October 2011: Ryerson Free Press

OCT 11

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CESAR BBQ Kicks Off in Support of Continuing Education Students

By Samantha Lui

Ryerson held its first- annual orientation concert and barbecue for continuing education and part-time students last Thursday night.

Teaming up with the Chang School of Continuing Education, the event was hosted by CESAR, Ryerson’s student union that represents continuing, part-time and distance education students.

Munching on hamburgers, pizza and coleslaw, students enjoyed having their caricatures drawn by artists while listening to music provided by Toronto-based reggae band Friendlyness and the Human Rights.

Spread along Gould St. were several booths providing students with information about on-campus services such as RyeAccess and the Discrimination and Harassment Prevention Services. Elections Ontario was also present to register students for the upcoming election and to teach them how to vote.

Although this was the first orientation barbecue hosted for Chang school students, Andrea Barbera says CESAR has hosted smaller orientation events in the past such as wine

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and cheese jazz nights.

Barbera, who is the programming and outreach coordinator of CESAR, says the orientation was organized to provide something for students who aren’t on campus every day.

Noting how full-time students get a Week of Welcome every year, she said events as such aren’t always accessible for Chang school students because they start school a week later.

“We find that a lot of the continuing education and part-time degree students have a very isolating experience,” Barbera said.

“We wanted to provide some type of community type of event to bring them together, bring their instructors together to try and build a more inclusive community.”

Dominic Wong, president of CESAR, said the point of this event was to get students interested in getting involved in the school community.

A Chang school student himself, Wong, who is studying non-profit management, felt lost and confused when he started at Ryerson.

“You just get thrown in there. I didn’t know what was going on,” he said. “Fortunately, someone from CESAR came in and I got involved.”

As for part-time student Farnaz Alijamshid, she attended the orientation event because she felt overwhelmed when she first entered the school.

Having just immigrated to Canada four months ago from Iran, the control project management student wanted to learn more of the things Ryerson has to offer.

“I came because I don’t have enough information and don’t know how to find information about Ryerson’s communities and events,” she said.

Having noticed that part-time and distance education students face difficulties in feeling a part of the school’s community, Ray Chang, chancellor of Ryerson University and naming benefactor of the Chang School, thought the event was a good way to help them feel more included.

“I think this is a great way for students to get together and meet each other,” he said. “I feel it is very important for them to feel part of Ryerson because they definitely are.”

Land Claims Forgotten Issue in Ontario Election

By Kate Mills Ontario is gearing up for another election on October 6. There hasn’t been much talk among the candidates about First Nations land claims. And yet, some of the claims have been at the table for over 100 years. Many Indigenous leaders are now warning the province that if land claims are not dealt with seriously it will lead to more conflict.

If land claims issues are not properly addressed, Temagami Second Chief Joe Katt recently stated, “First Nations will become a boiling point and catch like fire across Canada.”

Many First Nations leaders have stated that their communities are willing to share their lands as long as they benefit from the economic activities and have control as to what happens on their traditional land as outlined in their treaties, which the Supreme Court has ruled are protected by the Canadian Constitution.

The province plays a role in settling land claims, but has often stated that “it’s a federal responsibility.” This is what a Liberal representative told the Ryerson Free Press when asked for an interview on unresolved land claims in Ontario.

This is, however, only partially true. While responsibility for resolving land claims does reside with the federal government, provincial governments do have a significant role to play.

The provincial government continues to be involved in many land claims negotiations. As the federal government’s Aboriginal Affairs website states, provincial involvement occurs when the province, “had a role in the historical events giving rise to the claim” or when, “the claim involves assertions of rights to Crown lands, natural resources or private property.”

Considering that most land claims issues are sparked by resource extraction or development projects, the province is involved in more than a few land claims negotiations.

The federal government is tight-lipped about unresolved land claims.

When the Ryerson Free Press requested an interview with Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada they would only answer by email, and besides being directed to their website, provided this statement: “Canada continues to believe that negotiations offer the best forum in which to resolve [First Nations] land claims in a manner that will benefit all parties, including surrounding communities.”

Many, however, believe the provincial and federal governments are simply stalling negotiations on purpose.

As Gilles Bisson, NDP candidate for Timmins-James Bay put it, “The

attitude within the federal government is the less you can do to resolve the issues, the better because it won’t cost them any money.”

Land claims processes are also being confronted with Canada’s messy and violent historical involvement in internal First Nations’ governance.

One reason why negotiations are stalled with the Grand River Six Nations near Caledonia, according to Six Nations of Grand River Director of Land & Resources Lonny Bombarry, is because their own “elected band council and Confederacy council haven’t come to an agreement as to how they are going to work together to commence negotiations.

In 1924, the Canadian government evicted the Confederacy council and installed a band council more willing to see things the Canadian government’s way. As the Confederacy council has reasserted itself in the past few years, it has come into conflict with the band council.

The Confederacy council thinks they should be doing negotiations and the elected council not,” said Bombarry.

This same messy history has perpetuated poverty in numerous communities and led to unfair deals with industry that exclude many, leading to extreme poverty.

Chief Katt estimated that since 1971 when Bear Island became an official reserve, they have been given somewhere between $60 million to $100 million out of an estimated $3 billion in resources and taxation taken from the tribal territories of the Teme-Augama Anishnabai in the past 100 years or so. “We don’t mind economic development or other people coming in, but we want a fair share for resources in our community,” Katt said.

In addition to a fair economic deal, Bisson stated that jobs from the development projects on First Nations lands need to be offered to them. If First Nations people aren’t trained for those jobs then “we need to provide the ability to provide training in these communities, so people can qualify for these jobs, and we need to enshrine this in law,” Bisson said.

Whoever is elected on October 6, Grand Chief of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation Stan Beardy believes treaties should be discussed in a “practical sense.” This means talking about “what they mean in terms of education, health, right to shelter. We agree to benefit sharing. By talking about this it will become clear how we agree to work together. We need to be a part of it.”

The Ontario PC Party are not represented in this article as they could not be reached for comment.

Average Canadian tuition rose by eight per cent in two years: StatsCan Additional compulsory fees also on the rise

By Tannara Yelland, CUP Prairies & Northern Bureau Chief SASKATOON (CUP) — As universities try to balance their budgets in the face of a sluggish economy, Canadian university students have seen their tuition fees go up by eight per cent in the last two years.

A four per cent increase for the 2010–11 year was followed by another 4.3 per cent hike this year, according to recent Statistics Canada study. The Canadian average for undergraduate tuition is now $5,366. Ontario students, who pay $6,640 on average, pay the highest tuition in the country while Quebec undergrads enjoy the lowest tuition in the nation, paying an average of $2,519. Students in Newfoundland and Labrador, where tuition fees have been frozen since 2003–04, are paying an average of $2,649.

In Alberta, tuition is nominally capped to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), meaning it increased by about two per cent for the 2011– 12 year. Average fees for full-time undergrads in that province sit at $5,662.

“However, that number is misleading,” said University of Alberta Students’ Union vice-president external Farid Iskandar. “AlPhoto: sharon drummond/Flickr

berta has the highest mandatory non-instructional fees levied on students in the country: they’re $1,399.”

While Alberta has the highest nontuition fees, students in New Brunswick will have the largest increase over last year’s non-instructional fees for both graduates and undergraduates. Compulsory non-tuition fees went up for undergraduates by 21.5 per cent over last year, rising to $430. For graduate students, non-instructional fees went up by 17.6 per cent.

The national average for compulsory fees went up 5.5 per cent for undergrads. Graduate students in Nova Scotia were the only students in the nation to see a decline in compulsory fees; they went down by 7.5 per cent.

While Canadian undergrads are paying more each year, they are still significantly better off than either their international student counterparts or graduate students. International students, who represent a rapidly growing portion of the student population, pay an average of $17,571 in tuition — up 9.5 per cent from two years ago.

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

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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 Design ANDREA Yeomans

Contributors marie alcober amanda cupido sarah hahn briana hill anastasiya komkova samantha lui haseena manek max mertens kate mills manori ravindran kelsey rolfe rhiannon russell roohi sahajpal angela sterritt khavy tran amy ward tannara yelland

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

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Ryerson Free Press October 2011 3

Missing Women’s Commission Flounders Groups looking elsewhere for answers to murder, disappearance of Aboriginal women

By Angela Sterritt Just weeks before the B.C. Missing Women Commission of Inquiry is set to begin, concerns and questions continue to be raised by the groups representing Aboriginal, women’s, and sex-trade worker’s groups.

More are walking away from what appears to be a crumbling process.

“We are calling for a National Inquiry,” says Jeannette Corbiere Lavell, president of the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC). “This is a human rights violation: we are being denied the basic right to participate in a decision-making process that affects us,” she said. NWAC pulled out of the commission when it was announced that none of the organizations provided standing at the inquiry would be afforded legal representation.

“Canada is supposed to be leading the way for upholding rights—we should be able to access at least one of these rights, and be able to represent ourselves,” Lavell said in a telephone interview. “There are over 600 missing and murdered Aboriginal women and as Aboriginal women, we know the best way to address this—what works for us and what doesn’t.”

The commission was called on September 27, 2010, to investigate police handling of the murders committed by serial killer Robert Pickton. Just a month before the commission was set to begin, many observers watched in disbelief as the inquiry appeared to fall apart.

“On the tenth [of August 2011], we pulled out because we felt like the commission had reached a point where it no longer represented a meaningful exercise,” West Coast Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF) Executive Director Kasari Govender told The Dominion. West Coast LEAF is a non-profit group that was provided standing at the commission with coalition partner Ending Violence Association of B.C. “With its denial to fund legal counsel to Aboriginal and community groups we feel it greatly compromises the inquiry and many groups are feeling pushed out,” she said.

Eight of the groups granted standing at the commission withdrew from the proceedings after the B.C. government announced this summer that it can’t afford to pay the legal fees for groups participating in the Pickton inquest. The relatives of the serial killer’s victims, however, will be provided funding for counsel, albeit for one lawyer for all ten families.

It’s just one of many issues that has led some to question whether the commission will get to the bottom of a serious question: Why and how was it that a serial killer managed to operate freely without fear of repercussions for over a decade?

The Missing Women Investigation Review, issued by the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) in August, 2010, established that police inaction over the colossal number of reports of missing women from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES) warranted a rigorous investigation. It detailed eight key findings among the reasons for the failed investigation, including management, leadership, jurisdiction, and lack of resources, training and analysis.

The Review emphasizes that the VPD “did not cause the failure of the investigation into Pickton because the RCMP had responsibility for that investigation.” According to the review, the RCMP abandoned the investigation that they asserted authority over in 1999.

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But the cracks that spurred the lapsed investigation appeared much earlier.

In 1990, residents of Vancouver’s DTES alerted Ernie Crey to the disappearances of women from the neighbourhood. At the time he was the acting-president of the United Native Nations, then located at 108 Blood Alley in the DTES. Crey was the first high-profile Aboriginal leader to speak out when women began vanishing and became a strong voice for victims’ families after his sister—Dawn Crey—disappeared in November 2000.

“Folks were coming up and saying that women who live in the neighbourhood— women in the sex trade, women who were dependent on drugs, and women who were mentally ill—were disappearing,” Crey told The Dominion.

According to Crey, the then-police liaison provided the logic behind the mystery: The women were simply part of a transient population—one day in Calgary, Victoria the next, on a bus to Vancouver the following.

Regardless of the theory, inside the cop shop an officer was also raising suspicions about a serial killer.

One of the few PhD-educated police in the force, Kim Rossmo, also a criminologist, produced a sophisticated geographic profiling formula to predict where a serial criminal lives. However, in a paradoxical move, adding to the long list of setbacks, at the same time Rossmo brought forward his concerns about a potential serial killer at work, he was pushed from the force. While he wasn’t officially released because of the Pickton case, resentment over Rossmo’s quick rise through the ranks led to resentment among higherups, according to a former police colleague, and likely was a reason for his warnings being ignored.

The evidence was clear, but few seemed to take the disappearances of the women, many of whom were Aboriginal, seriously.

“It’s not just about the police, it’s a systemic issue, with racism and sex-discrimination at the forefront,” Lavell told The Dominion. “It’s about the refusal of the police, the justice department, the courts, the media and the public to acknowledge how the most vulnerable members of our society— impoverished Aboriginal women—are being abused and exposed to gruesome levels of violence,” she said.

When Pickton was finally arrested, the monster jigsaw puzzle finally came together and the picture seemed complete—except for one piece.

“We already had...demanded a full inquiry into how police undertook the investigation,” Ernie Crey remembers. “At that point it was our idea to ensure the inquiry’s scope was broad—not just focusing on the police inaction, but to look at other issues,” he said.

The judicial inquiry will delve into Robert Pickton’s horrific crimes: the murders of 33 women in just five years, all coming from the DTES. It will also question why, in 1998, the attorney general’s office stayed attempted-murder charges against him. Pickton bragged to an undercover cell-mate of killing 49 women.

Dawn Crey was one of the 30 women whose DNA was found at the killer’s pig farm. Pickton was not convicted for her murder, just like 20 others whose DNA was also found at the slaughter warehouse. The decision to stay the 20 remaining murder charges after Pickton was convicted on six counts of murder in 2007 came from then-

attorney general Wally Oppal. He claimed there was little to gain since Pickton was already serving the maximum sentence under Canadian law. The former judge also stated publicly during his tenure as attorney general that he saw no need for an inquiry.

In a surprising—and criticized—turn of events, Oppal (who was unseated in the 2009 provincial election) was eventually appointed to spearhead the examination of how 66 women disappeared from a small area without police taking heed.

“Some people objected [to Oppal’s appointment],” said Crey. “I didn’t initially, yet when I observed so much opposition from community and families, well I didn’t strenuously oppose, but if Oppal’s appointment carried so much suspicion and doubts then the only smart thing that could happen is if he decided to step down.”

Oppal has since changed his tune, jumping the proverbial fence and leaving some questioning his impartiality—this time on the side of the women.

“It would be the height of unfairness to require unrepresented individuals to cross-examine police who are represented by highly qualified counsel,” Oppal wrote in an eight page letter to then-attorney general Barry Penner, dated June 27. In it he urged Penner to fund the groups representing the issues and needs of the missing and murdered women.

Overall, the provincial and federal governments are providing funding for the one lawyer for the attorney general of B.C., three lawyers for the Department of Justice Canada (RCMP), nine lawyers for the commission counsel, two lawyers for the Vancouver Police Department, one lawyer for Rossmo (former VPD), two lawyers for the Criminal Justice Branch (prosecutors), and one lawyer for the Vancouver Police Union—19 legal representatives in total for the justice system representatives.

Just one lawyer is being covered for a fraction of the families of the missing and murdered women represented at the commission; no funding will be made available to the Aboriginal, sex-trade, and women’s groups, many of whom knew the women intimately and for several years.

“We were caught off guard and insulted when we were informed that there could be only one independent counsel to ask questions on behalf of all the families. To us it

be working on a limitless retainer to destroy the credibility of Aboriginal women, sex trade workers and other vulnerable witnesses if they dare criticize the police, and these witnesses won’t have their own lawyers to defend them,” said Eby in a telephone conversation with The Dominion. “It’s outrageous.”

On August 18, Barry Penner announced his resignation as attorney general. Prior to his departure, he gave a statement to The Dominion in an email exchange.

“These continue to be challenging economic times, and there are limits to how many millions of taxpayer dollars we can provide to lawyers representing advocacy groups. Funding lawyers for all the participants would add an additional 12 legal teams, effectively tripling the number of taxpayer funded lawyers at the inquiry,” Penner wrote.

On September 20, Pivot Legal Society also pulled out of the inquiry, the ninth group to do so.

On his blog, Eby wrote, “In the big picture, setting aside the petty fault finding exercise, this Commission is supposed to be about restoring the faith of B.C.’s Indigenous populations who live on and off reserve, restoring the faith of B.C.’s marginalized populations including those with addictions and those who are homeless or otherwise on the fringes, and restoring the faith of the population at large that might be on the edge, that if you go missing the police will look for you as aggressively as they look for anybody else.”

According to NWAC, a national inquiry can effectively examine the violence against Aboriginal women and girls, with full participation of Aboriginal women, including those groups whose expertise and knowledge can assist its deliberations. “If a national inquiry is not feasible, then we will have to take it to the next level —an international human rights case,” said NWAC president Lavell.

“In cases that involve the ongoing genocide of our people, it’s so crucial. I can’t wait another one or two years to watch more women go—this summer alone, 30 women have been reported as missing or murdered,” she said.

“As Aboriginal women we have the role for leading the next generation, every women and every girl is our future as Native people and this is why the impact is so critical.”

The commission hearings will begin in Vancouver on October 11.

The evidence was clear, but few seemed to take the disappearances of the women, many of whom were Aboriginal, seriously. appears discriminatory and it boils down to the fact that racism and sexism continue to lead the investigation,” said Lavell.

David Eby of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) is troubled by the lack of parity that he sees at the commission.

“The government’s decision means some of the best lawyers in Vancouver will

Angela Sterritt is a writer, visual artist and broadcast and television journalist based out of Vancouver, B.C. She is a proud member of the Gitxsan Nation.

This article was originally published by The Dominion.

‘This is the civil rights movement of our time’ Tar sands protesters from across the country converge on Ottawa for a day of action

By Briana Hill, CUP Ottawa Bureau Chief OTTAWA (CUP) — An estimated 100 people were arrested on Parliament Hill September 26 as hundreds of citizens from across the country descended on Canada’s seat of government to protest the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline and further development of Alberta’s tar sands.

Following a 10 a.m. rally around the Centennial Flame, waves of protesters began to peacefully scale the barricades set up by the RCMP on the lawn stretching up to Centre Block and sit on the grass on the other side.

“All together, there [were] over 30 waves of people that crossed this barricade and did a sit-in on the other side, and now one by one these very brave individuals are being arrested and processed by the RCMP,” said York University graduate student and tar sands activist Kimia Ghomeshi.

“I’m here today in solidarity with all the First Nations communities that are presently impacted by the tar sands and [who are] opposing the proposed pipeline that would come with the expansion of the tar sands,” she explained.

The sit-in was coordinated by several groups, including the Council of Canadians, Greenpeace Canada and the Indigenous Environmental Network and was billed as a publicly organized, peaceful act of civil disobedience that drew citizens from all over the country.

“These people, the reason they’ve come here today is because they realize that we’ve come to a point where we need to escalate...all these actions we were taking before were being disregarded by the federal government, so it’s time for us to be more creative if we want change to happen,” said Ghomeshi.

University of Guelph student Cassy Andrew made her way to Ottawa to participate in what she called “an extremely important action.”

“The bottom line is that resources are being destroyed and depleted and once that’s done

we can’t go back,” she said. “We’re risking the lives of billions of people, depleting a resource such as water, in exchange for oil, when we should be moving away from our dependency on oil.”

Minister of Natural Resources Joe Oliver released a statement on September 26 supporting the Keystone XL pipeline with no mention of the protest.

“Canada’s energy sector is a cornerstone of our national economy and future prosperity... revenues to government from the upstream oil and gas sector in 2010 totalled more than $16 billion,” it read.

“That’s money that supports Canada’s quality of life — including investments in health care, infrastructure and keeping taxes low for Canadian families. Currently, Canada’s oil sands directly employ 132,000 people and account for hundreds of thousands of indirect jobs across Canada,” the statement continued.

“It’s a really, really destructive industry,” Carleton University student Espoir Manirambona said from the other side of the barricade. “I mean, it destroys more than it creates.

“I think most Canadians, the vast majority of Canadians, are already with us, and agree that we need a sustainable economy — green jobs, which we can leave behind for our kids, not jobs that are fueled by an industry [that] destroys the environment,” Manirambona continued.

Many speakers were featured throughout the day who hailed from communities directly affected by the tar sands.

“If people really listen to the stories of the people that are being affected by things like the tar sands and by climate change, then they’re not going to be able to just sit back and not do anything,” said Andrew.

“That’s why we’re risking arrest right now,” said Manirambona. “This is the civil rights movement of our time: climate justice.”

“Freedom” Celebrated at Yonge-Dundas Square Government sponsored event ignores Canadian human rights violations

By Rhiannon Russell Retired Lt.-Gen. Romeo Dallaire remembers driving in Rwanda with some coworkers and seeing a little boy standing in the middle of the road. Dallaire and his cohorts, slightly concerned about the risk of an ambush, pulled over to help him find his family.

The boy ran off and Dallaire found him sitting in a hut, next to a man and woman who had been half-eaten by dogs and rats. He picked up the boy, and looked into his eyes.

“His stomach was bloated. He was dirty. He was mangy.

But his eyes…they were the eyes of a human child,” Dallaire said to a crowd of 2,700 students and teachers from across the GTA on September 20. “They were just as human as my son’s back home in Quebec City.”

Dallaire was speaking at Freedom Day, an event held at Yonge-Dundas Square and hosted by the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies (FSWC). The purpose was to celebrate Canada’s freedom and advocate for global human rights.

Michel Chikwanine, a former child soldier in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Max Eisen, a Holocaust survivor, spoke as well.

Their messages were similar. They encouraged nationalism and an awareness of the atrocities happening in other countries.

“Hundreds of millions were watching what was happening to their Jewish neighbours, and no one lifted a finger,” said Eisen, his voice hardening with anger.

Host Rick Campanelli kept the event’s potentially dismal tone light and animated. After Eisen spoke about his family being sent to the gas chambers when he was 15 years old, Campanelli descended upon the podium with a big grin. “Are we all having fun out there?” he shouted.

Toronto police Chief Bill Blair spoke to the crowd as well about the importance of advocating for global justice. He didn’t mention the human rights abuses that occurred in Toronto during the G20 summit.

Organizers seemed to have striven for an event with high entertainment value, perhaps because the majority of the audience was under 17. After a question-and-answer period with Dallaire and Chikwanine (all questioning students were sitting in the front rows, prepped with sheets of paper), four male dancers burst onto the stage, swiveling and spinning to Usher tunes.

Photo: Rhiannon Russell

They were entertaining, if completely irrelevant. Students excitedly crowded the stage, singing along and holding out their camera phones.

It was a nationalistic event.

Canada was described multiple times by different speakers as “the best country in the world.”

Avi Benlolo, FSWC president and CEO also spoke to the students briefly. After he unknowingly fuddled one of Simon Wiesenthal’s “most well-known quotes” (it was printed on a huge banner and affixed to the side of the stage), Benlolo said, “The fact that over four billion people on this planet live in unfree societies should be a concern to us all. Use Canada, the greatest country in the world, as a template for freedom. Use it as a template for the world.”

Dallaire gave the students tangible ways to help fight for justice. “You’re here today, you’re listening, but what else can you do?” he said. Earlier, Campanelli had complimented the students for supporting freedom by simply attending the event.

“Get out there, get off your butts, and get involved,” said Dallaire. “Are you an activist? Have you joined an NGO?” He encouraged the youth to volunteer in third-world countries, building houses or helping in schools. They should also Skype with their peers in these countries, he said. “Use the revolution of communication you know so well.”

Throughout the event, there was no mention of human rights violations in Canada.

Winnie Ng, the Canadian Auto Workers-Sam Gindin Chair in Social Justice and Democracy at Ryerson University, said some elements of freedom are universal, while others are more complex. “Very often you link a market-driven economy with freedom and democracy, when it needs to be explored deeper than that.”

Overall, Canada’s human rights situation is considered by

many to be very good. We don’t witness mass killings, rapes, tortures and war in this country. But according to Ng, there are violations that should not be ignored.

“Much as we don’t have those outright acts of brutalities, the systemic peace - those are the ones that are invisible.” She mentioned the Indian Act, migrant workers, immigration policies and protestors’ rights.

“I’m not going to criticize events like this, but the more they keep these celebratory type of events, the more we end up feeling complacent and, at the same time, feeling self-righteous.

We need to be continuously vigilant with what we have,” she said.

Freedom Day was sponsored partly by the Ontario government and Citizenship and Immigration Canada. Ng said we should question the funding and see that the government is trying to promote its own ideology and agenda.

“Say for example, had it been an Aboriginal group applying for funding to do a ‘freedom day’ event and expose some of the hypocrisy. Would the government come through with funding support?” she said. “This is a PR campaign here.”

Ryerson Free Press October 2011 5

OPINION IslamOWhat?!

By Haseena Manek

Dear Mr. Harper, What is Islamicism?

Is there a Christianityism? Or a Judaismism? What is the difference between Islamicism and Islam?

In all my years of studying, exploring and practising my faith, surely I would have come across such a monumental distinction, or potentially relevant offshoot of what I thought was my religion.

Please Prime Minister, could you break it down for me?

See, I have a few ideas, but I’m not sure I’m on the right track. Is Islamicism like racism, but specifically against Muslims? ‘Cause that’s sure what it sounds like when you talk about it.

Or are you talking about religious fundamentalism? ‘Cause if you are, couldn’t you just say that? And if that is the case, where is the recently and specially coined term for religious fundamentalists that terrorize in the name of Christianity or Judaism or any other religion?

Why does Islam get a special term? Is it because it is so important to you, Prime Minister, to distinguish between terrorists and the rest of us? Because, you know, I think that’s kind of cool, that you would go through all that trouble to distinguish for the population that you don’t think all Muslims are a threat.

Because that would mean I’m a threat.

That would mean my parents, my grandparents, even my little cousins, are somehow threats to the country we call home, simply by virtue of our faith, the language in which we pray.

I’m sure that’s not what you meant. Because Mr. Prime Minister, if what you are really trying to say is that Islam is the threat to your oil-seeking conservative imperialist Zionist enterprise then I’m sure you would just come out and say it.

If you have the guts to justify the deaths of thousands of people every year—Palestinians, Afghans, and the Canadians that serve in your armies, surely you can admit that all of your talk of defence, security and justice is just a front for your racism, intolerance and Islamophobia.

Mr. Harper if you mean to say that every Muslim in this country is a threat to your security, your worldview and your peace of then that I dare you to come out and declare it.

Don’t add innocuous suffixes to make your words seem less hateful. Don’t make up words so you can avoid saying what your really mean.

You talk about security, but what about my security? What about protecting me from the hate-speech, the verbal violence that I have to fight every day when the topic of my religious persuasion comes up in conversation?

Then there is the physical violence, women assaulted because they are wearing hijabs, mosques vandalised, anti-Islam terrorism that goes unacknowledged.

Why is it that Norway’s recent tragedy, and attack by a white man was “out of the blue,” But “Islamic terrorism” is a constant and international threat?

Why is it that even though it has been reported that the perpetrator was actually targeting Islam and multiculturalism, his 1,500 page manifesto is being compared to “a jihadist manifesto,” a “a complete mirroring of al-Qaeda”?

(Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at the Swedish National Defense College, told TIME.com. Read more here. <http://www.time.com/time/world/ article/0,8599,2084901,00.html>) Did you know Mr. Harper, that the Prime Minister of Norway made a public address in a mosque to show support and empathy to the Norwegian Muslim community?

He reached out to the Muslim community to strengthen bonds and combat Islamophobia.

What the hell are you doing? You’re just feeding the fire with your created “isms” and your talk of terror.

You know who the real terrorists are, don’t you? Mr. Prime Minister don’t you see that by perpetuating Islamophobia, by propagating fear and hate among your citizens you are alienating a good chunk of them?

I have enough trouble justifying the fact that I am even Canadian, being a woman of colour, never mind having to defend my faith from the assumptions people are left to make after watching conservative news broadcasts with images of oppressed women and suicide bombers.

What I’d really like to ask you Mr. Harper, is when you say “Islamicism” could you just qualify who you are talking about? Either come out and say you are accusing all Muslims, from my 92-year old great-grandmother down to my future children, of being terrorists, or differentiate between religious fundamentalism and religion.

And while I have your attention, could you please not generalize, essentialize and then demonize an entire faith? Unless your goal as Prime Minister is to lead a country full of fearful, accusative and ignorant people I suggest you lead by example.

Sincerely, Haseena Manek

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Photo: world economic forum

Canadian Citizenship: like a full bus

By Anastasiya Komkova

Whether we are proud of it or not, no one can deny that Canada is one of the most multicultural countries in the world. It is also no secret that many immigrants live in the most metropolitan parts of Canada such as Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, rather than in smaller cities or towns.

A rough estimate of 250,000 people migrate to Canada every year, most of which are from the former British empire. The several different immigration categories are family reunification, entrepreneurs, people with a degree or recent work experience in Canada, provincial nominees, and skilled workers.

Skilled workers make up the majority of the immigrant population and have the most difficulty getting settled. They either possess experience in the 20 or so extremely necessary professions, or need to be invited by a Canadian employer to work here for their firm.

The problem is that the worker’s university degree means very little to politicians, policy-makers, employers and regulatory agencies.

The belief of the Canadian government and other decision-makers is that Canadian education is of a higher standard compared to the rest of the word. This forces skilled workers to spend a lot of time and money trying to have their education recognized in Canada.

The most shocking moment I experienced was when I met an Indian man while performing general labour at a factory, making wine boxes. I discovered that he had a PhD in biology from a university in India and was planning on moving back.

Since he is a respected member of Indian society I understand why going back sounds like a fine idea, since staying here means everybody ridiculing his doctorate. Perhaps he was just an unlucky person, but this is not the only example of this kind of discrimination.

The people who, I feel, are in the toughest situation are foreign doctors. It is very clear that there is a shortage of doctors in Ontario.

The wait time for an appointment with a specialist is about one to three months. Nev-

ertheless, accepting doctors from any other countries is an extremely difficult process, with some people having to repeat medical school.

I agree that someone who is foreigntrained should be competent in English, be required to take a course to integrate themselves into Canadian society and then maybe work under supervision for a little while, but is foreign education really that different?

It’s extremely unlikely.

If they are able to communicate with the patient and their colleagues, it is doubtful that they will be unable to diagnose what most of the time are very common diseases.

The immigration process consists of a points-based system in order to determine whether a particular person will be of a benefit to society. Why? So that, when that person’s education will not be taken seriously, they can become a hotdog vendor or a cab driver, instead of going into their field of expertise where they are needed?

The people with the most points will have completed their education and will have experience within their field.

It is very likely that these professionals will be coming here with their spouse and children signifying that these skilled workers won’t have endless time, money or energy to spend on starting over.

Why invite these people here if we don’t provide the opportunities for them to get a job?

Canada can be compared to a full bus, where everyone who wants to live here, is trying to squeeze into. While outside, you push your way through and ask everyone to please make room for one more.

However, when finally the magical line is crossed and you are on the bus you tell the people still pushing to stop and wait for the next bus.

Canada’s immigration policy needs to be revised so that it may better help immigrants access the Canadian workforce.

Survival of the fittest

By Kelsey Rolfe

A couple of weekends ago, when August was nearing its end and I was gearing up to go back to school, I took the train home to visit my family.

Bulky, overweight suitcase in hand, I settled into my seat on the GO Train’s accessibility coach for some much-needed slumber.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t so lucky. I have the nasty habit of getting stuck near loud, obnoxious, or in other ways irritating people while on trains.

That Friday was no exception; only two seats in front of me was a middle-aged woman who thought her opinions were so important that she needed to share them with the whole coach. Twenty minutes into the ride I’d learned which part of Barrie she lived in, the names of her two dogs, and the age of her youngest grandchild, all without having asked, much less even having spoken to her.

When we were nearing the train’s final stop, she mentioned to her companion how the train ride home was her favourite part of the day.

“It’s so relaxing to leave Toronto,” she said. “Everyone’s so mean there, and always in a rush. When I’m going home it’s like I can feel the tension just leaving my system.”

My natural response was righteous indignation — Toronto is such a nice, happy place to be, and how dare she think it’s not?

— but then I stopped and considered the facts; maybe Loud Lady wasn’t so wrong after all.

When I first came to Toronto, just over a year ago, I was a timid little thing, generally afraid of crowds, and crossing at the Yonge and Dundas intersection just seemed so overwhelming to me.

I was also what I like to (not so) fondly refer to as a “Sunday walker” — the equivalent of a Sunday driver, but on foot.

Shuffling along the sidewalk, gawking at everything like a tourist, slowing other people down. Tall, serious-looking men in business suits and women in slim dresses and clickity-clack heels would skirt around my friends and I and shoot us looks that were, to understate, unappreciative.

Fast-forward a couple of months, and, without my realizing it, the city had

changed me.

Maybe it was just because I frequently left myself so little time to get anywhere, because of a new reliance on the TTC, but I moved faster, slipped through crowds like a ghost (okay, now I’m just bragging), and started to feel a nagging irritation when I was stuck behind slow pedestrians or a gaggle of teenagers in the mall. (You know the ones — they come in groups of three or more, and walk in a horizontal line, thereby eradicating your ability to get around them.

Oh, and they’re slower than molasses.)

After a year in the city, I will fully admit that I embody the women in the clickityclack shoes who used to pass me by. Now I’m the one who is making huffy noises and passing doe-eyed tourists and new-Torontonians on the street, trying my best not to turn the stink-eye on them.

My high school friends, when we’re together, complain I walk too fast, or ask me to please stop dragging them across the intersection when the walk sign is on for a four-way cross at Yonge and Dundas.

Getting caught in the Eaton Centre at peak hours is a horror show. When people wander into my path, clearly unsure of where they’re going, I have a habit of mentally muttering, “Do you know how to walk, or what?”

And heaven help the person who gets in front of me on the stairs at the GO station when I have a heavy suitcase, and decides that is the appropriate time to move slowly. If I have the ability to move faster than them while carrying a suitcase half my weight, there is a problem.

Whether we like to admit it or not, Toronto is a harried, fast-paced city; if you don’t know how to move and think quickly enough, it chews you up and spits you out.

And I firmly believe you can tell the inhabitants from the visitors if you look closely enough.

We cross the street with two seconds left on the timer, push past people to get onto a crowded subway car, and use whatever means necessary and mostly legal to get to where we’re going on time.

So, maybe the lady on the train was right. But if you can’t handle the heat, stay out of the kitchen.

WRITE FOR THE RFP Email ryersonfreepress@gmail.com Ryerson Free Press October 2011 7

FEATURES Youth are More Engaged in Erections than Elections “There’s an election? Since when?” – Canadian Youth Everywhere

By Sarah Hahn For as long as I have been old enough to vote, I’ve heard the challenge with getting youth to vote during elections. Youth are categorized as anyone between the ages of 18 and 24.

As an eligible voter, I can say with confidence that the only reason why I exercise my right and have since I became legal, is for the simple fact that I CAN. But for the majority of people in this age group, participating in elections tends to not make their to-do list.

Their lack of participation can be explained by several reasons. According to a report that was published by Elections Canada in 2003 called, Explaining the Turnout Decline in Canadian Federal Elections: A New Survey of Non-voters, some of the main reasons why youth don’t vote are: they are simply not interested; they think that their vote would not matter; they don’t like the parties/ candidates; they are busy at work or they don’t care about the issues.

While I believe that voting is part an integral part of being an active citizen, I agree with many of the reasons listed above and would adopt them as my own should I ever choose not to vote. But even as a voter, I am still not very knowledgeable about the different parties’ platforms.

If you were to quiz me on each candidate’s viewpoints on different issues, I would without a doubt fail. I blame this on our education system and for its inability to properly teach students about politics from a young age.

Apathyisboring.com published some interesting results taken from The Democracy Project, a large study prepared by the Innovative Research Group in which was included that 82 per cent of youth feel that they would be more likely to vote if schools taught more about the government.

Youth are disengaged because politics are not discussed at a young age in school.

The only memory I have about learning about politics is during the mandatory Civics course we were required to take in Grade 10. If you’ve ever taken Civics, you will know that the Canadian electoral system isn’t exactly presented a way that’s the most engaging or exciting, if at all. I remember learning about “left” and “right,” the branches of government and how to pass a bill, but I didn’t learn anything about what each place on the political spectrum represents on a tangible level, nor was I convinced that I should care.

I learned to read and write at a young age not just because it’s a good skill to have, but because these are important things for me to know how to do in order for me to fully

engage with and operate in this world.

Similarly, had I been taught the importance of voting and the impact this could have on me in relation to the city, province or country in which I live, I might have dedicated more of my spare time internalizing each party’s views on different issues that affect Canadians.

While certain activities can be quite stimulating for youth, voting is not one of them.

These days, everything around us seems to be sexed up as a way of engaging younger generations.

Clothes are a lot more revealing and have a tighter fit.

In addition, it’s almost impossible to come across a television show today that does not deal with, involve or show scenes of people having sex.

Maybe if elections had more of a sex appeal, there would be a higher chance of young electors voting.

When people have sex, they feel connected to each other in some way. This is the very reason why many youth did not

While certain activities can be quite stimulating for youth, voting is not one of them. These days, everything around us seems to be sexed up as a way of engaging younger generations.

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vote in the 2006 general election according to an article that was published by apathyisboring.com in 2007.

Research showed that many young people felt they couldn’t connect with politics so they chose to ignore it.

I once had the opportunity to hear Dalton McGuinty speak at Ryerson. For someone with very little interest in politics, this proved to be a lot more informative and made politics more exciting for me.

In general, there should be more opportunities like this as a way of engaging students in elections and encouraging youth to vote.

Moreover, when engaging in sex, all parties consent because they feel that the other person can satisfy certain needs.

In contrast, many youth feel that today’s candidates have nothing to offer them. As a result, they stray from voting because they feel that politicians fail to address what is important and relevant to them.

While maintaining free health care and lowering taxes are both issues that are vital to Canadians, what about promising to lower tuitions fees and creating more entry level jobs, which students can secure upon graduation?

Now that’s sexy.

In the meantime, are youth engaged enough in politics to vote?

No. Were they ever?

Not really.

Will they ever be?

Not unless the provincial education system decides to turn the Civics course into more than merely half a credit (but that speaks to a whole other issue) or if CTV decides to air some hot melodrama about politicians.

Elections Canada conducted a study several years ago to find out how many people were voting in each age group. The results showed that approximately 37 per cent of electors aged 18 to 24 voted in the 2004 general election.

Two years later, a similar study showed that approximately 44 per cent of electors in this age group voted.

I don’t expect the results to be much different for the provincial election on October 6.

Photo: axelsrose/flickr

Students tepid on Post-secondary education election promises

By Marie Alcober

More emphasis on containing post-secondary education costs has been made by the different political parties since the provincial campaign kicked off in preparation for election day on Oct. 6.

“We’ve called for more affordable tuition from all the parties,” Ryerson Student Union’s Vice-President of Education, Melissa Palermo said.

Toronto Centre’s incumbent Liberal candidate Glen Murray said the Ontario Liberal Party has received considerable cooperation from groups such as the RSU to develop their education platform.

“Although they lobbied for lower fees, we can’t freeze tuition because this reduces the funding that goes into universities,” he said, referring to the Liberal party’s platform delivered

by Ontario Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty on Sept. 6.

McGuinty promised a 30 per cent tuition grant which would be up to $1,600 for university students and $730 for college students. Only students in families with a gross household income of $160,000 or less are eligible to receive the reduction. Students no longer dependents of their parents will be ineligible for the grant, which will be in effect by Jan. 1 if the Ontario Liberal Party is re-elected. This tuition fee grant is estimated to cost $400 million in the first year. Every year after that, the estimated annual cost of the proposal could go up to $1.5 billion.

Ani Dergalstanian, a second-year politics and governance student is skeptical. “You have to look at the fine print. You have to analyze these platforms. Where is the money paying for the tuition break going to come from?” she said.

Murray said the Liberal party has a total education funding of $1.2 billion, which covers the cost of the first year.

Instead of promising any tuition cuts, the Ontario PC party promised to raise the threshold for financial support so more students can qualify for aid. Their platform includes adding

60,000 post-secondary spots and intentions of improving OSAP. “We don’t think it’s responsible to cut tuition. It only acts as short-term relief,” Ontario PC candidate Martin Abell said. “It only punishes younger generations because it can double provincial debt.”

Kevin Nguyen, a business technology student, was worried that the Liberals’ proposal would cost too much tax dollars. He preferred Ontario PC’s platform just like Santosh Inigo, an aerospace engineering student, who thought that an improved OSAP system would be best for him.

But one assistant professor for politics and public administration at Ryerson disagrees.

“If you’re going to get a tuition break, someone’s going to pay for it, obviously taxpayers.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch,” Tuna Baskoy said. If a measly $50 were to be pooled from taxpayers, he said it would go a long way in creating a public fund so students wouldn’t have to pay such high fees.

The Liberals have come under fire for their promises but they are banking on the investments already made at Ryerson, such as the development of the Student Learning Centre on Yonge Street, in hopes of keep a firm hold on the school community.

“I don’t think Ryerson has seen the kind of expansion that the Liberals have supported them with,” Murray said. “If you don’t believe we’re serious, walk around Ryerson and look at the new buildings going up.”

Ontario NDP revealed their education platform at Ryerson on Sept. 15 promising interest free loans. Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath said they will freeze tuition fees, which has an estimated cost of $100 million in the first year.

Dergalstanian was not impressed with any of the platforms. She knows that Ryerson is located in a province that pays the highest tuition fees in Canada. And like many Ryerson students, she wants change.

Riding Out the Orange Wave Why you should vote NDP in the provincial election

By Haseena Manek It’s that time again.

It seems like just weeks ago I was trying to decide whether or not to vote strategically the federal election or toss my vote away on the NDP, the party I actually support.

Most people that I spoke to agreed; the thing to do was talk NDP but vote Liberal (basically anything to keep the Conservatives out of power).

Jack Layton proved me wrong. He proved us all wrong by winning he official opposition position for the New Democratic Party.

He inspired hope for the future and restored some semblance of my faith in our parliamentary process. The thought

Photo: matt jiggins/flickr

of Harper having a majority didn’t seem so bad of someone like Jack Layton was around to keep him in check.

Unfortunately, just months after his historic success, the leader of the NDP left us. But as anyone who was in downtown Toronto during the week of his passing could see, the hope he instilled during his life was still in our hearts, despite his death.

Now, in the light of the upcoming provincial election, we need to capitalize on what’s left of that hope, that energy. We need to keep it alive long enough for Andrea Horwath, NDP candidate for Premier, to ride what’s left of the orange wave and let it take her straight into our provincial legislature.

If there was a time that I would believe it were possible for the NDP to become the leaders of Ontario, it would be now, in the wake of Jack Layton’s success last May. He may not be around to physically support Horwath during her campaign, but his spirit, and the spirits he raised in generations of cynical, apathetic or disinterested voters was the greatest gift of support he could have given her.

I feel an incredible sense of urgency with this election.

If Andrea Horwath wins, and does well as premier, then she will have won a monumental battle for the vaguely left on the political spectrum.

If she succeeds, then serious progress will have one foot in the door to Canadian politics, the same door that Jack Layton opened in the spring.

The NDP might have a chance to demonstrate decades of campaign promises, and show Canadians that there is more to politics than the neverending battle between the Liberals and Conservatives.

“In this election you have a choice,” says Horwath, “you can stick with the status quo that’s just not working, or you can choose change.”

This election isn’t just about improving the circumstance of Ontario’s goods and services for the next four years, it’s about making the NDP a serious contender, and changing the way voters see Canadian political parties and the entire electoral process.

“People are thirsty for positive change,” says Horwath. And I pray she can give it to us. Now, we as voters now have our part to play. Don’t fall prey to the previous routine of underestimating the NDP and voting liberal. We’ve had Liberal, we know we don’t want Conservative, so lets give the NDP a try.

The only way this will work is if all those thousands of people that lined up for Layton’s funeral and wrote messages of love on city hall put that same faith they had in the man into his party. And in Andrea Horwath.

Jack Layton may be gone but his official opposition still remains. Hope for Canada still remains.

A progressive presence in parliament still remains.

Lets give Ontario that chance.

Ryerson Free Press October 2011 9

Hey, Kid, Y’wanna Go Look At Some Art? Finding fine art kicking, screaming and very much alive in the heart of Toronto

By Khavy Tran Every year, for three days in early September, between the trees of Trinity Bellwoods Park, a forest grows. This forest isn’t composed of twigs and branches, but rather of ink, paint, pixels and light-sensitive chemicals, some choice materials among various other varieties of metaphorical fruit and woodflesh.

This spontaneous growth is the Queen West Art Crawl, an event that’s grown from a one-day event to a weekend-long festival since its inception in 2003. The Crawl has grown from a ragtag collection of local artists to include 250 others from the city and places beyond, some coming from as far as Kingston to get exposure. Attractions also include food booths, a children’s area and a main stage where experimental kitchen-sink jazz and spoken word/interpretive dance performances come and go.

The amount of free candy and prettily designed business cards (they are artists, after all) can almost be put into their own respective categories.

Among the strange trees of the festival there stalk the brains behind the artistic brawn; the creators, none of whom exemplify the stereotype of the “starving artist” with takeout trays and lunchboxes at the ready. Each of these art-

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ists was jury-selected from many applicants, so it would make sense that these guys are the cream of the metaphorical crop, the most successful.

So what can an aspiring artist do to someday break into the ranks of these mystical art-makers who miraculously manage to live off their work?

A sound piece of advice comes from scene and culture photographer Roger Cullman, a very sweet, very casual man in a sweater vest who willingly engaged in conversation with a nervous undergrad awkwardly holding a camera in front of his booth. This same casual man in a sweater vest regularly contributes to The Globe and Mail, Reader’s Digest, NOW Magazine, 24 Hours and Sports Illustrated, and also happens to be Ryerson alumni. Cullman says to, “Find your voice; there is so much [art] that to succeed, you have to do it differently.”

“Do what you want to do, not what you think people want to see” was another common bit of wisdom that relates almost directly to Cullman’s advice; in order to truly succeed in anything, you should be doing something that you love, something that you look forward to. The art world especially is based

in passion; if you have passion in your work, if you’ve put your entire heart in it, no matter the subject matter of the piece, this passion will translate through and your art will resonate with any audience.

Some artists who offered this advice were the mixed-media drawer/painter/all around candlestick maker Candance Osborne Bell, Mucha-esque poster artist Jack Dylan and photographer Michael Toole.

Another gem of advice to the budding artist comes from OCAD graduate Graham Von Houten: “Practice, practice, practice and stay in school. You have the opportunity to do things that you otherwise wouldn’t, learn techniques you didn’t know existed.”

The advice that these notso-starving creators offered was varied and oftentimes poignantly funny, but screenprinter Jacob Rolf perhaps says it the best: “Stick to it.

Get better at it. Love it. And even if you aren’t successful financially, you sure as hell will be successful personally.”

Overall, the Art Crawl is a colourful plethora of sight, sound and smell, a great weekend walk for anyone with any interest in being amused, confused, delighted and at times, even philosophical.

Jack Dylan

Graham von Houten

Candace Osborne Bell Photos: Khavy Tran

Ryerson Free Press October 2011 11

CULTURE Global art project turns Toronto communities Inside Out

By Roohi Sahajpal On a cool Saturday morning in midSeptember, about a dozen people gather in Regent Park. Armed with buckets and paint rollers, they assemble in front of construction boards surrounding the Regent Park Arts and Cultural Centre, opening in Spring 2012. They’re here to work today, but they’re not painting. In their buckets is wheat paste – a combination of wheat, water and sugar – and in their arms are stacks of folded paper, each printed with a black and white portrait ready to be pasted. On the weekend of September 18, this group of volunteers came together to participate in one of the largest activations of the Inside Out Project.

The Inside Out Project is a global art initiative started by JR, whose idea of transforming messages of personal identity into pieces of artistic work won him the prestigious TED prize, worth $100,000 and awarded yearly to an individual expressing their one wish to change the world.

“I wish for you to stand up for what you care about by participating in a global art project, and together we’ll turn the world...inside out,” said the French street artist during his wish announcement at TED 2011.

The idea behind the Inside Out project is simple. A portrait is taken and then blown up into a large black and white print, which is then pasted around a community.

JR’s work has reached places like Brazil, France and now Toronto.

Seema Jethalal, the managing director of the Regent Park Arts and Cultural Centre, says this project is important, especially in an area like Regent Park.

“Regent Park is often stigmatized by people and this project shows that this area has beautiful and diverse people living here.”

Twenty-four photographers had been going into communities before the event with the intention to photograph a diverse range of faces. In Regent Park particularly, the portraits being pasted were those of people living in the community.

Jacqueline Pizzolon, a volunteer at the Regent Park site, says that seeing reactions from people as they walked by was an experience in itself.

“I could only imagine what those people were thinking when they saw the faces of their friends and family blown up and pasted on walls in their own community,” she says. “One girl even noticed that her brother’s face was on one of the posters.”

Along with Regent Park, teams of volunteers set out to different areas of Toronto like Rexdale, Shaw Street and Jane and Finch to paste over 400 portraits.

With the pending cuts to public funding for the arts, Jethalal also says this project sends a strong message to the city of Toronto and encourages young artists to display their art.

“Public art can transform communities and inspire people. [Giving] young people a chance to have a space in the public sphere can only work towards a greater good.’’

For more information on the Regent Park Arts and Cultural Centre and the Inside Out Project visit TorontoArtScape.on.ca and InsideOutProject.net

Word on the Street: a literary fan-girl’s dream

By Kelsey Rolfe I’d never attended Toronto’s Word on the Street festival before, but on September 25, I had my first real exposure to the city’s thriving literary community and remained from start to finish.

The festival began in September 1990, when the Promotions Committee of the Book and Periodical Council determined it was time for the city to join other major publishing centres in hosting their own large-scale festival dedicated to the written word. Over the years, Word on the Street went from a crowd of about 40,000 visitors annually to over 200,000, and has attracted authors such as Margaret Atwood, Nino Ricci, David Suzuki, Kenneth Oppel and Dennis Lee. I stuck mostly to four tents: the Toronto Book Awards tent, to check out the authors in competition; the Toronto Star tent, for some insightful writing-related panels; the Remarkable Reads tent, to hear a couple of big-name authors do readings of their books; and the Scotia Bank Giller Prize Tent, to check out what books I should be reading in the future. (Also, Jian Ghomeshi was there...) Unfortunately, I did not make my way over to Kid Street.

For the first time ever, the festival was hosting a “Best Sellers of Tomorrow” panel at the Giller Prize tent, in which three “authors to watch” were introduced to the crowd, with a pitch from their publicist as to why each should be considered the next great Canadian author.

The three novelists on the panel this year were Brian Francis, with his newest novel Natural Order; Ian Hamilton, with the second book of his Ava Lee series; and Shane PeaPhoto: Garrett Ziegler/Flickr

cock, with the fifth book of his The Boy Sherlock Holmes series. After three pitches and three readings (Shane Peacock’s notably longer than everyone else’s), Natural Order held the most promise; the prose had an undeniable flow, it was funny — seemingly unintended — and from first blush Joyce, the main character, was blunt but likable.

Ian Hamilton’s crime fiction series does present an interesting story, but the narration sounded a little clunky from the section I heard, and Shane Peacock’s series seemed more appropriate for a slightly younger audience, though he claimed it was for people “ages 11 to 99.”

However, working with one of literature’s most beloved characters and managing to stay true to the character while making the series his own is an impressive feat.

As for the rest of the festival, the Toronto Star tent provided refreshingly funny panels on everything from reviewing movies, with Linda Barnard and Peter Howell, to the Ontario provincial election, with Robert Benzie, Martin Regg Cohn and Tanya Talaga. Jian Ghomeshi, definitely on his best game, led a spirited discussion about the Giller Prize long list, and the controversy regarding the readers’ choice pick, Myrna Dey’s Extensions.

But my favourite moment of the day took place in the Remarkable Reads tent, when Terry Fallis, the winner of Canada Reads 2011, read from his second novel, The High Road — and, lucky me, it was my favourite part of the entire book.

I recorded the whole reading, so I could play it back later. The entire festival was like a book-lover’s fantasy.

Ryerson Free Press October 2011 13

For the Love of the Job Unusual workplaces, job insecurity and finding a career that’s right for you

By Amanda Cupido We spend years in school, studying and agonizing about papers and exams. But why? In the end, it all comes down to wanting to get a good job.

But define “good job.” Is it something you have a passion for? Something you’re skilled at? Something that pays a lot of money?

Or is it about the hours? The benefits? The potential to advance within the company?

There are so many aspects to job hunting, and according to a Maclean’s poll, only 52 per cent of Canadians are happy with their jobs. Considering Canadians spend an average of 36.2 hours a week at work (as of 2010), that’s a large part of life that more people deserve to feel happy about.

While hunting for the perfect job, I’ve decided to profile two people with not-so-average jobs and a career coach who helps others figure out just when it’s time to call it quits.

Working as a knight in shining armour Sean Delaney has spent the last eight years working inside a castle. The Medieval Times castle in Toronto, that is.

As the head knight, Delaney is in charge of managing and training all the knights, as well as performing as the knight with the more difficult fight scenes.

Delaney, who loves his job, considers himself fortunate: “I really enjoy performing in front of an audience.”

Delaney went to school for theatre and stumbled upon a job posting for Medieval Times. With a background in martial arts, he thought he’d have a good chance at the gig.

“It was a nice mix of both of my passions,” said Delaney.

Before becoming a knight, all new hires start off as a squire – just as they would in real medieval times. Squires are in charge of grooming and feeding the horses along with caring for the weapons used in each performance.

After six months in that position, Delaney was promoted to knighthood. He progressed quickly through the hierarchy, and learned how to do stunts and ride horses – both of which he had never done before.

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“At first I found riding very difficult,” he said. “But now I enjoy working with the horses. I find it challenging and rewarding.”

The job is also physically demanding. “You have to be in shape,” he said. “Most of us are highly skilled athletically.”

The knights go through intensive fight training and have access to a gym that’s in the castle. It’s common for knights to get injured if they don’t fall correctly and end up with broken bones or muscle strains. Because of this, they are seen regularly by chiropractors and registered massage therapists.

“You have to be tough to do this job,” said Delaney.

Although Delaney has endured several injuries, he still has a passion for his job and hopes to stay with Medieval Times and move up to being a horse trainer or the director of stunts and choreography.

Working at a candy factory isn’t such a sweet deal This was no Willy Wonka experience for Amanda Cordner.

The 22-year-old spent last summer working in an assembly line for Concord Confections Inc., which is best known for making Hubba Bubba. Cordner worked from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. four days per week.

“I imagined myself swimming in gumballs,” said Cordner.

“I thought it would be super cool.”

But things soon took a turn for the worst: She was placed in the wax room where the candy lips are made and packaged.

Her duties included finding any lips that were deformed and taking the individually wrapped lips and putting them in boxes.

“I was yelled at for not sifting fast enough, and I was yelled at for not filling boxes fast enough,” said Cordner.

She said her job became increasingly annoying, and she wanted a way out.

“I contemplated ways to induce faint so I could be rushed to the hospital,” said Cordner. “I even tried eating a lot of wax so I’d get sick.”

Cordner admitted to tearing up on the job because she’d look at the time and know there were several hours left before the end of her shift. “I hated my job so everything would make me cry.”

Out of the 10 students hired along with Cordner at the beginning of summer, only two lasted in the position until the end of their contracts. Cordner was one of them.

“I will never forget that job because I had a summer of thinking,” she said. “I had a lot of time for self reflection.”

The York University theatre student realized her true passion was theatre and she couldn’t pursue a career in anything other than that.

The advice Francoise Soria works as a career coach and consultant.

She helps people take action when they are reconsidering their career path.

“I know how it feels to hate your job,” said Soria. “People need to give themselves permission to be happy at work.”

Soria has worked in individual development for 20 years and has noticed that most people pursue a career based on their skills and not their passion.

“Just because you’re skilled at something doesn’t mean you’re going to enjoy doing it all day long,” she said.

Soria said a common sign of discomfort in the work place is boredom and stress. In the worst cases, this can also lead to depression and take a toll on relationships and life outside of work.

“Our career is an extension of ourselves,” said Soria. “And a huge part of it is knowing that you’re making a difference in the world.”

People like Soria help individuals by offering advice and support in making decisions regarding their careers. She said many people don’t realize that finding the right job takes time.

And quitting a current job takes courage.

If you feel like you might be needing career advice, you can visit FindingMyCareer.ca.

Photo: Amanda cupido

Reviews

MUSIC BADBADNOTGOOD – BADBADNOTGOOD

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his isn’t your father’s jazz record.

BADBADNOTGOOD are three Toronto music students who have filmed themselves playing jazz interpretations of songs by the likes of Odd Future, Gucci Mane, Waka Flocka Flame and Flying Lotus. The videos typically feature drummer Alex Sowinski playing while wearing a creepy pig-faced mask alongside his bandmates, pianist Matt Tavares and bassist Chester Hansen, in a downtown condo. They’ve been racking up some pretty steady YouTube numbers since last spring, and gained some major exposure after controversybaiting Los Angeles rapper Tyler, The Creator tweeted about one video which features the trio performing an instrumental session of his songs. Since then, they’ve put out two self-titled mixtapes which you can listen to and download for free on their Bandcamp page (BadBadNotGood.Bandcamp.com).

Like traditional jazz, there is plenty of improvisa-

tion and medleys of several songs together, though you’ve never heard the songs like this before. Take “Hard In Da Paint” for example: a hyperaggressive track by Atlanta-based MC Waka Flocka Flame, which BADBADNOTGOOD transforms into a sinister-sounding jazz instrumental. Highlights include the plinking piano on Gucci Mane’s “Lemonade” and the band’s take on British post-punk legends Joy Division’s “Transmission.” They also throw in covers of A Tribe Called Quest’s “Electric Relaxation” and The Legend of Zelda theme song for good measure.

Once you wrap your head around the uniqueness of the concept, the music is pretty damn good. All three are talented musicians and what they’re doing is even more impressive when you consider that many of their interpretations are based on simply listening to the songs repeatedly. The perfect antidote to anyone who says that jazz is boring. — Max Mertens

Various Artists - Drive (Original Motion Soundtrack)

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et me begin this review with a disclaimer: I have yet to see Drive in theatres. The film, which stars the impossibly good-looking Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan, was one of the biggest draws at this year’s TIFF. I would by no means consider myself a cinephile, but I have talked to some friends who caught a screening and they all gave it rave reviews. I’ve only watched the trailer on YouTube, so I’m reviewing the soundtrack, rather than how the music fits the movie.

The soundtrack consists of an original score by Cliff Martinez (who, according to Google, was once the drummer for the Red Hot Chili Peppers) with a few other songs by artists including The Chromatics, Desire and Electric Youth. Martinez’s compositions are both atmospheric

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and dark, drawing inspiration from Italo-disco, slightly trashy synth-pop and 80s sci-fi soundtracks (think Blade Runner). The soundtrack’s pièce de résistance is Kavinsky’s “Nightcall,” which is synth-heavy French electro-house at its finest.

Of course, the fact that the song was produced by Daft Punk’s Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, mixed by Ed Banger Records’ SebastiAn and has Lovefoxxx from Brazilian band CSS contributing vocals, doesn’t hurt its chances of being successful either. In fact, listening to this, I can’t help but think this is what the Tron: Legacy soundtrack should’ve sounded like (sorry Daft Punk, I love you, but those compositions were phoned in). Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I have a movie to catch. — MM

Wavves - Life Sux E.P.

o say it’s been quite a year for San Diego’s Wavves would be a huge understatement. Since the release of last year’s King of the Beach, the trio has been a staple at major music festivals in North America and has played with everyone from Fucked Up to Wu-Tang Clan’s GZA. They’ve also kept themselves in music headlines for their various offstage antics. Frontman and lead singer Nathan Williams, who in the past has gotten a bit of a reputation as a hothead, has been featured on the cover of music magazines and in gossip blogs for his relationship with Best Coast’s Bethany Cosentino. Last month, the band’s attendance at the MTV Video Music Awards was halted abruptly when bassist Stephen Pope was kicked out for smuggling in booze and weed, their presence at the awards show akin to a bunch of skate kids crashing the popular kids’ party in high school. This bratty-butlovable attitude is all over their new E.P. Life Sux, a ramshackle six-song collection of live cuts, covers and collaborations, which they released on Williams’ own

label Ghost Ramp.

The trio—Williams, Pope and drummer Jacob Cooper—make poppunk that evokes Dookie-era Green Day and Weezer before they got terrible, while drawing production inspiration from the likes of Brian Wilson and Phil Spector. There’s a lo-fi feel to the E.P. that makes you believe it could’ve easily been recorded in someone’s garage. Wavves shows off their love of ’90s grunge with the Dinosaur Jr.-esque “Bug” (it’s too bad their version of Sonic Youth’s “100%” didn’t make it on here) and the cheekily-titled “I Wanna Meet Dave Grohl.” Everyone’s favourite Canadian frontman Damian Abraham (of Fucked Up) also shows up to lend his trademark growling to the rambunctious “Destroy.”

The highlight is “Nodding Off ” with Cosentino subtly contributing background vocals and Williams defiantly stating his independence. “Don’t call me friend,” he sings and lets us know that he’s doing just fine on his own, thank you. Being young and bored in California never sounded so sweet. — MM

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In a tiff.

Anyone who attends Ryerson University can attest to our school’s annual involvement with the Toronto International Film Festival, which ran from Sept. 8 to 18 at venues throughout the city. This year, Ryerson Theatre hosted the popular Midnight Madness series, the red-carpet premieres of highly-anticipated films such as Drive and 50/50, and even screened the prestigious People’s Choice award winner, Nadine Labaki’s Where Do We Go Now?, on the closing night of the festival.

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Despite our university’s role throughout TIFF, and the Ryerson Free Press’ yearround support of activities at the Bell Lightbox, it should be noted that our publication was denied press accreditation just a few weeks before the festival commenced. Instead, we were offered a small number of rush press vouchers, which — in addition to the submissions from writers who kindly paid their own way for various screenings — we have used to bring you the following film reviews.

Canadiana Edwin Boyd Edwin Boyd is one of those movies where the reviews will be suffixed with “for a Canadian movie.” And it’s actually quite good for a Canadian movie, even winning TIFF’s Sky Vodka Award for Best Canadian First Feature. An actiondriven story about Canada’s most famous bank robber, the story features the charming Scott Speedman as the titular World War II veteran desperate to find fame and a good life for his family. Stuck driving a bus and unable to afford acting lessons, he discovers he can redirect his desire for public glory and finally stock the cupboards by robbing banks. By the time he teams up with a group of bank robbers in what the papers dub the Boyd Gang, things have gone too far, but we can’t help but root for his sweet wife Doreen (Kelly Reilly) to bring Boyd back to reality. Even if you know the true-life story of Edwin Boyd, the plot is gripping and the characters keep you intrigued. The snow-covered Toronto neighbourhoods take on an almost fantastic quality through first-time director Nathan Morlando’s unpretentiously artistic sensibilities, with shots that look expensive, for a Canadian movie.

On the other hand, for a Canadian movie, sometimes the seams show through the expensive-looking suit. It’s hard to tell whether it’s a deliberately-created sense of claustrophobia or just bad sound design when the characters lock themselves in an isolated cabin where their shrieking voices ricochet off the walls and stab the audiences’ ears. Some of the styling choices seem strange, like the practical British wife who wears a tank top in a surely under-heated house in the middle of a Canadian winter, and who ages 15 years with no extra wrinkles and only a ponytail of a difference. But these are minor points, and not enough to detract from a solid film, regardless of what country produced it. So ignore the pedigree and lose yourself in a satisfying voyage through the cultural mythology of this great country of ours. —Amy Ward Café de flore Everybody has a song that conjures up all sorts of emotions no matter where they are. For Quebec director Jean-Marc Vallée, this nostalgia is a guiding principle in most of his films. Perhaps best known for the award-winning C.R.A.Z.Y. (2005), which audiences may remember for its David Bowie-infused soundtrack, Vallée is back on the festival circuit with Café de flore, in which the members of Pink Floyd may as well receive top billing.

Only Vallée could possibly conceive of a supernatural love story between both a man and his wife and a woman and her son, running parallel to one another yet distanced by about four decades. Antoine Godin (Kevin Parent) seems to have everything – a loving girlfriend, two beautiful daughters and a successful career as a DJ (only in Montreal!) – but the divorced Antoine can’t help but think that in separating from his wife (Hélène Florent), he has lost his soulmate. As the couple struggles to come to terms with the end of their relationship, Vallée introduces us to Jacqueline (Vanessa Paradis), a woman living in Paris in the 1960s, whose own love story involves her son Laurent, who has Down’s Syndrome.

For a film so hopelessly about love, Café de flore has a dark side that isn’t limited to Dark Side of the Moon (the iconic album figures prominently throughout the film).

Though Vallée’s story takes time to reveal itself, the director masterfully exposes the parts of being in love that can be ugly and self-destructive, and as such, takes on a sincerity that audiences are hard-pressed to find. — Manori Ravindran Monsieur Lazhar Philippe Falardeau’s Monsieur Lazhar, which picked up the City of Toronto Award for best Canadian feature at TIFF, is the kind of film you root for at festivals. The Quebec export centres on an elementary school that is shaken after the suicide of one of its teachers in a classroom. After reading of the incident in the local paper, Bachir Lazhar, an Algerian Photos: sam javanrouh/flickr

immigrant, approaches the school’s principal to ask if he can replace the teacher, and soon takes over her troubled class.

Algerian actor and comedian Mohamed Fellag, who plays Bachir Lazhar, anchors Falardeau’s film as the well-meaning teacher who, on top of counselling young students still reeling from their teacher’s suicide, has his share of legal problems to deal with. It’s this latter subplot – the teacher’s immigrant status and his struggle for clemency in Canada after fleeing Algeria – that unequivocally roots Monsieur Lazhar with other politicized cinema coming out of Quebec in recent years. Much like Denis Villeneuve’s Incendies – the producers of which also worked on Falardeau’s film – Monsieur Lazhar deftly tackles the discrimination and alienation experienced by racialized immigrants in Quebec, adding to a growing repertoire of Canadian films that don’t shy away from exploring the fallacies behind multiculturalism.

Falardeau’s film was recently announced as Canada’s official submission for the 2012 Academy Awards’ foreign language category. If selected in the final round of nominations, it will join Villeneuve’s Incendies (2010), Deepa Mehta’s Water (2005) and Denys Arcand’s The Decline of the American Empire (1986), Jesus of Montreal (1989) and The Barbarian Invasions (2003) as Canadian Oscar nominees. —MR Take This Waltz We’ve all been there: Feeling stuck, getting used to the same routine and itching for a change. Then something new and exciting comes along, fixating our attention. Except, if you have these feelings about your relationship, things become much more difficult. That’s the premise of Sarah Polley’s new film, Take This Waltz, which made its debut at the 36th annual Toronto International Film Festival.

The film stars Michelle Williams as Margot, a 20-something writer working for Parks Canada who feels stuck in her marriage to the lovable Lou (Seth Rogan). Lou seems perfectly content in their relationship but spends more time in culinary quests making chicken than with his wife. Nothing seems to be particularly wrong in their relationship, but her need to fill a void in her life leads her into the arms of Daniel, played by Hamilton native Luke Kirby. The two meet in Halifax and in serendipitous movie fashion, they end up on the same flight back to Toronto, share a cab and then realize that they are neighbours.

Michelle Williams does a good job in portraying the role of a neglected wife, similar to her character in Blue Valentine (2010). You will either root for her or shake your head as Margot plays a balancing act between love and devotion for her husband, and passion and excitement for her neighbor.

Sarah Silverman makes a small cameo as Geraldine, Lou’s sister battling an alcohol addiction, adding a comedic touch to the film.

Take This Waltz runs a lengthy two hours and leads the audience in a cat and mouse game of “will she or won’t she?” Overall, the film is a light-hearted drama, and locals will appreciate the film for its Toronto setting, as it captures a glimpse of life in the city during the summer. — Roohi Sahajpal

Vive la France!

A Happy Event “Two pretty French people have a baby” is the basic premise guiding Rémi Bezançon’s A Happy Event, one of the most thorough meditations on motherhood in recent years, and with opening credits that could give Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing (1989) a run for its money.

Interestingly, in Bezançon’s fourth feature, Barbara (Louise Bourgoin) and Nicolas (Pio Marmaï) think they’re doing the right thing when, after a breathless romance, they decide to try for a baby. But for this couple, getting pregnant is the easy part: bringing up baby brings its own set of complications.

It’s understandable if, at first, you can’t quite take Barbara and Nicolas seriously as a couple. After all, upon meeting your soulmate, who would forgo happy, childless years for utter chaos? Apparently, young French couples.

Bezançon diligently documents the whimsy video store romance where the handsome duo flirts exclusively through DVD titles (Fatal Attraction, Catch Me If You Can, etc.), but the majority of his film centres on Barbara’s pregnancy and life after baby. As expected, it’s not easy, and Bezançon takes care in detailing the anxieties plaguing new mothers who often struggle with distant husbands and their own identities.

The problem with A Happy Event is that once you realize it’s pretty unhappy, there’s not much else keeping your

attention. Bezançon’s film feels too much like effective birth control, and other than documenting the madness of motherhood, offers only scraps of a tired plot. —MR J’aime regarder les filles For those with a special place in their hearts for both contemporary French cinema and films about growing pains, newcomer Fred Louf ’s J’aime regarder les filles – which translates to 18 Years Old and Rising – marries all the sweetness, heartache and poor decision-making of adolescence, but with immaculately dressed Parisians.

Primo Bramsi (Pierre Niney) has moved out of his parents’ modest home in the suburbs and into a small apartment in Paris. Until recently, all his efforts were going to passing his senior year so he can attend college, but when he gets involved with a group of wealthy socialites and falls for wellto-do beauty Gabrielle (Lou de Laâge), Primo has to become someone he’s not in order to fit in.

Niney is effervescent as Primo, and may be the most redeeming aspect of Louf ’s directorial debut. That awkwardin-your-own-skin stage of adolescence is effortlessly embod-

Ryerson Free Press October 2011 17

ied in Niney, whose gangly underdog remains lovable, despite squandering his parents’ hard-earned rent money on fancy bottles of wine. Like Starter for 10, a similar coming-of-age film with James McAvoy as a working-class student out to “find himself ” at university, Louf ’s film shouldn’t be expected to yield grand insights into the dalliances of youth. But for the charming Euro-trip that it is, J’aime regarder les filles comes of age before your eyes. —MR The Woman in the Fifth Those who happen to see a promotional shot for Pawel Pawlikowski’s The Woman in the Fifth may be reminded of a graduated Before Sunrise: a radiant Kristin Scott Thomas and bookish Ethan Hawke smirk at one another on a balcony overlooking the Eiffel Tower, and you can only imagine the cerebral banter between them. Unfortunately, in his fourth feature, the My Summer of Love director gives us a lugubrious brainteaser of a film that’s as windy as a Hitchcock thriller with none of the charisma.

As far Americans in Paris go, Tom Ricks (Ethan Hawke) hasn’t had much luck. A modestly successful novelist, Tom moved to the city to be closer to his six-year-old daughter and estranged wife, but it appears his wife has filed a restraining order against him. When he enters his family’s apartment anyway, she calls the police, but not before mentioning a breakdown that had him committed.

The unlucky writer finds a room in a dumpy motel, and is quickly offered a shady job by the owner. During his travails in Paris, Tom also meets a mysterious woman (Kristin Scott Thomas) who becomes his lover. But when a grisly murder at his motel implicates him in the crime, Tom’s life quickly unravels, and his own state of mind is again called into question.

Although Hawke does his best with halting French, his character’s misery tends to shroud the entire film, and is both unlikeable and difficult to read. “I feel like the real me is somewhere else, winning a literary award, and the me that’s here is a sad double,” he says at one point. Lucky us. Indeed, the mysterious events that transpire aren’t explained by Pawlikowski until the very end, when it’s too late to redeem the rest of the film. The Woman in the Fifth is a two-dimensional thriller as forlorn as the poorly realized characters we must tolerate for a merciful 83 minutes. —MR

The Reel World Urbanized If Rob Ford saw any film at TIFF this year, let’s hope he watched this documentary. Director Gary Hustwit, previously best known for making typeface engaging in Helvetica (2007), explores what makes cities great and warns about the dangers of short-sighted planning in Urbanized. While there are plenty of examples of the hazards of sprawl and cars, the film’s globetrotting footage focuses more on the ideas and the idealists who make their cities a little more liveable.

It’s hard not to be inspired by the insightful activists who saw the potential for a park with million-dollar views in fighting to create New York’s High Line Park on an elevated railroad spur destined for demolition. Equally impressive are the small changes – better lighting and safety lookouts – that Cape Town community members made to turn a pedestrian route in the most dangerous part of town into a safe playground for families. Meanwhile, locals in the steadily depopulating Detroit boost neighbourhood spirits and com-

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pensate for the lack of urban grocery stores by planting community gardens where abandoned houses once stood.

Rob Ford could take a few hints from former Bogota, Colombia, mayor Enrique Peñalosa, who talks about how he addressed the city’s “low self-esteem” by investing in its people, with more funding for libraries, public transit and bike lanes. Fighting against a culture that stigmatized people for riding a bike or taking transit, he paved bike routes where cars still struggle on dirt roads, and he improved the status of public transit with nicer buses, designated bus lanes and high-tech platforms that make Toronto look like a developing city. “A bus carries a hundred people, and it deserves a hundred times the space,” he said.

Sadly, these global sentiments seem almost foreign in Toronto, which appears briefly in the film as the face of failed social housing, with a shot of the demolition of Regent Park. It’s refreshing, yet oddly foreign, to hear Danish architect Jan Gehl say that Copenhagen’s curbside bike lanes are designed with “parked cars to protect people bicycling, rather than people bicycling to protect parked cars.” The film ends with a stirring public mission to save a Stuttgart park from development, a climactic moment that may rouse even the most passive audience member to stand up and fight for a vibrant, loveable city.

—AW Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope The woman in line for another film was misguided when she said, “I’m already Morgan Spurlock-ed out this year.” True, the Super Size Me director just released his latest documentary, The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, a clever delve into product placement in film that left an uneasy taste of riding along with a swindle, in spite of Spurlock’s agreeable charm.

So the best thing the director could do with Comic-Con Episode IV was not appear in the film. If you miss the credits, you may not realize this is a Spurlock production, which lets his strong narrative skills shine through without falling back on the cult of the documentary star. The best of his style is still evident: the sense of humour and compassion for the real-life characters, and the keen devotion to his subject, in this case Comic-Con, the world’s largest comic book convention held annually in San Diego. But this doc lets the fans star, as we follow the convention preparations and experiences of two hungry aspiring comic book artists, a young woman who builds animatronic costumes in her garage, and a comic book dealer who might have to sell his prized possession, a mint condition Red Robin #1, to make up for declining comic book sales.

As film critic Scott Mantz says in the film, the Comic-Con convention, which now attracts an audience of 130,000 people each year, is more a “pop culture con” than just a venue for die-hard comic book fans. Spurlock hints that part of the attraction and also the danger of the huge crowd, the interactive displays from Lucasfilm, Lego, video game makers and the old-school comic book dealers and publishers, is that welcoming geeks of all stripes to the festival can both expand the audience and endanger the haven for nerdy obsession that the event was designed to foster.

Like any good nerd flick, this one features plenty of star cameos, including Kevin Smith, Frank Miller, Guillermo del Toro, Seth Rogen, Matt Groening, and of course Stan Lee, but the doc builds compelling arcs for each of the obsessed pilgrims we follow, making this film about its true subject: the fans. Say what you will about your appetite for more Spurlock this year; any true geek, nerd or Big Bang Theory fan will already be designing their costume for the opening screening. —AW

Masters of Cinema Dark Horse I’ve never seen any of director Todd Solondz’s films before, but when he walked on stage at the Toronto International Film Festival to introduce his latest production, Dark

Horse, he received a standing ovation. A good sign, I thought, and an invitation to expect a lot. Solondz is the awardwinning filmmaker behind Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995), Palindromes (2004) and Life During Wartime (2009).

Dark Horse started off well with pumping music and a choreographed dance scene at a Jewish wedding, but the camera soon drifted away from the fun and fell upon Abe (Jordan Gelber) and Miranda (Selma Blair), two strangers who look as though they are both ready to climb into their respective boxes and close the lid. The hour and 24 minutes that remained was equally dull.

The treat of a fun movie is that it lets you disappear into a brighter, funnier, smarter and more beautiful world. Dark Horse is the opposite of that, leading the audience into a much bleaker reality. Abe hates his life. He lives in his childhood bedroom in his parents’ house with his collection of action-figure dolls (“I’m not a trekkie or anything nerdy like that,” he says). He works a dead-end office job for his father, drives a yellow Hummer and proposes to Miranda after only meeting her twice. Despite clearly disliking him, she agrees.

They make the worst combination ever, possibly because she hates her life even more than he hates his. His desperation to stimulate a romantic connection with Miranda, mixed with his anger-management issues, is a cocktail for hallucinations that summon images of his “guardian angel” (and happens to be the only woman that hits on him) who in real life is his dad’s 50-something secretary (Mary Joy).

This film did make me feel something strongly, but it was not empathy; it was plain dislike for a pathetic cast of characters that have no ambition to change. Stuck in the gutter of their own lives, they drag the audience down with them, and that’s not at all what I was expecting. — Otiena Ellwand Faust You should know that Russian director Alexsandr Sokurov’s Faust, a retelling of Goethe’s soul-selling tragedy, won the Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion award. You should also know that, during the first press screening at TIFF, more than a third of the audience walked out before the midpoint of the film. Faust is one of those introspective films –“unquestionably difficult,” as Variety magazine describes it – that you either love or hate. Black Swan director Darren Aronofsky raved about the film in his role on the Venice Festival jury, but the film is definitely not for everyone.

The story recreates the German myth of a doctor (Johannes Zeiler) who sells his soul to an otherworldly moneylender (Anton Adasinsky) for one night with a beautiful young woman (Isolda Dychauk).

The world as seen through brown and green-tinted lenses is one that oscillates between the divine nature of beautiful women and the bodied reality of men. With an opening shot of an autopsied corpse’s flaccid penis, Sokurov sets the tone of a weighty, if not pointed, analysis of the sins of men and the role that women play in that downfall. The devil, with a playdoughy body and a nubby tail but nothing up front, reveals himself in a surreal bathhouse scene where Faust gives himself up to his primal impulses and chooses lust over divinity. Passionate lovers of complicated film may adore this foray, but those who prefer more structured plot may call a bluff and say the emperor – or in this case, the devil – has no clothes. —AW Wuthering Heights Photos: sam javanrouh/flickr

For a director whose first two films were gritty dramas about the British working class, the fact that the anticipated third feature from Andrea Arnold is an adaptation of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights may come as a surprise. Though her fans can rest assured that Arnold’s take on the classic is fiercely independent of the brooding adaptations before it, the film’s debut at the Venice Film Festival split critics left and right, receiving high praise from some and unapologetic pans from others.

Arnold brings her distinct vision to Wuthering Heights in much the same way as she did to both Red Road (2006) and Fish Tank (2009): the director shows, not tells. The animal imagery Arnold is so fond of is rife in this latest film, and the grim North Yorkshire moors provide the ideal setting for the photography of life and death. No surprise, then, that the film’s cinematographer, Robbie Ryan, won the best cinema-

tography prize at Venice.

The director stays loyal in telling the doomed love story between Catherine and Heathcliff, only straying in the sense that Arnold’s leading man is Black. Three of the four principal actors are also unknowns: Wuthering Heights being the only credit to their names in most cases. While this casting technique worked with the electric Katie Jarvis in Fish Tank, Arnold’s lovers have about as much warmth between them as the desolate moors through which they plod unhappily for much of the film. Coupled with sparse dialogue and meandering shots of wildlife, the tragic romance associated with Brontë’s classic is painfully missing from Arnold’s withering adaptation. —MR Alois Nebel It’s not often enough that beautiful animation serves the dark side of film instead of just the fun-loving side. Fortunately, Czech director Tomás Lunák explores the dark side in Alois Nebel, using heavy black and white rotoscope animation to tell the tale of Alois, a Czech train station agent still haunted by the Nazi occupation of his childhood town years later when the Berlin Wall is being torn down. In gradually revealed flashbacks, we see how Alois is still stuck at that station of his youth where the Nazi train pulled out of town, a pivotal moment that we only later see in full, when the defeated Germans were hauled back to the fatherland.

The film revels in moodiness: plodding dark rain and snow, black and white blood on a fern, barren train stations and the rhythm of reciting train schedules. The ominous noir animation turns reality into the black, white and gray simplicity of a man functioning at the fringe of society.

Sometimes the mood and psychological overbearance seem to be painted heavily as a substitute for plot. Alois has meagre ambitions. He wants to study the trains, find love if it comes his way, and right his relationship to the history that flashes back in his mind, though he approaches these with a passivity and a sense of lost cause. He’s a sympathetic character, ground down by the wheels of society, but it’s hard to root for him when he wants little other than to watch the trains. Still, the dreamlike web of darkness in the beautiful images seems suited for the thoughtful pacing. —AW

Up Close & Personal Your Sister’s Sister On September 11, the world premiere of indie film Your Sister’s Sister, directed by Lynn Shelton, took place at our very own Ryerson Theatre.

Your Sister’s Sister follows Iris (Emily Blunt), her sister Hannah (Rosemary DeWitt) and her “emotionally precarious” friend Jack (Mark Duplass, of the directorial duo, the Duplass Brothers) during a weekend trip to the girls’ father’s cabin in the woods. The role of Hannah was originally intended for Rachel Weisz, but she had to drop out when filming was pushed back.

The film picks up with Jack, Iris and several of their friends one year after Jack’s brother’s death. After Jack, still deeply affected, speaks out in the midst of a friend’s eulogy, Iris sends him to the cabin to spend some time alone. There, he runs into Iris’s half-sister Hannah, who recently ended her long-term relationship with her girlfriend, Pam. After a night of heavy drinking, the two find themselves keeping secrets from Iris, who comes to visit the next day.

The film, which according to Shelton, consisted of dialogue that was mostly improvised, looks at the intricacies of romantic and sibling relationships, and is at once poignant and hilariously funny. Duplass’ performance was unquestionably the stand-out, given his pitch-perfect comedic timing.

However, Blunt’s sensitive and sweet portrayal of Iris also wins over audiences.

IFC Films acquired the movie for distribution in North America and Latin America, and with good reason: Your Sister’s Sister is an absolute must-see. ­— Kelsey Rolfe Think of Me Lauren Ambrose is luminous as Angela, a single mother on the seedy side of Las Vegas, looking for the universe to give her a break. Ambrose is almost unrecognizable from her five-year portrayal of the awkward artsy daughter Claire on HBO’s Six Feet Under. Now playing a brash, self-absorbed woman raising her sweet daughter Sunny (the subtly adorable Audrey P. Scott) on the streets of Las Vegas that the tour guides don’t show, Ambrose lends her complex charm to a character that could easily seem despicable. When we first meet Angela, she’s picking up a basketball player at a strip club, hoping he’ll give her some cash after spending the night. Eight-year-old Sunny seems like the adult in the relationship as Angela drifts between moments of maternal instinct and childishness. She drags her daughter across town at all hours and floats around her call-centre day job, using sexuality to manipulate her coworkers. Her short-term goal is to get enough money to sink in a certified, sure-win real-estate investment with her boss, but her ultimate desire seems to be to return to that reckless glory that young, beautiful women enjoy, albeit fleetingly.

Las Vegas is an appropriate setting for that desperation, not only for its culture of simultaneous self-denial and indulgence, but as one of the places worst hit by the recession. Yet this is a timeless tale of desperation for glory, and unlike much of the poverty porn populating reality television, Think of Me is complicated enough to ring true. Is Angela a bad mother for telling her daughter she can only afford a coke instead of a milkshake? What about when the car breaks down and Angela calls a limo because she refuses to ride the bus? Angela makes her decisions on impulse and emotion, regardless of risk to herself, or her daughter. She’ll willingly pay a 25 per cent fee on a payday loan instead of opening a bank account, and she gives up fighting on too many lost causes in favour of the next quick fix. The only question is, in her hunt for short-term glory, what else is she willing to give away? —AW Rampart In this police misconduct tale inspired by the Rampart scandal and Rodney King beating that plagued the LAPD in the 1990s, there’s so much talent crammed that little of it gets the chance to breathe. Woody Harrelson makes harsh, dirty cop Dave Brown almost likeable through his innate charm, but most of the stars, including a barely-there Steve Buscemi, a refreshingly unbotoxed Sigourney Weaver and charmless love interest Robin Wright seem like bold-name wallpaper. After Dave stirs up more bad publicity for the department by beating a couple of robbery suspects, he makes one misstep after another in attempt to deodorize his bad name. If there were more to like about this character, it might make for an engaging bad luck tale, but without much to latch on to on either side of the investigation, it’s hard to care what happens.

Another noir story from writer James Ellroy, you’ll either love or hate the flashy dialogue also seen in his previous adaptations L.A. Confidential (1997) and Black Dahlia (2006). The characters are intriguing, especially Dave’s ongoing relationships with sisters (Cynthia Nixon and Anne Heche) who live side by side and each raise one of his children: but intrigue is not the same as empathy. The show-off dialogue would be enough to contend with, but director Oren Moverman adds to the disengagement with self-consciously arty cinematography that detracts from the story, including one nausea-inducing scene where the camera pans between three characters like a merry-go-round run loose. Overall,

Photos: sam javanrouh/flickr; ed van-west garcia/flickr

the film offers a fresh take on the police procedural, but it’s best for those who prefer swagger over substance. —AW

Ordinary People Jeff Who Lives At Home “I watched Signs again last night. It gets better every time I see it. I can’t help but wonder about my fate, about my destiny.” Meet the unemployed, basement-dwelling Jeff, who lives at home, the latest misfit from Jay and Mark Duplass, collectively known as the Duplass Brothers. Played by Jason Segel, who is all too convincing as the lovable giant, Jeff tells himself one morning, after answering a phone call from someone looking for “Kevin,” that his purpose that day is to follow the signs (a basketball jersey, ice cream truck, etc.) wherever they take him. And while he may have envisioned an elaborate adventure, fate seems to have something closer to home in mind.

An intimate but affecting cast surrounds Segel, with Susan Sarandon playing Jeff ’s harried mother Sharon – whose non-existent love life is suddenly sparked by instant messages from a secret admirer – and his brother Pat (Ed Helms), whose marriage manages to fall apart in the course of 24 hours. Jeff, hell-bent on following the signs, suddenly begins to realize that the signs are leading him smack-dab into his own family.

Jeff Who Lives At Home brims with positivity and good vibes, and while the misadventures of Jeff, Pat and Sharon in the course of a single day may seem absurdist, if not outright nonsensical, it’s one of those rare indie films that not only inspires but also encourages everyone to get up and follow a sign or two of their own. —MR A Separation Asghar Farhadi’s film begins, in one long take, with the final act of a separation. In front of a judge, Nader and Simin are ending their 14-year marriage, and asking for a divorce.

When it’s not granted on the grounds that their problems aren’t serious enough (Simin wants to leave the country as she doesn’t want her daughter growing up in Iran), the family breaks apart, and Simin goes to live on her own after finding a local woman to help her estranged husband with the housework.

Trying to understand something when you’re not entirely sure what you’re looking at is the initial experience of Farhadi’s film. Once Simin leaves and a quiet maid enters the household with her young daughter, there is little cause for concern for the middle-class family, which seems to be coping fairly well with the new living arrangements. But when an unfortunate altercation involving the working-class maid ends fatally, two families must turn on one another to seek truth and, above all, justice.

A Separation, which won the Golden Berlin Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival, is rife with political symbolism, with the two sparring families representing the class divide permeating Iran, and the inevitable politics inherent to each side. Due to the strict restrictions and censorship placed on Iranian filmmakers, the subtleties of Farhadi’s commentary are searing, making A Separation one of the most politically charged and devastating films of the season. —MR

Ryerson Free Press October 2011 19

R y e r so n Co m m uni ty P re sents

Ryerson

Social

Justice

Week 17

18

Monday Oct 17 Friday Oct 21, 2011 A week of events, speakers, exhibit and cultural events to transform Ryerson into a hub of social justice and solidarity in Toronto.

19

20

21 12:30pm-2:00pm

MONDAY

TUESDAY

WEDNESDAY

THURSDAY

ALL DAY

ALL DAY

ALL DAY

ALL DAY

PHOTO EXHIBIT ON MIGRANT WORKERS

"THIS IS MADNESS" EXHIBIT

ABORIGINAL CIRCLE WORKSHOP

ART EXHIBIT

BY SKETCH

TRSM

Credit Union Lounge

Credit Union Lounge

Credit Union Lounge

by Vince Pietropaolo

School of Disability Studies

12:00pm-1:30pm

2:00pm-5:00pm

ANTI-POVERTY AND GOOD JOBS FOR ALL RALLY

ABORIGINAL CIRCLE WORKSHOP

Gould Street

on the Indian Act Thomas Lounge, Student Centre

6:30pm-8:30pm

6:30pm-9:00pm

RE-IMAGINE SOCIAL JUSTICE: FROM GLOBAL TO LOCAL

INTERGENERATIONAL DIALOGUE ON RACE, GENDER AND CLASS

Public lecture by

Guest Speakers:

STEPHEN LEWIS

• • • • •

Judy Rebick Akua Benjamin Joanne Dallaire Mariela Arce de Leis and others

on the Indian Act

12:00pm-1:30pm

12:00pm-1:30pm

LUNCH AND LEARN ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

MUSIC AND WORDS ON THE STREET

Guest Speaker:

• Clayton Thomas Muller Organizer, Anti-Tarsand Coalition

Thomas Lounge, Student Centre

LEARNING FROM THE RESISTANCE OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES Guest Speakers: • John Cutfeet, KI Nation • Joanne Dallaire

Twitter: @RyeGindinChair

Admission: Free with Student I.D. Spotlight on the Khoi-San II: The Uprising of Hangberg Co-Director: Dylan Valley South Africa 90 min · 2010 English and Afrikaans with English subtitles

• and others Gould Street

6:30pm-9:00pm

POPULAR EDUCATION WORKSHOP

LIB72

in partnership with The imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival

Cinema 2 (350 King St. West)

on Worker Justice and International Solidarity Thomas Lounge, Student Centre

SPECIAL FILM PRESENTATION

TIFF Bell Lightbox

6:30pm-9:00pm

Photo credit: Gordon Griffiths

TRS 1067

Featuring: • 7 Firez Hip Hop • D’bi Young

FRIDAY

Room A/B, Student Centre

For more information about the events: Twitter: RyeGindinChair Email: tsf@ryerson.ca Website: www.ryerson.ca/socialjustice