suicide at times.

But then everything changed.

“I became a dancer,” he said, “a traditional dancer. I love that powwow music. I like the sound of the drum. I like the sound of the people singing. My life changed. I respect myself, I honour myself and I love myself, who I am today.”

Grand Chief Ben Sylliboy from Waycobah also spoke about his experiences at the residential school, which he attended for four years, starting in 1947. He was six years old and attended with his two sisters.

“My mother ended up with TB in ‘47,” he said. “We were put into the residential school. During that time, there was a thing called centralization, where the people from Whycocomagh were forced to go to Eskasoni to live here. There were nine families that remained in Waycobah, one of which was my parents. We had everything. We had our own farm. My father worked. The only problem was, my father couldn’t look after us. So we ended up going to Shubie.”

He recalls being forced to speak English.

“The only language we knew was Mi’kmaq,” he said. “Being put in an environment where you didn’t know the language, it was a difficult thing. I couldn’t even ask to go to the washroom.”

He said the school officials told the children they would never amount to anything.

“They said, the only good Indian is a dead Indian,” he said.

“Even the nuns told me that. That hurt everybody.”

He said the boys in the school stuck together, becoming comrades. But the boys were kept strictly separated from the girls.

“The hardest part was, you weren’t allowed to talk to your sisters,” said Sylliboy. ‘I would have liked to have a little 15 minutes together. But we weren’t even allowed.”

He said when their parents visited, the visit was supervised by a nun, and they were only allowed to speak English.

Letters home were also dictated by the nuns, with the children all writing the same thing that was written on the board.

“That’s how we communicated with our parents,” he said.

“We couldn’t tell them what was really going on, the beatings we’d take.”

In the winter, children were sent outside regardless of the circumstances.

“I remember one time I had a sore stomach,” he said.

“Diarrhea. I knocked on the door and knocked on the door.

They wouldn’t open the door for me. So I dirtied myself. Eventually a nun came to the door. She said, what’s wrong? I said, I’ve got a sore stomach. She said, you shouldn’t knock on the door. She banged my hand on the door until you could see the bruises. Here, you can see the scar. That remained with me for 66 years.”

After four years, his mother recovered, and he was able to go home. He contracted tuberculosis and spent four years in hospitals. He credits the elders, including Caroline Gould, with helping him re-learn the Mi’kmaq language and reconnect with Mi’kmaq traditions.

Georgina Doucette of Eskasoni said leaving the residential school was also difficult.

“Coming back into my community,” she said, “I felt as if I didn’t belong. Even my grandmother said of my brother and I when we went to stay with her, she told her friends, you know these children who come out of that school, they’re not right in the head. Those were words from my own grandmother. We no longer spoke the language, we no longer had that connection with family because we separated for so long. We didn’t belong in the White world, and we didn’t belong in our community.”

She said it took her a long time to cope with her experiences, turning to liquor at a young age.

“I passed on that legacy to my children,” she said. “When I sobered up 24 years ago, I looked at them. And I kept apologizing. I feel deep down, this is the road I set for my children, with alcoholism. And their children drink and do drugs. I feel very guilty. It’s hard to shake that guilt when you’ve carried it for so long.”

She said she was unable to talk about the residential school for a long time.

“I never talked about the residential school because I had nothing good to say,” she said. “I never told my children stories of what happened to me. It’s hard for me to try and forgive, but I know deep down I have to forgive myself first.”

She said she is still on a journey of healing, which started with a family powwow and a return to traditional ways.

“The revival of our culture was really needed,” she said.

Mi’kmaq Grand Chief Ben Sylliboy “I’m proud of how far we’ve come, and I know we have a long ways to go. The whole community has to get together. That’s the only way we can get through it, talk about it, cry and move on.”

Margaret (Sylliboy) Poulette of Waycobah went to the residential school at the age of four. She remembers some fun times, such as going swimming in a nearby lake, but even those memories have a sad side to them. She spoke of making herself a doll out of a cleaning cloth, and having the toys sent by her parents taken away by the nuns to be given to an orphanage.

She said she can barely remember a time before the residential school because she was so young when she went there.

She says she does recall waiting for her dad to come and get her and take her home.

“You know at night when a car comes up and the light goes round the room,” she said. “That night a car came up and the light went round. I thought it would be him.”

Children were assigned English names and numbers at the school.

“My number was 54,” said Poulette. “I’ve seen a lot of abuse in the classroom. They picked on people who had darker skin.”

She recalled a blind girl being strapped for not being able to read, and a boy who stuttered having his mouth held open by a stick all day. Another boy was punished by having to wear a dress and have the other children feel the bones of his head where the nuns said “his horns were coming out.” Another girl spilled milk and was strapped for it until her hands turned blue. Children who tried to run away were punished by having their heads shaved. Children who vomited at meals were forced to eat the vomit.

She said they did celebrate holidays, such as Christmas.

“I remember making streamers for decorating,” she said, “but Santa never found us there.”

Commissioner Wilton Littlechild said a lot of the stories resonated with his own experiences as a boy attending a residential school on the Prairies. The commission is visiting First Nations communities across the country collecting such accounts.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized to residential school survivors on behalf of the Canadian government in 2008.

“I didn’t accept his apology, to be honest with you,” said Benji Lafford, “because it didn’t come from the heart. Someone just wrote that on a paper and said, read that to the survivors of the Indian Residential Schools to ease their pain. A lot of survivors never got to ease their pain.”

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission came out with a court settlement with residential school survivors in 2006.

Commissioner Marie Wilson said the commission aims to share these stories with all Canadians.

“We think it’s non-Native people who don’t know the story, but very often it is also the Aboriginal children and grandchildren who have never been told these stories,” she said. “They don’t have a context for why things have been the way they have been. I think it’s an extremely important transference of knowledge to share that.”

The hearing in Eskasoni was the last in a series held across Atlantic Canada. A national event was also held in Halifax from October 26 to 29 at the World Trade and Convention Centre.

This article was originally published in the Inverness Oran.

PHOTO: JOYCE MACDONALD

Cholera, Catastrophe and Three Dollars a Day Haitians continue to suffer while UN workers enjoy air conditioning and corporations make millions

By Anastasiya Komkova On October 13, a free public forum, “Haiti Beyond the Headlines,” hosted by the University of Toronto, discussed the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Haiti following the January 2010 earthquake. The forum consisted of four speakers who discussed the politics, problems, and experiences that are being faced by those living in Haiti today.

Two of the speakers, Roger Annis and Rosena Joseph, who were both members of a ten-day fact-finding and solidarity mission to Haiti, gave a general overview of the facts and statistics from their eyewitness report titled, “Canadian FactFinding Delegation Reports on Post-Earthquake Haiti.”

Annis and Joseph delivered their talk by focusing on the helplessness and disarray in Haiti. According to them, only one per cent of the $1.7 billion of the donated bilateral relief was used in restabilising the country. Nothing is getting rebuilt since the money is simply not getting to the people.

In Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, 382,256 out of 420,000 buildings were coded for damage. Out of these only 54 per cent of homes were safe for habitation, while the other 46 per cent were either unsafe or damaged beyond repair. The dangers of moving back into an unsafe house does not stop many Haitians from doing so, as the alternatives are camps with extremely difficult living conditions.

According to UN statistics only 25 per cent of the total 894 camps provide water, 50 per cent have toilets, and 60 per cent have bathing in the midst of a cholera epidemic. Even with all these difficulties, 70,000 people were forced out of these camps by private land owners with the help of UN

soldiers.

Annis and Joseph visited a hospital in Léogâne, Sainte Croix, which is funded by the Episcopalian Church in the U.S. where only a third of the hospital is able to be used. The number of beds since the earthquake was cut down from 6,000 to only 40.

Sectors of the economy that would normally employ many Haitians, such as agriculture or factory work, have not yet been re-established. It is thought that the U.S. may be contributing to the unbelievably high unemployment rate of 80 per cent by providing subsidized food imports instead of putting money into Haitian industries.

In 2008, various Haitian unions and the Haitian parliament attempted to raise the minimum wage paid by major US corporations such as Levi’s, Hanes, and Fruit of the Loom from $1.50 a day to $5 a day. The factory owners and U.S. embassy fought this and it resulted in a $3 minimum wage.

Kevin Edmonds, a Toronto Haiti Action Committee (THAC) member and co-author of “Stabilizing Haiti: Mission Accomplished?” believes that Haiti may have been deliberately undermined by these countries while they claimed a Responsibility to Protect.

Edmonds highlighted the role France, Canada and the U.S. played in overthrowing the Haitian government in 2004.

The result, according to Edmonds, was that Haiti was thrown into chaos, resulting in the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). Edmonds labelled this “imperialism and neo-colonialism.”

One billion dollars each year is spent on MINUSTAH to control the population and, ostensibly, to protect the people from Haitian gangs and attempt to rebuild. In reality this organization is responsible for sexual assaults, many evictions from camps and the cholera epidemic because of them discarding waste in the water. When protests occur the soldiers shoot rubber bullets, and gas the citizens. A Haitian doctor appalled by the violence was quoted, “we need gauze, not guns.”

In addition, noted Kim Ives, an editor of a biweekly newspaper titled Haiti Liberté, MINUSTAH have built themselves small places of residence with air conditioning. If they are able to do it for themselves then why aren’t they able to do it for the citizens?

Haiti Liberté works with Wikileaks to put out shocking information about Haiti. Ives spoke of the fact that Haiti has a lot of limestone from which cement is created and in 1986 Haiti had nine companies for this purpose. Today none of these are operating because the French and U.S. government closed them down. According to Ives, if these companies remained Haiti would at least be able to rebuild itself.

Ives spoke about “legalized corruption,” referring to nongovernment organizations being paid $600 per day to propose projects which are out of touch with Haitian reality. He believes that if $850 was to be given to every Haitian citizen they would be able to organize and stabilize themselves without outside help.

For more information visit thac.ca or canadahaitiaction.ca

Conservatives Attempt Overhaul of Crime Legislation Legal and human rights experts say crime bill is an ideological project

By James Burrows, News Editor The Conservative government is rushing through an overhaul of crime legislation that critics say will have serious and devastating consequences for drug related crime and drug use, both inside and outside of prison.

According to Eugene Oscapella, a lawyer and founder of the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition, Bill C-10, “is going to make our drug problems considerably worse.”

“I teach a third-year criminology course at the University of Ottawa. 80 per cent of my students are criminals under this legislation,” stated Oscapella. “About 10 to 20 per cent of them would be liable to a mandatory minimum sentence of two-

PHOTO: THE.COMEDIAN/FLICKR

years for simply passing a tab of ecstasy at a party.”

Bill C-10, the Safe Streets and Communities Act, is an omnibus crime bill that includes nine pieces of legislation the Conservatives were unable to pass as a minority government.

Among these are the Penalties for Organized Drug Crime Act, which will impose mandatory minimum sentences for certain drug crimes, the Protecting Children from Sexual Predators Act, and the Protecting the Public from Violent Young Offenders Act, which would require courts to consider adult sentences for those 14 and older.

“Before 1987 you could have been sentenced to a mandatory minimum of seven years for importing one joint into Canada,” noted Oscapella. “The Supreme Court of Canada shot down that law in 1987, saying it was disproportionate, but it did not say that all mandatory minimums are disproportionate.”

Under the new legislation a mandatory minimum sentence of two-years is required in numerous drug crimes, including distributing marijuana in an area that is frequented by those under 18.

When announcing the crime bill in September the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, Rob Nicholson, stated that the Conservatives, “campaigned on a promise to get tough on child sexual offenders, crack down on illegal drug trafficking, and improve the overall efficiency of our judicial system. Canadians gave us a strong mandate to bring forward these reforms.”

But many human rights advocates are concerned that the emphasis on community safety is an ideological retreat from sensible policy and could decrease community safety and

increase crime.

Oscapella is concerned that the new provisions could actually increase organized crime. “It is going to push the small, generally non-violent ‘Ma and Pa’ producers out of the market and pave the way for organized crime, which generally doesn’t care about incarceration, into the market.”

While many jurisdictions are moving away from mandatory minimum drug sentencing that dramatically increase prison populations, including, most notoriously, Republican lawmakers in Texas, the Conservative government is using its new majority mandate to celebrate its tough-on-crime approach, despite statistics that show crime is at its lowest level in nearly 40 years.

Patricia Allard, Deputy Director of the Canadian HIV/ AIDS Legal Network believes that “when you overcrowd prisons…and you do not provide harm reduction tools and you do not provide sterile injection equipment, you are moving towards a health disaster.”

The Canadian Harm Reduction Network has cited two studies that highlight Allard’s concerns. A 2008 study conducted in British Columbia showed that those incarcerated are 2.5 times more likely to be infected with HIV and a 2002 report also showed that people in federal penal institutions are 50 times more likely to overdose than those living in the community.

As of 2006, Canada had the second highest rate of druguser imprisonment in the world. In 2007, the Correctional Service of Canada reported that about 80 per cent of those CRIME continued on page 6

Ryerson Free Press November 2011 5

CRIME continued from page 5 reporting to prison had a serious drug problem and that half of those committed their crimes while under the influence.

The cost of the bill could also be substantial and several provinces have signaled that they are hesitant to pay the additional costs. Jean-Marc Fournier, Quebec’s Minister of Justice, has been the most vocally opposed, having recently stated that Quebec will not pay for additional costs for legislation it believes is counterproductive.

The Canadian Bar Association (CBA) has also come out strongly against the bill, writing in its submission to the justice committee that “bundling several critical and entirely distinct criminal justice initiatives into one omnibus bill is inappropriate, and not in the spirit of Canada’s democratic process.”

The CBA is also seriously concerned that there is too much focus on punishment and not enough focus on rehabilitation. “As most offenders will one day return to their communities, we know that prevention and rehabilitation are most likely to contribute to public safety. The proposed initiatives also move Canada along a road that has clearly failed in other countries. Rather than replicate that failure, at enormous public expense, we might instead learn from those countries’ experience.”

Greg Simmons, a prisoners’ rights expert and advocate, who also spent 14 years as an inmate, is also worried about the emphasis on punishment and is concerned that with no new money for rehabilitation programs, and an increased prison population, recidivism rates will increase.

“People that are involved in crime will lose hope. Once you lose hope you take more chances, you don’t care about

6 ryersonfreepress.ca

what you do to people or what you do to yourself.” According to Simmons, this will result in “more victims and increased category one offenses, such as robberies, assault, aggravated assault and murders.”

According to the Canadian Press, Nunavut has already been told to expect an increase of 15 per cent to its inmate population even though their one jail is already at double capacity. The territory currently has no facility for counseling and addictions.

In 1995 conditional sentencing legislation was passed because many were concerned that incarceration alone was counterproductive. Conditional sentencing permits those convicted of a crime to serve time in the community, usually under “house-arrest,” so that they may continue to work or go to school. Such a sentence can only be given if they believe that the person convicted does not pose a danger to the community and their sentence was less than two-years. Conditions of the sentence often include drug rehabilitation programs. Proponents of conditional sentencing have noted that community re-integration and rehabilitation have a much higher chance of succeeding than if the offender is simply incarcerated.

The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police is supportive of the legislation and recently stated to the justice committee that the provisions limiting the use of conditional sentencing is the right approach because “it focuses on serious penalties for serious offences. Canadians want this, especially victims of crime.”

Steve Sullivan, who is the Executive Director for Ottawa Victim Services and was the first federal ombudsman for victims of crime, which the Conservatives created in 2006, sees

little in the new bill that helps victims.

“Out of a 100 page bill there might be four or five paragraphs that I would applaud. Some enhancements for the rights of victims in the correctional system, the right to go to a parole hearing and present a statement…most of these were introduced by the previous government so there is nothing new here.”

“They say that they will provide support and protection for victims but,” Sullivan noted, “the reality of this bill is that crowns are going to be so much busier that they will have less time to spend with victims. They are actually not spending any new dollars for victims services at the federal level.”

For those who may be forced to stay in an abusive relationship because of limited shelter space, “there is no money for them,” noted Sullivan.

The Conservative government has been making a name for itself as ideologically blind to information or bureaucrats it doesn’t like. For those such as Oscapella and Sullivan this appears to be just one more example.

Sullivan has been a vocal critic of the Conservative government since his term as ombudsman finished, an office that, according to him, appeared to have been created because, “it made a good press release.”

Oscapella, Sullivan, Simmons and Allard spoke in Toronto on October 18 as part of a panel of legal and human rights experts opposed to Bill C-10.

For more information visit torontoharmreduction.org, the Canadian Foundation for Drug Policy website at cfdp.ca, and the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network at aidslaw.ca.

OPINION The Ontario Provincial Election What went wrong, what went right, and how did McGuinty win again?

By Joseph Lee The last provincial election was a tough one to call. I, and many other people were sure that Tim Hudak was going to win a majority government, then as time wore on, a minority...then the opposition.

What exactly went wrong?

Well, he said and did some things that didn’t exactly help his cause. He called landed immigrants who have become Canadian citizens “foreign workers,” and it just so happened that these “foreign workers” had a vote. His campaign released flyers that were full of, and I’m sure it’s safe to say, lies about the McGuinty government’s sexual education curriculum. And frankly, his association with Rob Ford just plain scared some people away.

None of this is to say that he didn’t win a significant amount of seats, which he did, and at least he won his own seat, but he didn’t win enough.

My father, a lifelong, big-C Conservative, voted Liberal for the first time this election. According to him, “There’s something about Hudak I don’t like,” and, “he looks like a criminal.” This sentiment was echoed in a lot of political conversations that I had in the weeks preceding the election.

No one was sure about Tim Hudak. There was something about him and his campaign’s tone that they just didn’t like.

McGuinty, on the other hand, came out on top, even if he did only win 53 seats. Fifty-three seats is technically a minority government, but it’s a minority government in the way that going to a bar at 11:50 PM, ten minutes before your

nineteenth birthday means you’re still technically “underage.”

The Premier can get a lot of things done with a 53 seat minority, since all he really has to do is woo one MP from either of the opposition parties to vote for his measures. As a centrist, there’s going to be space in his policies for at least some compromise.

Dalton McGuinty won because of one thing: stability.

He lost a total of 17 seats, or if you want to think about it in another way, the entire NDP presence in the Ontario legislature. This means that 17 ridings switched political allegiances.

This may seem like a lot, but we, as a whole, are forgetting the wrecking ball that was John Tory in the last election. His multi-faith schools plan and various other political miscalculations led to Dalton McGuinty winning a second straight majority.

The lack of an issue as divisive as Tory’s played in favour of the opposition parties, as people who voted against John Tory and his PCs were once again able to vote for their preferred party.

As for Andrea Horwath and the Ontario NDP, it seems like they really placed their hope on residuals from the Federal “Orange Wave,” which brought Jack Layton’s NDP to their current position.

Their “Pump Up The Vote,” campaign didn’t really catch on, and from some of the women I’ve spoken to, was actually quite offensive.

Horwath had some great ideas, but these ideas were essentially set to appeal to the NDP base, which is quite narrow considering the political divisions in this province.

There was a certain mix of populism and social-democratic policies in their platform that didn’t make too much sense and sounded all too familiar (read “gravy train”).

I’m not going to discount the NDPs successes though.

They won a handy amount of seats in the north of the province due in part to Horwath’s “Respect for the North” platform, which outlined some realistic, pragmatic policies to improve the state of Northern Ontario.

Overall, we ended up with the same government that we started out with. Some parties came out stronger, some weakened, but not much has changed.

What I learned from this election is that people have both a great distaste and a morbid fascination for divisive politics. I also learned that a recession is not the time for massive governmental change, as much as we would’ve liked to see that last May. So people: don’t complain about McGuinty being premier again, because it’s your fault. Voter turnout was at an all time low this election, and change wasn’t going to come unless people showed up to the polls.

Sleep tight everyone. Sleep tight in the knowledge that we have the same government we’ve had since 2003, and we won’t see a new one for another four years.

At least it’s not Ernie Eves, eh?

Keeping politics on the street A post-election reflection

By Haseena Manek I have to say, after all of those personal attacks, the slights against immigrants and the clever NDP ad involving a pair of bright orange pumps, the outcome of this years provincial election was decidedly anticlimactic.

I’ll admit, a small part of me did fear a conservative trifecta, the hat trick of doom.

But a larger part of me, okay the rest of me, was unabashedly hoping and praying for Andrea Horwath’s success. NDP supporters were disappointed when McGuinty was elected for the third time in a row.

Not as disappointed as we would have been if Hudak won, for obvious reasons.

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: we must not lose hope. We, the vaguely left, must do as we have always done and keep fighting.

We lost our champion in parliament, we missed our chance in the provincial legislature, we are still mourning the loss at the municipal level, but Toronto activists must not stop.

Even though we may not be changing the world overnight, even though we were disappointed, election-wise—it appears that we are still in a different place than we were last year.

I believe that recent events indicate that the collective consciousness is moving towards a more progressive and inclusive system, socially and economically.

Sustainable initiatives are popping up, local produce is becoming more popular, being green is trendy. Protestors demanding change for our system that takes from the majority and gives to a minority are occupying the neighbourhoods of the highest rollers all over the world.

While corporations get more and more power, more and more people every day realize that our current system is not one that they can support.

Even though McGuinty was elected for the third time in a row, Harper got a majority and Rob Ford has control over the best city in Canada, I still believe progress is happening. Slowly, subtly, we’re moving forward.

I mean really, would any of us thought this time last year that an NDP candidate would actually have a chance in an election? That in itself is proof enough that we are doing something right. So maybe we haven’t won the war just yet, but are getting a fair few battles under our proverbial and collective belt.

But we must not stop. And by we I don’t just mean activists. I mean everyone. Now that the election is over, don’t stop thinking about politics. Now that the Occupy Toronto protest is no longer headline news, don’t forget why people are still camped out at St. James Park.

Now that we’ve hit a lull, don’t forget that every second you are not screaming for your rights, stamping your feet and raising your fists, you are wasting a chance to build a better world for your children, your grandchildren, even your future self if we work hard enough.

I implore you to maintain your interest in our political situation. Even when all evidence of Jack Layton’s memorial has been washed away by the rain, when all of the Elections Ontario ads have left the TTC, if and when Occupy Toronto links are no longer coming up on our news feeds, stay on top of what’s going on.

This is a formal request for you to stay active. People need to realize that it is when things stop appearing on the news, we need to be paying the most attention.

The streets of our city have been a hotbed of activity. From last year’s G20 catastrophe, to Jack Layton’s death this summer, and finally with Occupy Toronto, it seems to be that in Toronto the political is now on the street.

Our public sphere is no longer a chamber of elected officials, which really hasn’t felt all that public in a while; indeed the public sphere is your status updates, your tweets, your blogs and your marches. It is the ground you walk on as you wave a placard and it is the air you are breathing as you sing your songs of freedom.

So let’s keep it that way. Let’s keep the Arab Spring and North African revolutions in mind. Let’s keep asking for the troops to come home. Let’s keep talking about service cuts in the city and representing the 99 per cent.

We must not let the current government or a culture of apathy define how we view the democratic system or how we view our country. All we have is the stolen land we stand on so we better make our voices heard. Discuss, participate and appreciate. Discuss the current situation, participate in the progressive movements in which you believe and appreciate the nature of your own potential to make a change in the place you live.

You must fight for your right to participate. You must demand your role. You are not sheep you are citizens. If you are not a citizen you are a resident. If you have no status, no one will hand it to you.

Fight for your existence or you will carry on unaware until our destructive and unsustainable ways finally reach our limit and the world, as we know it, crumbles around us.

Then what will you have? Nothing. What do you have now? Nothing.

Better to know now while you can still do something about it.

Ryerson Free Press November 2011 7

Da Vinci of our time?

By Brian Boudreau I found out about Steve Jobs’ death on Facebook, through an edited version of the Apple logo: the bite on the apple replaced by Steve Jobs’ silhouetted face profile. His death was unexpected to me, and so was the world’s response.

There had been much buzz around Apple in the weeks preceding his death, but almost none of it had anything to do with Jobs. Instead, the release of the iphone 4S under the leadership of new CEO Tim Cook was at centre stage.

And then, on October 5, that big, bright spotlight was back on Steve Jobs. He died after seven years of battling against a rare form of pancreatic cancer.

This marks the first time a CEO’s death affected people around the world so profoundly, and so publicly.

Almost every Facebook status that night related to Steve Jobs. Twitter exploded with sorrowful R.I.P messages from around the world. Globally, people started referring to Jobs as the most innovative and revolutionary mind of our time.

To an extent, I agree with that sentiment. But I don’t love Steve Jobs, nor have I ever.

It is important to remember that there is always an agenda. Steve Jobs’ agenda was to create fascinating products that, at the end of the day, sold. And sell they did – so much so that Apple became a monopoly of its own.

Apple products work best with other Apple products. For example, the company’s music and app store is the only place in the web where compatible (legal) files can be purchased and downloaded to the sleek music players and phones, meaning that Apple is not only receiving the big bucks for the technology they have created, but also from what is being transferred into these products. As a result of this and many other practices, the company has become the most valuable technology company in the world, with $65 billion annual sales and a net worth of $302 billion.

The mastermind behind it all: Steve Jobs. And while his main motive might not have been the money, that’s not the point I am trying to prove.

The point is that death narrows the scope of a person’s character. Time and again, the media has abided to the idea that not only is criticizing the dead an unthinkable act, but anything short of martyrdom is unacceptable.

When Michael Jackson died, everyone seemed to forget about the overwhelming

8 ryersonfreepress.ca

amount of controversy surrounding him in the years prior. The charges of pedophilia and his questionable decisions became a discussion for another day as people began to remember him as the King of Pop and King of Pop only. Likewise, when Amy Winehouse died, she went from a drug and alcohol abuser to a victim of drugs and alcohol. And to hit a chord closer to home, when Jack Layton died, people stopped referring to him as a politician, opting to paint a more uplifting and grand picture of the late NDP leader.

In other words: with death comes greatness. Unless, of course, you are the likes of Gaddafi.

This same media treatment is happening with Steve Jobs’ death as well, and it is only heightened by what has come to be recognized as some – not all – Apple customers’ sort of cult mentality.

If you haven’t already, try telling a Mac user their brand is defective. More likely than not, he or she will snap back at you, going to the ends of the earth to convince you you’re wrong. Try it with a Microsoft user, and the response might not be as heated.

People have bought into this idea that buying Apple is a lifestyle choice. They are, in their minds, getting the better product.

These are the people filling Apple store display windows with sticky notes, placing makeshift shrines by the front of the stores, and going in and buying more products almost out of respect for the late CEO. To be clear, I am an Apple customer. And, yes, I do enjoy some of their products. But I am aware that at times there are other products out there that are more to my liking or convenience. Nonetheless, though I do not subscribe to this “only Apple” mentality, it does shed some light on the response.

Steve Jobs’ technology and concepts were targeted directly towards our generation – the first, really, to be in touch with technology from a very early age. Apple products were moulded for us. We are the primary consumers that ushered this new era of personalized technology. And, perhaps, this is why Steve Jobs’ passing hit so many, so personally.

And on that light, the tag that went along with that edited picture of the Apple logo might actually be true after all. Maybe he was the da Vinci of our time.

But if he was, it isn’t because of his death; it is because of what he did while alive.

PHOTO: RYANB/FLICKR

FEATURES How do we build the ‘Occupy’ movement?

By Jesse McLaren Fuelled by the economic crisis and inspired by the Arab Spring, the Occupy Wall Street movement has spread around the world.

Like all movements, there are a series of debates emerging that will determine the Occupy Movement across Canada’s direction and success. Is occupation a tactic or a principle? Should the focus be on the internal procedures of those actively occupying, or outreach to broader communities and struggles? How do we build a movement of the 99 per cent?

The movement of the 99 per cent The Occupy movement marks the re-emergence of the anti-capitalist movement. Building on years of struggle against war, climate chaos and economic crisis, it identifies these and other issues as symptoms of a massively unequal system that benefits the one per cent.

The 99 per cent includes poor and working class people, students, racialized and oppressed groups. The very issues at the heart of this new movement—police brutality, racism and other forms of oppression, the struggle to pay tuition fees and defend good jobs—creates barriers for most of the 99 per cent to maintain a permanent outdoor occupation with police presence and long meetings during working hours.

That is why the main strategy of the one per cent so far has been to wait for those actively occupying to become

PHOTO: MAI HABIB

isolated. How do we build the occupy movement into a real movement of the 99 per cent?

The Occupy movement has been inspired by the Arab Spring, but the corporate media have perpetuated a distorted view of the Egyptian Revolution: that it was a spontaneous event, organized purely over social media, that drove dictator Hosni Mubarak from power only through the occupation of Tahrir Square, and that is over.

First, the Egyptian Revolution was a product of a decade of struggle in which occupations was one of many tactics.

When the Iraq War began thousands occupied Tahrir Square, and then built other movements—from political movements for civil liberties, to economic struggles over wages.

Secondly, while social media played a role at the start of the uprising, the state and corporations turned off all internet and cell phones, yet the revolution grew because people used more traditional methods—meetings in neighbourhoods, workplaces and faith groups which are more accessible to a broader layer of the population.

Thirdly, while the mainstream media were focusing on Tahrir Square, the revolution was spreading to the factories.

It was when workers across Egypt began mass strikes that Mubarak was driven from power.

Finally, while Mubarak is gone and Tahrir is no longer occupied, the Egyptian Revolution is continuing the deepen through mass strikes and protests, and occasional occupations like at series of campus occupations last month.

The ongoing Egyptian Revolution demonstrates that societal change is a process, not an event, in which movements rely on a variety of tactics— including occupations—and where the success depends on the active participation of the working class. Had the Egyptian revolution remained confined to Tahrir Square it would not have succeeded. It needed Tahrir to spread.

The Arab Spring inspired Wisconsin workers and students to occupy their state building for three weeks against budget cuts. Some were disappointed when the occupation ended, but it was part of the process of radicalization that triggered the Occupy movement, which has gone through different phases.

In the summer, people in New York launched “Bloombergville,” a protest camp to oppose mayor Bloomberg’s budget cuts. People camped for weeks, but without outreach to broader community and labour allies the occupation was isolated and disintegrated.

Occupy Wall Street learned the lessons and has been successful because of outreach beyond the park.

As a participant in both occupations told The Real News, “what the unions and community groups bring along with them is a lot of people who have been organizing in marginalized communities and a lot of people who are hardest hit by economic crisis and also racism and sexism and all the other oppressions that we all face. So they bring those struggles here, and they also bring concrete demands because they fight around those concrete demands all the time. That’s incredibly important for this kind of movement to ground itself in very concrete struggles that are actu-

ally taking place all the time.”

As a result of labour solidarity, bus drivers have refused to transport arrested protesters.

Occupy Canada Despite claims by the Canadian state that the Occupy movement is not relevant here, people across Canada and Quebec know better.

Canada is built on occupied land, and there has been growing solidarity with First Nations people—and participation from Aboriginal activists in the occupations—fighting for self-determination against a government that denies its own colonial history, ignores missing and murdered Aboriginal women, and maintains brutal conditions that spread illness and suicide on reserves.

For years people across Canada and Quebec have also mobilized against Harper’s regime of war, Islamophobia, tar sands and austerity—and against the local “one per cent,” from the B.C. Liberals to the Toronto regime of Rob Ford.

In the context of a global economic crisis, social democracy is incapable of delivering reform—and people have watched governments elected from the left (from Barack Obama in the U.S., to George Papandreou in Greece, to David Miller in Toronto) impose the same neoliberal agenda.

The “orange wave” for the NDP, riding on the wave of inspiration provided by the Arab Spring, expressed people’s hopes of a better world—rather than support for the NDP platform that vowed to continue the military budget. The recent Ontario elections were much more about competing party platforms, and as a result drew the lowest voter turnout in the province’s history.

But the Occupy movement shows this is not because of apathy. Thousands of people have joined the Occupy movement—the first political experience for many—as they look for an alternative outside the dominant institutions of the system that can’t offer real change.

But like all movements there are fault lines that could fracture the movement.

On the question of demands there are two potential dangers. The media are asking for a few simple demands that the system might accommodate, eliminating the systemic critique at the heart of the movement. On the other hand, some participants are calling for no demands in a way that reduces the movement to the procedural form divorced from the radical content and the movements that inform it.

A related problem to the exclusive focus on procedure is that it reduces the movement to the minority able to occupy for long hours, isolated from broader communities and struggles.

This can give rise to seeing this group as the agent of change—through a frenetic calendar of events that the majority of people don’t have the ability to participate in, or elevating the occupation from a tactic to a principle.

As the temperature drops, it will become more unsustainable to maintain outdoor occupations, and prioritizing this over outreach beyond the occupation will cut the movement off from broader struggles. At Occupy Toronto there have been efforts to build beyond the park—joining the Ryerson Social Justice Week on day three, and marching with labour and community allies against the local one per cent regime of Rob Ford today.

As we’ve seen from Tahrir to Wisconsin, occupations are simply one tactic in a broader movement for change. The main strategy needs to be the active participation of masses of people—in the streets, campuses, and workplaces. Only through self-emancipation can we create a world for the 99 per cent, by the 99 per cent.

This article originally appeared on rabble.ca on October 22, 2011.

Ryerson Free Press November 2011 9

OCCUPY T

For more than a month, Torontonians have occupied St. society for all people, around the world.

10   ryersonfreepress.ca

TORONTO

. James Square demanding a more fair and equitable PHOTOS: MAI HABIB AND IFTEKHAR KABIR

Ryerson Free Press November 2011 11

We remember Alexandra Dodger

By Alex Kerner

I

n the early morning of October 16, student activist and future human rights lawyer, Alexandra Dodger, lost her life in a tragic accident in Ottawa. Alex had just finished her legal studies at McGill and was articling at Amnesty International.

I met Alexandra in March 2002 when she first ran for the board of directors of the University of Toronto Students’ Union. Despite being only 18, she immediately impressed all those around her. She could carry a room with her articulate arguments, quick wit and glowing personality. She was an icon on the university campus and her strong socialist and feminist convictions provided a beacon of confidence for so many women in the activist community.

During her time at U of T, Alexandra was instrumental in the campaign for undergraduates to join the Canadian Federation of Students and was a founding and leading member of Students Against Sanctions and War in Iraq. She was also involved in winning students a discount on their TTC pass and a two-year tuition fee freeze in Ontario.

She later served as Ontario Representative on the national executive of the Canadian Federation of Students. She was president of the New Democratic Party’s Trinity-Spadina riding association, went to the West Bank in Palestine in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle, and helped in numerous capacities with the War Resisters Support Campaign.

While at law school, Alexandra involved herself in the Radical Law Club and the McGill Human Rights Working Group. She was also a contributor to the McGill Law Journal. She was part of the mooting team that came in second in the prestigious Jessop Moot in international law. Most recently, she clerked at the International Court of Justice in The Hague and worked for a human rights firm in Paris.

In light of all Alexandra’s ability and accolades, one might assume she would forget all those she worked with over the years, but one of the most amazing things about Alexandra was how she always made that extra effort to keep in touch. She had always made time for a coffee or dinner, a chat online or a phone call. Whenever one needed advice about politics, education choices or just plain life, she always provided her insight and encouragement.

I have never been so sad to lose someone before. We have all lost a wonderful anti-war and social activist, whose bright future as a human rights lawyer has been taken away from the world. But most of all we have lost a friend, whose laugh and smile and funny stories made the struggle for a better world all the more enjoyable.

You will be sorely missed, Alexandra. We will continue the struggle with your spirit in our hearts and your convictions on our mind.

12 ryersonfreepress.ca

Four Years Later, Still No Sign of a School for Pikangikum First Nation

By Kate Mills Pikangikum First Nation is a fly-in community of 2,400 in Northwestern Ontario that isn’t connected to the hydro grid, doesn’t have a sewage system, and lacks easy access to clean drinking water.

It also doesn’t have a proper school, four years after their old one built down.

The First Nation now uses 17 sub-standard portables as their schools.

Pikangikum is also widely reported to have the highest suicide rate in the world.

There doesn’t appear to be a concrete answer as to why a new school hasn’t been built.

When asked why, Pikangikum CEO Gordon Peters said, “Due to a lack of electricity. We are on a diesel generator. They are at full capacity. The federal government say they won’t build until there is enough electricity. We have been trying to get electricity from the Ontario grid line.

Maybe the Federal government is scrapped for money.”

Yet when I asked the Federal government—Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada (AADC) why a new school hadn’t been built in Pikangikum, their answer was different. They declined to give an interview but offered this statement, “The First Nation is working towards completion of a School Feasibility Study. Funding to support the design and construction of the new school is currently scheduled in future years in the First Nation Infrastructure Investment Plan.”

Regardless of why a new school hasn’t been built, the conditions of the school are far below the rest of Ontario’s standard, and attending school in buildings of disrepair remains a daily reality for the children that go to school there.

As taken from the recent Chief Coroner’s Death Review of the Youth Suicides at the Pikangikum First Nation 2006-2008, some of the conditions in the 17 portables currently used as their school include: poor or no insulation leading to drafts, cold floors, dangerous ice-damming on roofs, freezing pipes, soil erosion and shifted buildings leading to animals and children crawling into the spaces under the buildings…no common spaces, no library, no bathroom facilities in any of the portables, and extreme over-crowding in classrooms leading to children having to sit in hallways during class. Teachers had to accommodate 55 children in the 2010-2011 Grade 8 class. “[The 17 portables were] a 14 million dollar project. For a few million more they could have built a real school,” Peters said.

In particular, Peters would like to see a computer room and library, and a large playground built into the new school. “(The school) should be comparable to schools built elsewhere,” Peters said.

The coroner’s report also suggested that on-reserve education be transferred as a responsibility from the federal government to the provincial government, since the province is primarily responsible for the education of the majority of Ontario anyway. This would challenge the

Federal government’s responsibility to ensure access to education, a right that was guaranteed through signed treaties.

This is a potential solution especially considering, “When it comes to education, we know that a First Nations young person receives anywhere from $2,000 to $7,000 less for their education that the rest of Canada,” says National Chief Shawn Atleo as quoted in the Oct. 5, 2011 edition of the Montreal Gazette.

The Ontario Ministry of Education appears to be open to taking on the responsibility of onreserve education, if the funding was granted from the Federal government. They stated, “The Ontario government, through the Council of Federations’ Aboriginal Affairs Working Group (AAWG), continues to call for a First Ministers’ meeting on Aboriginal education with national Aboriginal leaders. Ontario’s offer to manage Aboriginal education, provided adequate funding from the Federal government is obtained, is still on the table.”

Meanwhile, as reports with recommendations get written, the days pass in Pikangikum, and lives are lost.

While acknowledging there are many complex factors that lead someone to end their life, one can draw a link between the lack of a proper school in Pikangikum and the increase in youth suicides there.

As reported in the Chief Coroner’s report, of the 16 deaths that occurred at the Pikangikum First Nation in the years 2006-2008, six deaths in two clusters, occurred shortly after the school burned down. One of the clusters of suicide deaths occurred immediately after the school burned down, with a second cluster occurring shortly thereafter.

“One facility would make it more ‘homey’ and encourage more kids to stay in classes,” Peters said.

The fight for Pikangikum First Nation to get a school that is ‘homey’ and adequate is not unique to their community. The campaign Shannen’s Dream, named after Shannen Koostachin, advocates for just that, for First Nations communities across Ontario.

She was a 15-year-old Cree girl from Attawapiskat who fought tirelessly to have a permanent school built in her community.

Shannen unfortunately died in a car accident before she saw her dream realised. However, funding is now in place for Attawapiskat to get a new school by 2013.

Shannen saw the kids that dropped out in Grades 4 or 5, and wanted to change her reality.

In her words, “School should be a time for hopes and dreams of the future. Every kid deserves this.”

Time will tell if government cooperation can help Pikangikum’s youth to hope and dream soon too.

Nameless-Homeless: Who Cares?

By Don Weitz Remember their names: Eugene Upper, Erwin Anderson, Mirsalah Aldin-Kompani, Edmond Yu, and hundreds more who died on Toronto streets since ‘97 —From Nameless-Homeless, an unpublished rant in progress.

During the recent Ontario election campaign, no candidate discussed homelessness and affordable housing as urgent priorities demanding immediate action – street nurse Cathy Crowe was the one exception. Here’s the grim context. Today, it’s widely acknowledged that the “deinstitutionalization” of psychiatric survivors has been a total failure and fraud; it was from the very start. Why? Because of government incompetence and negligence, poor urban planning, and public indifference to “discharged” psychiatric survivors and other poor, marginalized and stigmatized people in our communities.

As you read this, thousands of homeless psychiatric survivors are struggling to survive on the street and in overcrowded and violence-ridden shelters where they are often exposed to tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and other communicable diseases. According to the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee that tracks homeless deaths, approximately 500 homeless people have died since 2000. Faced with minimal community support and an almost complete lack of alternatives, many are forced back into psychiatric hospitals or wards, where they’re drugged, degraded and traumatized all over again. On the street, these survivors are easy targets for the psychiatric police.

Ten years ago, at a public meeting of the Toronto City Council’s Neighbourhoods Committee, a few of us activists tried to convince city councillors in attendance that affordable and supportive housing for psychiatric survivors and other marginalized people was urgently needed. I pointed out that affordable housing should replace all psychiatric facili-

ties, including the notorious Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), and that government-funded housing initiatives could save not only the health and lives of thousands of survivors and others, but also millions of tax dollars every year. All that was needed was the political will; there is still no city, provincial or national affordable housing strategy in Canada.- only token initiatives at Queen’s Park.

During the last five years, fewer than 5,000 affordable or “social housing” units have been built in Toronto; at least 50,000 are needed. Consider these facts cited in a 2010 Housing Connections report there were: • 140,649: total number of people on Housing Connections centralized waiting list for social housing in Toronto as of Sept. 30, 2010.

• 29,917: number of children under the age of 17 on household applications for social housing; this number is in addition to 13,190 single parents.

At community meetings preceding the 2010 municipal election, not one candidate running for Toronto City Council proposed, much less demanded, an affordable housing strategy for the city. The plight of homeless people was not a priority issue. In keeping with the current political climate of callous indifference to homeless and other poor people, no target figures or housing strategies have even been discussed, much less announced, and the need for supportive housing goals and strategies for psychiatric survivors has been completely ignored.

This, despite the following facts: • Well over 70,000 citizens have been on Toronto’s social-housing waiting list for several years.

• There are currently more than 140,000 households on affordable-housing waiting lists across Toronto.

• There are currently 1.5 million homeless people,

including over half-a-million poor children, in Canada, struggling to survive on under-funded government welfare and disability support programs that grudgingly provide single individuals with approximately $550 a month for rent.

The average rent for a bachelor apartment in downtown Toronto is $800. Adding insult to injury, Ontario’s Liberal government plans to eliminate its Special Diet Allowance program.

Conceived and initiated by the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP), the Special Diet program has been hugely successful; during the last three years it has provided an additional, desperately needed a $250 monthly food allowance for many thousands of poor and unemployed people, psychiatric survivors and others with disabilities or serious medical conditions. Many Special Diet recipients are immigrants and refugees from Somalia and other African countries. This is just one more example of government-sanctioned injustice and racial discrimination in the ruling establishment’s continuing war against the poor.

In 2009, Ontario’s mental health budget was an astronomical $34 billion.

What a waste of money, and, more importantly, what a tragic waste of people’s health and lives! For a fraction of that cost, besides saving millions of Medicare dollars, we could build thousands of affordable, low-cost houses, crisis/ healing and drug withdrawal centres; completely eliminate homelessness in Canada; and, above all, save thousands of lives each year.

Don Weitz is an antipsychiatry and social justice activist in Toronto. This revised article consists of excerpts from a substantially longer version published in rabble.ca on July 12, 2011.

Ryerson Free Press November 2011 13

CULTURE Criminal minds, Marshall McLuhan and zombies at the International Festival of Authors

By Amy Ward Choosing your next book to dig into based on a live author reading is a little like picking a mayor based on the campaign ads: the sales pitch may give you a taste of what to expect if you commit to this candidate for the long haul, but so much can be swayed on looks, personality and the ability to do impressions. On the other hand, it’s hard to sell books and mayors with only paper brochures, which is why an event like the International Festival of Authors helps writers with a joke or two up their sleeves to connect to an audience hungry for fresh ideas.

This year’s festival brought 150 authors from around the world to the Harbourfront Centre for 12 days of readings, lectures, panel discussions and author-stalking (or booksigning, as the industry calls it). This year’s cohort included authors ranging from Booker prize-winner Michael Ondaatje (The Cat’s Table) to breakthrough novelist Patrick deWitt (The Sisters Brothers); fashion designer and short story writer Gloria Vanderbilt (The Things We Fear Most) to bestselling thriller author Kathy Reichs (Seizure); and graphic novelist Daniel Clowes (The Death-Ray) to panmedia guru Douglas Coupland (Marshall McLuhan).

The 32nd annual festival featured a series of events to celebrate the 100th birthday of media theorist Marshall McLuhan, which leads up to a larger conference being held at McLuhan’s former academic home at the University of Toronto in mid-November.

The festival also featured readings from the five finalists of the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, giving audiences just enough time to read up on the contenders before the winners are announced on Nov. 15.

The Criminal Minds of Stuart MacBride, Denise Mina, Ian Rankin and David Adams Richards Despite their confinement to the genre shelves of bookstores and libraries, crime novels are often underestimated for the literary light that glows through their dark storylines.

A reading series featuring Scottish authors Stuart MacBride, Denise Mina and Ian Rankin, as well as Canadian David Adams Richards, confirmed that engaging stories and great writing are not mutually exclusive. The dark minds

14 ryersonfreepress.ca

of northern writers just know how to handle the equinox of comedy and tragedy in a tale of woe.

“In crime fiction, what we want to know is why, because we’re trying to empathize,” said Mina, before reading from her latest novel, The End of the Wasp Season. Real life mysteries often fail to answer those questions, and she argued that we turn to portrayals of wrongdoings in literature and film in order to explain the dark side of reality. Mina, who did her PhD in mental illness diagnoses of female prisoners, uses intellectual subtexts to tell stories, such as Wasp Season’s exploration of a financier’s suicide following the global financial crisis.

Stuart MacBride explored the character side of the story in a highly theatrical reading from his latest novel, Shatter the Bones. MacBride has the rare talent of giving unique voices to each of his characters in his reading, which makes it all the more surprising that his publisher used to hire actors to read for the audio book. MacBride joked that his audio books were read with melodramatic voices by actors who could never understand the unintuitive pronunciation of Scottish names. “If ever you’re reading a crime novel, you have to sound as angry as possible with every single word,” he joked. Perhaps the intimidating tone lets readers forget that the fun read they’re enjoying is actually, deep down, an insightful commentary on the nature of society, dark though it may be at its core.

Colson Whitehead

Clay Shirky can recreate Wikipedia in a weekend New York University professor Clay Shirky, author of Cognitive Surplus, spoke to an opening night crowd as part of the festival’s McLuhan 100 series. Shirky, whose previous students include the founders of Foursquare, explores ideas of collective action and social media in his latest book.

He calculated that the entire creation of Wikipedia, including all of the research, writing and editing on all pages in all languages of the site by 2008 took global volunteers 100 million hours to complete. Comparatively, North Americans spend 200 billion hours every year watching TV. The time North Americans spend just watching the ads on TV over a weekend would add up to the entire creation time of Wikipedia. The calculation helps conceptualize how tiny contributions from a crowd can add up to something so substantial.

The ideas behind Cognitive Surplus seem simple enough, but they challenge the very way the business world and government look at the ownership of information.

“The problem is, we don’t have a public sphere online. We have a corporate sphere that tolerates the public voice,” Clay Shirky and Jesse Hirsh Shirky said.

He referred to the website Patients Like Me, where people dealing with diseases can meet online to vent about their treatment and symptoms and healthcare experiences. An analysis of the website found that the public forums collected significantly more patient data than the million-dollar clinical trials funded by drug companies.

“It is antithetical to medical culture in the United States,” he said, when discussing the idea that information should be public. If it were up to the industry to create such a site, he said the forums would prevent patients from venting or complaining about their treatment. Yet this opportunity to express the frustrations with one’s experience, as well as sharing wisdom and successes, is what draws patients to the site in the first place. If the corporate world wants to truly tap into the data of its consumers, “It has to change the culture to succeed.”

The end of the world, according to Joe Dunthorne and Colson Whitehead On the morning of Toronto’s annual Zombie Walk, a crowd of large juicy brains gathered to hear tales of the apocalypse. Welsh author Joe Dunthorne read from his new commune-in-crisis novel, Wild Abandon, while New York’s Colson Whitehead talked about his zombie book, Zone One. Like most tales of horror, these were tinged with humour.

Dunthorne, whose previous novel Submarine was adapted to a film, fed the brains the twisted tale of a marijuana-overdosing cult leader with an excerpt from his novel in which the children of a commune decide to escape to the glamour of suburbia. Whitehead kept the brains wired with a dryly-sarcastic review of his writing life, beginning with a twisted cliché: “I grew up as a poor black child in Mississippi.

There was dancing and singing. Actually, I grew up in New York.” His novel explores civilization’s reconstruction after a plague, where the survivors must deal with Post-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder.

Both stories are semi-fantastical explorations of a nottoo-farfetched place, but as Whitehead noted, “If you get on the subway at rush hour, you’re pretty acquainted with zombies walking around.”

PHOTOS: AMY WARD

ImagineNATIVE celebrates indigenous cultures in 12th annual festival Lightbox-hosted series features 110 works of film, multimedia and music

By Amy Ward A reputation for producing great storytellers is not a bad cultural stereotype to have.

Yet every year the ImagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival solidifies the rumour that indigenous cultures from around the world can’t help but tell some fresh, inspiring and hilarious stories in high- and low-tech media alike.

The festival, now in its 12th year, moved to its new home in the TIFF Bell Lightbox, where it featured 110 works of film, multimedia and music from indigenous artists representing six continents. In addition to contributions from Canada and the U.S., films came from Australia, Bolivia, Nepal, Norway, the Philippines, Russia, South Africa and many other countries.

One of the greatest things about the festival is how accessible the creative process is.

The audience is full of the films’ directors, actors and writers, and their extended families and friends, which makes attending a screening feel almost like a big family film festival, if your family is full of jokesters and storytellers. ImagineNATIVE is a leader when it comes to the representation of female filmmakers, a trend that perhaps it can share with the other film festivals of the world.

ImagineNATIVE is also one of the few festivals that give ticket discounts to the underemployed. It’s a self-determined category, but one that more festivals might consider if they truly want to make the experience open to all.

This year, the stories cycled between celebration and despair, touching on themes of occupation and addiction, family and spirituality, hunting, hip hop and throat singing, reserves and boarding schools, environmental protection, and the world’s best Indian taco.

Animation was a common ingredient in the shorts and features alike, which often blended animation with live action, bending reality and mysticism with a little humour as spice. The festival also featured its first 3D film, Duke Redbird’s environmental short, Totem Impact.

Many of the films satirized stereotypes of native cultures. Filmmaker Alethea ArnaquqBaril’s Sloth was a mocking portrayal of the typecast lazy Inuit, contrasting the harsh lifestyle of their ancestors with a tongue-in-cheek jeer that modern Inuit are too busy lazily surfing the Internet to even finish animating the short. Further denying any sloth in her

blood, Arnaquq-Baril directed two films in this year’s festival. Her feature, Tunniit, a documentary about traditional Inuit facial tattooing, explored her personal journey to reclaim the tradition lost to the generation of her elders through her quest to get her own tattoos.

Despite her parents’ fears that the tribe would not respect her decision to bring back the form of beautification, Arnaquq-Baril said she has since inspired other women in her reserve to be tattooed. She’s now working on a film that will explore the traditional seal hunt from the Inuit perspective, in response to opposition by animal activists.

The drama Every Emotion Costs explored reserve life from the perspective of two sisters who return after a decade in the city when their mother passes away, and must face the family troubles that drove them away in the first place. Director Darlene Naponse’s portrait of her home in northern Ontario’s Atikameksheng Ashinawbek reserve highlights the natural beauty, the strong community and the loving aunties who make the reserve wondrous and warm in a way that outsiders tend to miss at the sight of pre-fab houses and endless snow.

Shorts make up a large component of the festival, which included several shorts-only programs as well as short films as introductions to each of the features. The Witching Hour program is a festival tradition, a collection of weird, creepy, or bizarre short films shown just before midnight. This year’s program split fairly evenly between the funny (such as Steven Judd’s one-liner Neil Discovers the Moon, in which an indigenous moon girl asks the landing astronaut if she will have to move again) and the dark (including Marie Clements’ musical Jesus Indian, a tale of incarceration and woe that could double as a gothic music video). Eagle vs. Sparrow, which received an honourable mention for best short, turned a traditional tale of an eagle and a sparrow into a live re-enactment featuring talented high school students personifying the birds of the tale.

Fortunately, ImagineNATIVE doesn’t stop at the theatre doors. New media, visual arts and radio elements were on display at venues across town. Interactive and radio features, such as Courtney Montour’s Kahnawake Voices, a community gathering website, and Tansi!

Nehiyawetan, a website where kids can brush up on their Cree, can still be accessed at ImagineNATIVE.org.

Fashion Diaries

By Hafsa Mulla Models saunter down the runway under the luminous spotlight, dressed to the nines, exuding confidence with a heavy strut, vertiginous heels included. They make it look effortless and ooze nonchalance, but behind the scenes the atmosphere is entirely different.

I recently had the pleasure of witnessing the sensational backstage process that could singlehandedly make or slightly break the show at Toronto’s LG Fashion Week. From designers such as Michi to Jay Manuel, every show had a different vibe and a different message, but the backstage hullabaloo was equivalent.

What happens between shows is a show in itself —the backstage bustles with media, designers and industry folks amid a mélange of irritability, clamor and distressed divas.

The hair and make-up stations are flooded with eye shadow palettes, a plethora of lip colours, various forms of eyeliner, tweezers, the infamous flat top kabuki to a dozen other top-of-theline makeup brushes ready to transform even the most average face into a PHOTO: HAFSA MULLA

fierce glamazon.

The process is strenuous, to put it mildly. Towering models perch on stools for excruciatingly long hours while their limp hair is styled into voluminous manes, skin is made supple, face is lacquered and preened to perfection. And their diet is simple – the incessant sipping of SmartWater.

The models then glide to the dressing area that is awash in clothing racks, shoes and dazzling accessories. Their looks are immaculately pre-styled, snapped in a Polaroid and plastered in front of their respective changing areas.

Moments before the show, models are unclothed from their comfortable off-duty clothes into designer wear that ranges from the most outlandish outfits to just five inches of fabric that they have no choice but to squeeze into.

Racing against the clock designers pace the floors and get all hands on deck to eradicate any fashion emergency at hand – mending a shoe buckle, removing a kink or steaming that stubborn crease are standard hurdles that hinder with recreating the Polaroid that was shot weeks in advance. They have to stay true to the aesthetic and ensure that their models are able to illustrate their brand beautifully amidst rows and rows of spectators who are quick to hurl necessary and sometimes totally unnecessary criticism.

Five minutes leading up to the show and panic takes over by a storm. A stream of beauties line up, knocking their knees together in anticipation while getting quick touch-ups.

They know that they are donning more than just clothes, they have to stage the designers intricate creations and conform to a theme—serious, fun, theatrical, expressive or somewhere in between—and rock the ramp with attitude and great energy. Anything short of precision is not an option.

Then, the music booms, the spotlight gleams and a runway model summons the courage, channels her inner Coco Rocha and opens the show with poise. She owns the runway for less than 60 seconds and then sashays backstage where she swiftly strips, restyles and perfects her second look and glamorously graces the catwalk all over again. This chaotic pattern is sometimes repeated up to three, four or five times per show.

Once the entire collection is shown, the finale walk takes place and the designer calms his/her palpitating nerves, takes a bow and closes the show.

After months of hard work of casting models, choreographing a unique sequence, designing divine pieces and investing a stupendous amount of money, success and recognition for the label is still not guaranteed. Either those precious 20 minutes on the runway are spent mesmerizing the audience and dropping their jaws in awe or they are merely left uninspired.

However, Canada’s creative designers enjoy this gamble and courageously exhibit their positive potential that is manifested by their work of art. Our job as a member of the audience is to acknowledge their effort and diligence, and receive it fairly with better judgment.

Here’s to celebrating 13 years of Canadian fashion and many more to come!

Ryerson Free Press November 2011 15

Reviews

MUSIC Ohbijou’s travels reflected in latest experimental album

C

asey Mecija, lead singer of Toronto indie darlings, Ohbijou, extends her arm to the rafters, body swaying back and forth as she croons on the stage of Trinity-St. Paul’s United Church. Sporting a Peter Pan haircut and a gold emblazoned jacket, Mecija’s body twists and turns like a small windmill as she sings to keyboardist Ryan Carley. At times both serene and energetic, Mecija leads us through the eclectic, lush landscape of Ohbijou’s newest and most experimental album, Metal Meets, in a venue that is no stranger to ardent worship.

Ohbijou’s third album showcases a new creative venture and the maturation of their sound, exploring uncharted territory both musically and physically. Known for their loyalty to Toronto turf, the band departs from their former Queen West base of operations and pays homage to their extensive travels in Metal Meets. “After the release of Beacons, we did a lot of touring abroad, saw a lot of places. Personally, our lives were splintering off to sort of invest in different endeavours, like school and recording other projects, so I think that breath of experience offered more depth and complexity for our third record,” says Mecija.

Tonight, the cushioned church pews are packed, eyes focused on Ohbijou’s first soothing sermon of the night, “Sligo,” a song that meanders slowly at first with violin chords and shimmering tones, building momentum as fast-paced drums and bass crash with thunderous cymbals. “Bring something more than this. I know I’m more than this. You’re something more than this,” sings Mecija, whose voice is a powerhouse in a small frame. Behind the band, a projector screen displays a mesmerising kaleidoscope of geometric shapes that ebb and flow like “Iron and Ore,” transforming with each new song.

While writing Metal Meets, the band retreated to a cottage in Dyer’s Bay, located on the Bruce Peninsula, to escape everyday distractions. “We kind of felt like leaving the city and leaving behind wireless and cell phones and relationships and trends; that would be the best way to really hone everything in and have an album that projected a greater focus,” explains Mecija.

Bringing Besnard Lakes frontman Jace Lasek to the helm of the project as producer gave the band a fresh perspective, while enhancing what they had imagined for the record. “My first encounter with him was seeing this huge wizard man in all black and there was an immediate rapport and an immediate connection,” says Mecija. “He is not only so technically skilled and so sonically creative, he’s just such a nice person and it made for or best recording experience so far for sure.”

A former graduate of Ryerson’s Radio and Television Arts program with fellow bandmate, bassist Heather Kirby, Mecija is currently completing her Master of Sociology and Equity Studies at the University of Toronto. Studying the struggles of Filipinos in the diaspora and mentoring young Filipino artists at the Kapisanan Philippine Centre for Arts & Culture this past March influenced Mecija’s song writing and desire to explore her ancestry in the song “Balikbayan.”

“I think that being Filipino is an aspect of myself that I’m deeply impacted by everyday, that I never thought about writing about,” says Mecija. “And I think that with that experience it sparked this need to sort of excavate my own history.”

While playing with new techniques and sounds, Metal Meets stays true to Ohbijou’s captivating style of orchestral arrangement, emotional soundscapes and storytelling lyrics. It pulls from the band’s nomadic memories in a poetic, haunting way. For Mecija, the second last song on the album, “Turquoise Lake,” made the biggest visual impact, even though it isn’t an actual place she knows of.

“It was just this winter day in Toronto and I don’t know who I was with or what I was doing but I just remember driving by the lake front and Lake Ontario was just this effervescent turquoise. And, for me, that was a really strong image and it still is one of the strongest images for me on the record.” — Adriana Rolston

Inaugural Bloor-Ossington Folk Festival touches down

W

hen asked to name a Toronto music festival, most people would probably identify Canadian Music Week, North by Northeast or the Toronto Downtown Jazz Festival. These are huge multi-day festivals that feature hundreds of bands at dozens of venues around the city, and sponsored by everyone from AOL to Jägermeister to PlayStation. What Torontonians might not know is that in recent years, there have been a number of smaller, more community-minded music festivals popping up. These events are put on by local organizers or venues and receive little to no arts funding from the city and provincial government. This is the case with this year’s inaugural Bloor-Ossington Folk Festival, which took place from Oct. 14 to 16 and featured approximately 50 acts playing six venues in Toronto’s west side. Organized mainly by Toronto-based Canadian music magazine Exclaim! and Bloor Street West cafe Saving Gigi, the first edition included performances by Cuff The Duke’s Wayne Petti, Rheostatics’ Dave Bidini, Holy Fuck’s Brian Borcherdt and more.

One of the highlights of the weekend was singer-songwriter Julie Doiron, originally from Moncton, New Brunswick, who played on the patio of a small restaurant on Saturday. Admitting she was a little tipsy on one beer and a shot of ouzo—the latter offered enthusiastically by the bar’s owner to audience members as they passed through the back doors—Doiron played an acoustic set of folk-pop tunes to a small group that included her young daughter. Down the road at Saving Gigi, The Wooden Sky’s Gavin Gardiner performed a solo set as onlookers warmed their hands around their lattes. While the majority of the acts playing the festival would fall into the “folk” category, there was also a rowdy showcase in the basement of a venue called The Theater of Human Health, with Toronto noise rock band METZ and a surprise performance by hardcore punk heroes Cancer Bats that was anything but quiet. Because of the smaller venues, there was a real sense of intimacy to the weekend as neighbours chatted with each other, families brought their children and everyone seemed to know everyone. Here’s hoping there’s a second edition. — Max Mertens

16 ryersonfreepress.ca

PHOTO: REYNARD LI

FILM Toronto Israel Film Festival The Flood

T

To Catch A Thief

G

race Kelly: From Movie Star to Princess is TIFF’s upcoming fall exhibition, curated by festival CEO and co-director Piers Handling, and Lightbox artistic director Noah Cowan. It will display rarely shown items and artifacts that range from Kelly’s days as a Hollywood star to a princess of one of Europe’s oldest royal families – the Monegasques.

Running in conjunction with the exhibition is Icy Fire: The Hitchcock Blonde. The series of movies looks at Alfred Hitchcock’s fascination with blonde bombshells, highlighting Grace Kelly, the very embodiment of Hitchcock’s blonde: “cool, aloof, seemingly untouchable, but harbouring masochistic passions beneath her icy veneer.”

The series includes Dial M for Murder (1954), Psycho (1960), The Birds (1963), The 39 Steps (1935), Rear Window (1954), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), Marnie (1964), Vertigo (1958), Family Plot (1976), North by Northwest (1959), and the rarely screened To Catch A Thief (1955).

To Catch A Thief is a romantic thriller that stars Cary Grant and Grace Kelly, as well as Jessie Royce Landis and Brigitte Auber. In the film, John Robie (Grant), an ex-thief living on the French Riviera, is forced out of retirement when a copycat commits a series of robberies bearing his trademark. When the police show up at his front door, Robie knows he must find the thief, or risk taking the fall for a crime he didn’t commit.

On the way, he meets Frances Stevens (Kelly), an American tourist with a shocking interest in Robie’s former profession.

The movie is undoubtedly one of Hitchcock’s lightest, and does not suffer for it: To Catch A Thief is like a luxurious trip through the Riviera (the aerial car chase was just gorgeous) with a bit of suspense. All throughout, the storyline mirrors the area in which it was shot: graceful, refined, with subtle humour, lots of romance and just a hint of sex (the fireworks scene was one of Hitchcock’s most famous). And, of course, Grace Kelly as the typical Hitchcock blonde: Frances Stevens, right up until the last second, is the epitome of the description.

Cary Grant and Grace Kelly were fabulous in their roles, but Hitchcock’s directing was the real standout performance: he captured a common car chase with flare, and was able to mislead the audience with suggestive camera angles and sound; you wouldn’t know the wool was pulled over your eyes until two minutes later.

The Grace Kelly: From Movie Star to Princess exhibit will run at the TIFF Bell Lightbox from November 4, 2011, until January 22, 2012. Icy Fire: The Hitchcock Blonde will be open from November 4 until December 11, 2011. — Kelsey Rolfe

The Interrupters

S

et in the violence-laden streets of Chicago comes The Interrupters, a film chronicling a year in the lives of three ex-gang members who try to protect their communities from the harm they once afflicted.

With the help of New York Times writer Alex Kotlowitz, director Steve James examines the efforts of three Violence Interrupters: Ameena Matthews, Cobe Williams and Eddie Bocanegra. The trio works with CeaseFire, an organization that strives to prevent more conflicts from happening in Chicago neighbourhoods.

Each Interrupter has a crime-ridden past, but one central objective.

Matthews, the daughter of Jeff Fort, one of the city’s most notorious gang leaders, was once a drug ring enforcer. With her fearless and passionate personality, the film follows her friendship with a troubled teenage girl who reminds Matthews of herself when she was that age.

Williams, who witnessed his father’s brutal murder at the age of 11, once served 12 years in prison for attempted murder and drug trafficking before turning his life around. With his good humour and general good nature, Williams confronts Flamo, a man who sets out to take vengeance on his enemies.

Then there’s Boncanegra, a former Latino gangbanger who spent 14 years in jail for killing a rival gang member. Today, he helps kids express themselves through painting. He serves as a mentor for these children, who at times are overwhelmed by the violence they witness in their communities.

By intervening in neighbourly disputes with the goal of persuading those involved not to kill one another, each Interrupter hopes to make their communities a safer place to live.

Having garnered positive reviews at the Sundance Film Festival, James, who was present at a screening at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, hopes The Interrupters can help others open up about the issue of crime and gang violence.

“The Interrupters take the reality and they act,” he said. “I want you to look beyond the stereotypes and see that they are real people. These people want the same things and want to help their community.”

Although the film doesn’t deliver happy endings, The Interrupters is a realistic look at the violence experienced in the Chicago streets. Intimate and gripping, James captures the ups and downs of the film’s three main subjects as they attempt to bring peace to their neighbourhoods. Though hopeless at times when more senseless homicides take place, it’s obvious the effect each Interrupter has on those they try to help.

While lives have changed significantly by film’s end, the future remains murky. As disputes continue to strike, it’s clear much change still awaits. — Samantha Lui

he Flood is a beautiful story about communication and acceptance.

The plot revolves around 13-year-old Yoni, a smart but physically under-developed boy who, because of his size, struggles with bullying in school. On top of that, his family is slowly falling apart. And with parents who barely speak to each other, separation seems imminent. On the eve of Yoni’s Bar Mitzvah, his autistic older brother, Tomer, returns home from a recently closed institution, and his return threatens to destroy what’s left of Yoni’s dysfunctional family.

The 90-minute film is packed with symbolism and powerful imagery, contrasting the recurring Bar Mitzvah chant of Noah, the holy man, to the sinful lives led by the story’s characters. This is, in the words of director Guy Nattiv, the family’s last chance to fix their errors. Specifically, it is Yoni’s chance to find love in the most unexpected person of all, and to let go of the anger he holds inside.

The cinematography and resolution of the film are a bit on the amateur side: There are some interesting perspectives that give the images depth; however, the shots are distracting and unappealing.

But while the film disappoints technically, it has an overwhelmingly effective narrative.

This is Nattiv’s baby: the film is an expanded version of a short he did in university. And although it took years to get the film to the big screen, the amount of thought put into every scene and character makes the film an honest and immersive experience.

For the character of Tomer, played by Michael Moshonov, Nattiv interviewed several families to capture a vivid and accurate portrayal of a person who has autism. This research, paired with Moshonov’s flawless performance, creates a believable and heart-wrenching character of a disabled boy who has been forgotten by his family.

I could go on and on about how brilliant every actor in the film is.

They truly are. But if there is someone I must absolutely talk about, it’s Yoav Rotman, who plays Yoni. His grasp of the character is on par with adult counterparts. Rotman is capable of detecting and effectively portraying the self-doubt and anger that Yoni suffers, and his physical attributes and talent make him the perfect Yoni.

The Flood is a flawed film. But it’s nearly impossible to hold its faults against it because of its beautiful message and heart. Its legitimate set of questions about society, not only in Israel but in the world, makes it a film worth watching. — Brian Boudreau

Dusk

A

lon Zingman’s Dusk is the second movie I watched at the festival.

Having watched Guy Nattiv’s The Flood, I was expecting a similarly light-hearted film. That was naïve of me.

The film starts innocently enough. An Argentinian mother travelling to the city with her son; a father waiting for his daughter’s arrival at the airport; a mother taking her daughter to school; and a hair stylist going about her daily business. But the story gets darker when a car accident brings these four complete strangers together. Between the film’s beginning at sunrise at the airport and ending at sunset at the hospital, their four stories are woven together and the value of life, love and company all come to light.

A few people walked out midway through the movie, which is understandable. Although it is peppered with some comedy, it’s a “feel-bad” film, making you think about things that maybe you’d rather not think about. Because the film takes place within one day, the chaos that ensues encourages the idea that today is not just any other day. It is a space in time where a lot can happen – good or bad. It also points to the inevitability of death.

Although the format of the film does borrow some cinematic techniques that have been used before, there is enough originality in it to claim that Alon Zingman has a very distinct and smart directorial style.

Zingman uses time as a transitional and emotional tool. At its beginning, the film exudes a sense of happiness and hope. It’s just another day. But as the day progresses, a series of unexpected and tense events transpire so that, by the time sunset (and eventual darkness) comes along, the storylines have gotten so twisted that it’s hard to believe this is the same movie. But that’s the beauty of the film: it’s dynamic, and it’s nonconformist.

The one complaint I have with the film is that there are some unfinished storylines. And though it is understandable that parts of the script are inevitably lost in the editing room, some themes were barely touched on, begging the question of why they were included in the first place.

In life, there aren’t always answers, and Dusk is life. It is a series of unconnected events. But, somehow, Zingman is able to connect these events into a story, and a very good one at that. — BB

Ryerson Free Press November 2011 17

CHINATOWN FESTIVAL Photos by Peter Lewicki

Ryerson Free Press November 2011 19

AP

PE

JAN

KEEP CALM

AL

UA

DE

RY

AD

LIN

13

E

and

SUBMIT an APPEAL Don’t stress! Continuing Education and Part-time degree students can access CESAR’s Academic & Student Advocacy Service for help with: Grade/Standing Appeals Fee Appeals

Academic Misconduct Appeals Instructor & Course Complaints

To make an appointment and more information visit www.mycesar.ca or call (416) 979 - 5193 This is a FREE service to all CESAR members!