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SURVIVAL SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER/NOVEMBER ARts + LifestylE
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Contents Editor’s Letter / 10 Contributors / 11 Guests / 13 Animal Fostering 101 / 14 The Music That Gets You Through / 16 Alex Chinien reports on the E3 2009 Video Games Conference / 18 Sam Windholz explores Mortality in Gaming / 19 From Spider-Man to Scarface: A.J. Little looks at the heroes we worship in film / 20 Back to School Survival Items / 22 Casualties and War: An interview by Julia Pyper / 23 Alex Nitsou visits the Mile End Legal Clinic / 26 At the Prison: The effects of art therapy on inmates / 27 Scarred for Life: Some of our friends show us their scars and share the stories behind them / 28 Landscapers: Surviving in the great outdoors by Colin Throness / 30 Trapped: A photo series by Alexi Hobbs / 32 Natural Remedies For Your Health / 34 Your Montréal Survival Guide / 37 The city’s best spots that stay open 24 hours / 38 Cheap Cheap Cheap: Where to save a dime around town / 39 Our picks for the best Halloween Costume Stores / 40 Fall Fashion / 43 The Voodoo You Do by Marilis Cardinal / 45 Fashion and Fatal Appeal: Jessica Goldfond explores death imagery in fashion / 49 Wild Heart by Maude Tremblay / 50 Desert Storm by MarquisMontes / 58 Africa: Essays and musings on the state of this scarred and majestic continent / 66 The End of The Mursi by Marcel Mueller / 68 Music Across Africa: An interview by Katie Kotler / 70 Paying For Our Respects: Reflections on a recent trip by Julia Pyper / 72 Global Apartheid: A story by Daniel Douek / 74 A Taste of Africa in Montréal: Some African venues and events of note / 76 Immigration and Cultural Identity: A study by Laura Kneale / 78 The Shoestring Artist and How He Thrives in Montréal / 81 Parenting and the Survival Instinct / 82 East End Blues: A gay column by Roberto Cialdella / 83 Forensic Art: The study of faces / 86
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A ll contents of this maga zine are cop y righted ©2009 SNAP Inc. 1/4064 St. L aurent, Montréal , QC , H2 W 1Y8 or third part y-part y content prov iders. SN A P Inc. assumes no responsibilit y for content of advertisement. Reproduction of editorial is strictly prohibited without prior permission of SNAP Inc. SNAP Inc. will not hold itself responsible for unsolicited contributions.
ILLUSTRATION BY SUPER KIPPA 2000 (MAXIME FRANCOUT, ADRIEN BAUDET)
SNAP! is excited to announce the first ever
OPEN CALL for submissions! Our winter issue due out in December will showcase the contributions of anyone and everyone who makes a quality pitch by FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 25TH. Pick one from any number of THREE LETTER WORDS and then make it your own. Anything from Gin Tie Wig Car Sex Bug Bra Sea Fly Die Hot Age Ink Boy... the list can go as far as your imagination! All pitches are subject to our editor’s discretion. A page length will be allocated according to the nature of your story idea, visual concept or general proposal. With 94 pages up for grabs our THREE LETTER WORDS issue is set to be the most playful and eclectic one yet! We are all excited to see what you clever chickens come up with. So get your entries in now! Final deadline for all completed work is October 10th.
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Editor’s Letter There is a warped reality of death for those still living. Mortality and suffering are universal experiences but still remain surreal and incomprehensible to all of us. I realized something a few years back when a dead pigeon brought me to tears: maybe you can learn to overcome suffering, pain and loss by desensitizing yourself – by learning to care a little less. This was my very crude version of a Buddhist philosophy. But over time I’ve come to see a better way to deal – to accept and live with how blunt and wrenching our world can be. To care more. It sounds antithetical and maybe even cheesy, but if you consider what gets you through the toughest times in life – what helps you survive – it’s the solidarity of those around you. It’s the words, the thoughts and the actions of people who feel your pain and hold your hand. It reminds you that we’re all in it together. Over the course of this issue death kept tapping us on the shoulder. It was a difficult time. But this issue is about SURVIVAL and how we get through. From the simple day to day stuff to serious issues like conflict, war, prison and personal struggle. Sometimes life can be dark but we all have the SURVIVAL instinct that kicks in to see us through to a brighter day. Issue #8 is a salute to the warrior within that fights the good fight and knows that whatever doesn’t kill you will only make you stronger. We hope you dig it. SP
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What did you think? Let us know. info@snapme.ca
Contributors Independent Publisher and Editor Shayl Prisk Founders Hannah Byrne and Shayl Prisk Art Director Vanda Daftari Lay-out Vanda Daftari, Hannah Byrne, jeremy dabrowski Fashion Director Pascale Georgiev Copy Editing Colin Throness, Elizabeth McIntosh Interns Catherine Campagna, Carla Warrilow, Imogen Eveson, jeremy dabrowski, rebeka pelaez gaetz Writing Shayl Prisk, Ben Pobjoy, Jeremy Dabrowski, Jon Ng, Imogen Eveson, Edmund Lam, Robin Hart Hiltz, Hannah Byrne, Alex Chinien, Sam Windholz, A.J. Little, Pascale Georgiev, Julia Pyper, Alex Nitsou, Natasha Viau Skreslet, Colin Throness, Sara McDonald, Jessica Goldfond, Marcel Mueller, Katie Kotler, Daniel Douek, Carla Warrilow, Laura Kneale, Lauren Jane Heller, Roberto Cialdella Photography Maude Tremblay, Vanda Daftari, Shayl Prisk, Robin Hart Hiltz, Alex Chinien, Maxyme g Delisle, Annalie Young, Alexi Hobbs, Carla Warrilow, Yannick Hagmann, Marilis Cardinal, MarquisMontes, Marcel Mueller Artwork Adrien Baudet, Aimée van Drimmelen, Corri lynn Tetz, Dave Arnold, Imogen Eveson Marketing and Communications Hannah Byrne Web Editors Hannah Byrne, Kate Reddington Web Photographers Fahad Asvat, Chiali Tsai, Catherine Campagna Web Director Jeff Traynor SNAP! TV Director Alexandre LeBlanc, Julien Gregoire Gallery Ariane Gregoire, Armance Brandenburg Advertising Information 514 576 7867 Offices 4064 St Laurent Blvd, Suite 1, MontrÉal QC H2W 1Y8 www.snapme.ca info@snapme.ca Printers Marquis Book Printing
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On the cover: Yaniya wears a vero moda tunic and urban outfitters necklace (worn as headpiece). Photography by Maude Tremblay Art direction by Vanda Daftari Styling by Pascale Georgiev Hair and Make Up by Braydon Nelson for Orbite
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Ben Pobjoy The Mirror billed him as one of Montréal’s top Noisemakers for 2009 while their poll put his gallery The Emporium at fourth for best in the city: yes it’s clear that this guy is expert at making waves all over the place, from photographing big names like Peaches, A-Trak and Busy P, to being published in magazines like Vice and AP; penning his critically acclaimed book Land of America or starting a shady prison-style-tattoo practice – he’s kind of done it all. As Co-Creative & Operations Director for the company Switzerland he can be found traveling to far off places like Mexico, France and Australia – that is if he isn’t curating, hanging and managing a show at his gallery or shooting the shit with corporate big-wigs looking to get a little of the gold dust that seems to follow this dude wherever he goes. The best part: he’s as unassuming as they come and is always the friendliest guy in the room. Long live Pobjoy!
Jessica Goldfond Freelance editor, stylist, writer and contributor for magazines like Dujour, MANKIND, Design Milk and Pocketto, Brooklyn-based Jessica Goldfond also manages and curates online art gallery The Shiny Squirrel, started her own online travel magazine Truant and in her spare time DJs and organizes benefit events to raise money for local charities. We thought we worked hard! Hats off to this girl, who somehow got around to penning a piece for this issue’s fashion section titled ‘Fashion and Fatal Appeal,’ which you can find on page 49. Check out theshinysquirrel.com to see some more of what this wonder kid is doing!
Yaniya Lee Montréal-born Yaniya Lee has worked at some of this city’s most-loved spots, but this Concordia English Lit student has also travelled and worked abroad quite a bit. After cegep, she spent monthes perfercting her Spanish while backpacking in Cental America. Most recently, she spent time living in Berlin, honing her writing and practising her German. Yaniya finally returned to Montréal this January and after a chance encounter outside her old haunt, Casa, we were all but scrambling to have her killer cheekbones featured on our SNAP! pages. More into books than fashion, Yaniya later told us that she dreams of moving to Berlin by 2010 to continue her studies at the University of Bremen. Our loss is their gain!
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ANIMAL FOSTERING 101 Many of us who are busy with work or school, or who never know where we will be from one year to the next, often dismiss the idea of having a pet because of the long term commitment. But for the animal lovers among us there is another option: fostering. If you are settled into a routine and have a stable apartment for at least the next few months, a great way to help a dog or cat in need is to offer shelter and love as a temporary arrangement until a more permanent home for them can be found. There are a number of great groups and fostering programs across the city that you can get in touch with to help rescue animals in need and yes, if you do fall in love with your pet, there is usually an option to keep them once the foster period has ended. So if you have some space and a bit of love to give, it’s pretty much the most rewarding thing you can do!
CATS
Animal Rescue Network · animalrescuenetwork.org Steri Anima · steri-animal.org Sphinx Project · sphinxprojet.com
DOGS
Sophie’s Dog Adoption · sophiesdogadoption.com Rosie Animal Adoption · rosieanimaladoption.org Animatch · animatch.ca
CATS + DOGS
Gerdy’s Rescues and Adoptions · gerdysrescue.org SPCA Montréal · SPcaMontréal.com
SURVIVAL STORIES Lenny
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Kisha
husky mix · 5YRS
TORTOISE SHELL · 4YRS
I rescued Lenny from a dysfunctional home where he lived until the age of three and a half. He was timid, needy, and scared. He pulled my shoulder out on-leash, hadn’t been taught any of the basic commands, and couldn’t even go up and down stairs. Nor could he be left on his own – he ate through my vestibule, shutters, and favorite jeans. Today, he remains a pretty anxious loup (that’s his nickname), and occasionally nibbles at doors and sweaters. But! He can sit, lie down, bound up staircases, and barely needs a leash at all. Plus, he’s so damn cute with his piercing husky eyes and the massive crush he has on our cat, Kaya. ~J.A.
I found her shivering and soaked on a cold April night. She was light and delicate and buried herself in my arms as I carried her into my apartment to give her shelter and food. She had clearly been on the streets for quite some time and needed to gain weight and get shots from the vet. The first summer I had her she managed to scavenge sausages and steaks from neighbourhood BBQs at least six times. Her hunting and pilfering skills are first-rate. I’ve had her now for three years. She is crazy, she tears through garbage and scares easily, but I have never met a more sweet and affectionate cat. I am so glad I took her in, she’s part of the family now. ~ S.P.
The Music That Gets You Through Photo by Robin Hart Hiltz Whether it’s pumping it up loud or taking refuge in a slow calming soundtrack, everyone has ‘that album’ they reach for when their day has been long and hard. A few of our contributors told us their choice and why it never fails them.
BEN POBJOY › Ryan Adams/Heartbreaker I’ve always been fond of Ryan Adams’ first record, Heartbreaker. I’ve long loved the songs, the flow of the tracks and the lonely, fragile warmth of the production. Over this past year I’ve come to heavily rely on it. I find myself listening to it all the time now – especially late at night when I’m alone, smoking cigs, pounding beers and trying to reconcile what has been a very difficult year. Heartbreaker reminds me of how universal pain is and why it’s important to be stoic.
JEREMY DABROWSKI › Cat Power/Moon Pix and You Are Free On long bus r ide s or whe n I ne ed to lower my blood pressure I’ll usually land on Moon Pix and You Are Free by Cat Power, played back to back. There’s something in the pace of the songs that’s humbling to me. I’ve listened to these albums so many times that I can pick up on every idiosyncrasy for what other people might find monotonous and droning.
JON NG › Deltron3030
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This album never fails me. I first heard it in 2000 when I was in my first year of animation at Sheridan College. My roommate Nishio was always bumpin’ that CD from his room. It’s such a visual record. It has such an atmospheric quality thanks to the Automator, the geeked-out visual lyrics from Del, and of course the scratch
magic from my man, Kid K. There’s just so much going on in every track that I never get bored, I can always find something new in there. It always gets my mind going if I need to get inspired. Still waitin’ on the sequel...
IMOGEN EVESON › Joni Mitchell/Blue This album has played like a soundtrack to some of my life’s most poignant moments. Its poetry and sparse beauty remain relevant however many weeks, months or years that may lapse between listens. New meaning gathers like moss and certain tracks resonate louder and louder. Being from England, I now find myself in Montréal playing Case of You, and, with its map of Canada refrain, basking in its latest significance.
EDMUND LAM › Super Friendz/Mock Up Scale Down I tend to categorize albums I enjoy into two separate categories: those that are immediately satisfying, but tire easily and those that are challenging but have sustainable appeal. However there are always exceptions. One example is Mock Up Scale Down by the nineties Halifax greats the Super Friendz. The now defunct band’s debut is sugary and intelligent. The melodies are satisfying but surprising. The guitar riffs are innovative and jagged, all the while paying hommage to classic rock guitar showmanship.
ROBIN HART HILTZ › Weezer/Blue Album It’s 2009 and this record is 15 years old. This scares me. Over those 15 years I’ve probably purchased this record six times. It is essential. I sometimes feel that the true brilliance of it is overshadowed by the plethora of suck that came post-Pinkerton. But from family vacations to trans-Canadian roadtrips, working in Photoshop or even sitting in a bar – and everyone around me singing it at the top of their lungs (I can actually recall two separate occasions that this happened to me) – all the way this record has been with me.
HANNAH BYRNE › The Killers/Day & Age I’ve indulged in a guilty four year love affair with The Killers and each of their three albums. They’re an epic band with theatrical albums that are larger than life. Their songs are torch-waving anthems and when feeling under the weather, you need something that fills you up. I love pretending to be in a music video and The Killers hand me that on a plate. “Everything will be alright.”
Where the eating is good breakfast - lunch Le Vieux St. Laurent
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3993 St. Laurent
2009 e3 Video Games convention words and photos by Alex chinien
The passengers of Air Canada flight 797 displayed a brand of unbridled enthusiasm I had not yet seen at seven in the morning. This was no ordinary flight from Montréal to Los Angeles. This flight was carrying an overwhelming cohort of employees from both Ubisoft and EA Montréal. Also waiting for the flight were the games journalists, who like myself, were boarding with stars in their eyes and business cards in their pockets. We were on our way to the 2009 Electronic Entertainment Expo, one of the world’s largest gaming trade shows and this was the reason, along with the seemingly unending rounds of double espressos being handed out, for all the excitement. It was not going to be all fun and games, at least not for the EA employees. I overheard that EA had set-up temporary work terminals in LA so that after the show floor closed at six in the evening, they could catch up on the work that they were missing throughout the evening. Upon arrival in LAX, I took a shuttle downtown and within minutes it was revealed that everybody in the van was going to E3. This was not surprising considering this year’s attendance reached 41,000 people. Business cards were exchanged faster than the eye could see and when we arrived at the LA convention center it was plastered from head to toe with enormous game advertisements.
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On the first day of the show I took three and a half hours to walk through both halls of exhibits and simply digest everything. There were enormous LCD displays, women dressed as video game characters as well DJs and bands performing. I found myself going to lunch at a hole in the wall taco restaurant with a Berkeley games journalist and Eskil Steenberg, an indie game developer from Sweden.
Steenberg is busy building a Massively Multiplayer Online game completely on his own, from the ground up. His game, titled Love, is nearing beta development and has already garnered enormous critical praise. Among the blockbuster games shown, God of War III for the Playstation 3 had without a doubt the longest queue of gamers waiting to play. Legendary game creator Tim Schafer’s Brutal Legend was also a draw, featuring the voice of Jack Black for its protagonist, who uses his guitar to perform lightning attacks. The critical darling of the show was surprisingly, a handheld title called Scribblenauts for the Nintendo DS. The game’s premise is simple; the player solves simple puzzles by typing any noun they can imagine into a keyboard. For example, I was able to type in the word axe and then lumberjack and both appeared on the screen. Then I dragged the axe into the lumberjack’s hands and he proceeded to chop down a tree that was in my way. The huge database of objects you can type in allows for lots of creativity for solving the puzzles. Eventually I typed in Vampire and a friend typed in Zombie and they started fighting each other. The person working the booth told us to type in garlic, and as soon as we did, the vampire ran away in fear. If the industry is being negatively affected by the shrinking economy, it didn’t show at any of the lavish invite-only parties that games companies hosted every evening. On the last night I found myself at a party on the roof of the Grammy museum in downtown LA. Between free glasses of wine, somebody handed me a business card with the title “Street Fighter IV Regional Champion” alongside his other credentials. I realized then that I would probably be coming back to do it all again next year.
Video Games
Words by Sam Windholz What replaces death in a world where you can’t really die? The words “GAME OVER” are now déclassé, marched off to the dustbin of video game history. But in the hoary old days of yestergaming, those inevitable words were but a clarion call to action: the fuel for you to try again against the artificial challenges you found carefully laid out before you. Die, curse, throw controller at wall, chill out, pick up controller, and try again (repeat ad near-infinitum and make mental note to fix wall). With the increased complexity of most modern games and our current hive-mind’s collective ADHD, this kind of repeat‘til-you-triumph process is now perceived as a fatal weakness. To wit: “man, hard game” became “meh, hard game.” Still, without a real threat there is no challenge, and without challenge there is no game. So what replaces death in a world where you can’t really die? The revamped Prince of Persia series from homegrown heroes Ubisoft Montréal is a pitch-perfect example of this idea. In its classic 2-D iteration (Broderbund, 1989) it was soul-crushingly frustrating, designed to make you fall in every pit or spike trap at least once, until you memorized every step you took and measured every jump twice. When the series was relaunched in 3-D back in 2003, the first thing to be introduced was a system where you could roll back time to just before the inexorable fall into those pits and spikes and what have you. Death without the sting.
In the popular Lego series of games (Lego Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Batman, and the inevitable Lego Harry Potter) British games developer Travellers Tales merely penalizes the player by a loss of points for being “killed”. You have infinite lives, and simply reappear on the spot with little to no retreading necessary. But in order to get bonuses and fulfill special objectives, much like in real life, you are challenged to limit death to a reasonable minimum. Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto series has always removed death from the equation entirely by having you reappear at a hospital or police station after dying or being arrested, respectively. But repeating the mission from that point often involved a long sequence of driving to actually get back to the plot. This was one of the larger complaints in the otherwise stellar GTA4 (2008). So, natch, in the downloadable expansion for the game, GTA4: The Lost & The Damned (2009), one of the new features answers that complaint directly, by allowing you to skip the travelling and go straight back to a checkpoint. Less wait, more killing. The flipside to revamping virtual mortality is that the game can then be perceived as being too easy or short; what once took hours retreading the same ground now sees those hours shaved off the total play time. The new creative tension lies in providing a value-length experience, within budget, and minimizing ye olde cloying reiteration trick. Without evolution, stagnation – or as a wise man once said: “Game over, man. Game over.”
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From Spider-Man to Scarface A.J. Little looks at two antithetical heroes our generation continues to adulate and attempts to answer why. Words by A.J. Little Illustrations by Aimée Van Drimmelen
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There is a cult of personality among certain screen characters. The ones that work exude a dictatorial power and pervade the lexicon, the fashion, and all other available aspects of our culture. Likewise there can be a certain kind of iconography in cinema that creates an understanding of character types long before particular films are even seen. I knew about Scarface from rap lyrics, grainy black and white posters and schoolyard skits by older boys (“Say hello to my
little friend”) long before I actually saw the movie. Likewise it seems I always knew about Spider-Man: the toys, the breakfast cereals and even my underwear; all were stamped with his insignia long before Peter Parker and I were formally introduced in film. These two characters are the archetypal heroes of our age. They may be diametric in their opposition, yet they remain kindred as standards for our generation’s popular culture.
Scarface is essentially the dramatic antithesis of Spider-Man – he is the everyman, yes – but the criminal everyman, and he doesn’t function in any traditional emotional realm. Scarface the film is essentially thematic rather than character driven. The characters seem there only to spout quotables and oft-imitated accents. The American ideal has always deified the criminal element, from the F.B.I. public enemy program to tacky movies of the week about serial killers. The person operating outside of the realm of conventions and reason has always made good fodder for story telling in our post-modern age. Scarface, although he has some of the same touchstones as other characters within the context of the monomyth, seems to exist almost exclusively to show his surroundings, to be a reflection of a morbid obsession with wealth and recklessness. Before hip hop cultivated its brand to include Scarface it was simply kitschy violent fun. A movie so peppered with swear words you forget they sometimes don’t fit into your polite conversations. The hip hop connection to Scarface has greatly affected the extent to which Pacino’s character has come to be revered. I heard Incarcerated Scarfaces by Wu-Tang member Raekwon long before I was introduced to Al Pacino’s Cuban accent. Raekwon created a genre of hip hop built around the narratives of coke kingpins and this model dominated the themes and lyrics for much of the rap produced in the following decade. By making this topic a musical norm the Scarface type became integrated into mainstream pop culture. In addition to this influence, the very specific iconography of the Scarface poster – striking in its elemental black and white, with red letters – elevates his character to some kind of timeless tragic hero. Maybe it will always be that way: the Scarface poster will continue to be the top choice for baby-fresh thuglets living in their first year dorms, adorning a brutal and brave Pacino mask.
WWW. DIRXIONS. COM
Spider-Man stands as a monomyth, an antiquary idea of the universality of the hero. This idea is native to the comic book universe. Here, each hero has the same touchstones in their history. What makes Spider-Man different is his lack of apotheosis. He never quite reaches demigod status; he is decidedly human in spite of his fantastic abilities. Under the mask he is still Peter Parker. I think it is for this reason that he is so enduring. He is not an exulted hero; he is the nerdy teenager who – though suddenly endowed with super powers – still retains all the social awkwardness and bad breaks of adolescence. Spider-Man is a hero that endures for several reasons. First, the iconography: he is so easily recognizable and his colour scheme is memorable and classic. Second, Spider-Man continues to be adulated because he is familiar and ubiquitous. That makes him believable and beloved, a hero we will always root for and see ourselves in.
Travel scrabble
banana guard
personal alarm
lint sheets earthlust water bottle
first aid pack
compass
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portable towelettes
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UV-C scanner
Casualties and War An interview by Julia Pyper
There are currently 2700 Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan. The death toll at printing sits at 124. For both Canadians and Afghanis, Operation Enduring Freedom has been costly and continues to affect the world at large. Julia Pyper spoke with Hilary Frank, an operating room nurse, mother of three, and captain in the Canadian army, and asked her to describe her experience from two trips for a total of six months in Afghanistan. Were you well prepared for what you experienced? “I think so, you know it’s the unknown that scares people the most. They put you through training and get you aware of the Afghan culture. They prepare you as well as they can but when you get there it’s a whole different world.” What do they do to prepare you? “Make sure you’re medically fit to go and that your weapons training is all up to date. You get a psychological appointment to make sure you’re in the right headspace to go. Also, if you have a young family they make sure you have a family plan. They want to make sure your kids are well cared for in case there’s a need.” What was the most shocking thing you experienced? “The types of injuries. Traumas due to improvised explosive devices. Like if a vehicle drove over an explosive device we’d get the trauma in from that. There were lots of horrific injuries we received in that operating room. Lots of gun-shot wounds and lots of limbs amputated…serious traumas like that.” What were the working conditions like? “We’d go into work about 7:30 am. We would start with follow up surgeries. A lot of our surgeries were looking after the Afghan army and police force. So if a coalition soldier got injured they’d get care and get sent out. If they needed follow up with burns and skin
graphing and that sort of thing, we’d do that in the morning. Then in the afternoon often times we’d get our trauma injuries coming in. Then we’d stay until we were finished. Often it was late and you could get called back anytime. We were the only team while we were there, working 24/7. We were always on call, we worked everyday.” Did you ever feel vulnerable or scared on the base? “There are mortar attacks on base and everyone is carrying around a weapon and you get negligence discharge occasionally – human error and mistakes with your weapon.” Was it difficult to leave your friends and family? “That’s the biggest thing. You worry about them because you know they’re worried about you while you’re there. I was only there for half a tour at a time but normally others go for six months and that’s really hard on them.” Do you get the sense that the Afghani people welcome the Canadian forces? “For the most part they are thankful that the coalition forces are there. It’s tough to say but for the most part they are. We’re bringing a little stability.” Can you speak about Stephen Harper’s trip to Afghanistan? “It was just after he took office, the first time I was there. It was pretty exciting. There was a lot of security. He did a tour of the hospital so we met him there and he shook everyone’s hand and asked how they were doing.” Having experienced it first-hand, how do you feel about Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan? “I think there’s a need for us in Afghanistan. I think it’s important that we’re there. Anybody I spoke to and my own thoughts are that you believe in the mission, you think you’re doing good and you just go and do what you can.”
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Clinically Just Alex Nitsou visits the Mile End Legal Clinic, aiding through hard work and good will Words by Alex Nitsiou Photo by Annalie Young “To have a just society people need to have access to the legal system,” explained Geeta Narang, Founder and Executive Director of the Mile End Legal Clinic. “We’re so proud of our charters here in Quebec,” she continued, “but the laws are worth nothing if you can’t exercise those rights.” For that reason, Narang and her faithful crew of volunteers at the Mile End legal clinic have been helping Montréalers keep their civil liberties fit. The clinic, which occupies the Mile End Mission every Wednesday evening, offers free legal support to anyone who can’t otherwise afford an attorney. Through individual consultations on a drop-in basis, a team of lawyers and law students lend a hand at demystifying the legal system and aim to make justice accessible for all. “Quebec is behind compared with other provinces in providing free legal aid,” declared Colin Irving, President of the Board with some 50 years of legal practice under his belt. “If individuals make more than $12,149 a year, they don’t qualify for legal aid,” explained Irving, remarking that lawyer fees are far from cheap these days. “Even if they’ve just started to practice, lawyers can charge at least $175 an hour.” The unfortunate result is that “few people actually have access to any type of legal help.”
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Given such a sad state of civil affairs, Narang felt the need to give back to the community. A Mile End native herself, she made her way to the Mission fresh out of law school back in 2002. In addition to a private practice, Narang sat there once a week, offering free legal consultations. Taking time off during her pregnancies, she vowed to return with added support to deal with the overwhelming amount of cases. One major coup for Narang was joining forces with McGill University’s Legal Clinic Course, which places students as interns at the Mile End Legal Clinic. Université de Montréal will also jump on board starting September 2009. Further assistance came when the team enlisted the help of Irving,
whom Narang describes as invaluable to the success of the clinic. Today, the Mile End Legal Clinic is a non-profit organization. Still, Narang waits upon legal formalities to achieve charitable status, even though the team is armed with a network of experienced lawyers. Once granted, the clinic will be able to receive much needed funding from a variety of organizations. “What people don’t seem to realize is that we’re all volunteers,” she pointed out, alluding to the fact that donations are always welcomed and currently their only means of financing. “The state should be funding this, but the clinic’s success is mainly due to a lot of people with a lot of good will.” By providing legal information and walking individuals through legal proceedings, the clinic aims to overcome the obstructions that exist between those practicing law and those who are subject to it. “For the most part,” Narang asserted, “the people who come to see us are those who fall through the cracks, the ones who need legal help the most, but can’t get any.” Some fortunate citizens might know a lawyer or have one in the family, “so it’s often just that point of entry that most people need, yet don’t know where to go.” Pondering the future of the clinic, Narang says she hopes the funds required to sustain such a venture continue to roll in. “We seem to be the victims of our own success” she mused, “but the concept of working through a community center and getting to know the public intimately is such a great model that I hope every borough has one within twenty years.” The Mile End Legal Clinic is situated at 99 Bernard West (Wednesdays from 6 to 7 pm) For more information, please visit justiceMontréal.org · On September 16th, the Clinic holds a ‘6 à 8’ at the Mile-End Library. A meeting point for jurists and citizens, the occasion will include the screening of local filmmaker Charles Latour’s documentary that highlights several legal cases they’ve dealt with.
Agir par l’imaginaire: Critical Context Art, like life, is often all about perspective. In life, your perspective is your choice of an appropriate context for your opinions and beliefs. In art, it affects what you see – or don’t see. Can you tell if you’re seeing the whole picture? by Natasha Viau-Skreslet
The subject of the photograph is a solitary ballpoint pen. There is nothing the least bit distinctive about this particular pen – you can’t even discern what brand it is. The light suggests harsh overhead fluorescents, the kind that line hospital corridors. The object creates no shadows. Lying on its side, the pen is slightly askew within the frame. The piece is entitled: J’attends toujours ta lettre – I’m still waiting on your letter. On its own, the photograph evokes a stark loneliness, a kind of involuntary solitude. “It’s a powerful image,” says Paul Litherland, the photographer who led the workshop in which the photograph was taken, “it doesn’t get much more direct than that.” The photograph belongs to a small but growing body of artwork created by female inmates currently residing in one of five Quebec correctional facilities. These women have chosen to take action with their imaginations to change the way that society regards them. Agir par l’imaginaire, a collaboration between the Societe Elizabeth Fry du Quebec and Engrenage Noir – LEVIER, aims to deconstruct the prejudices commonly held in our society about criminalized women and poverty. Since 2008, the initiative has selected and trained career artists to enter an environment where communication is severely restricted, and offer women the opportunity to convey their story, their way. All of the works completed over a two-year period will be displayed in a final exhibition, open to the public. An associated round-table discussion will celebrate the women’s creativity, while focusing on the process by which women become impoverished within the prison system. The focus is not only to facilitate a self-reflective process by which each woman can re-con-
nect with her sense of self, but also to explore the mythologies of imprisonment that exist outside the prison walls. “Our interest is to work through creative means to explore what is possible. The project is not just a question of expression – it is one of discovery, exploration, and fundamentally challenging the status quo,” says co-director of the program Devora Neumark. Again, there is a need to look beyond what is immediately obvious. Despite the fact that Canadian crime rates reached a 25-year low in 2006, the number of women being imprisoned is increasing. “It is due to the criminalization of poverty, mental illness and addiction,” commented Neumark, “and it is completely absurd.” The continuing cuts to social welfare and the reduction of social supports are forcing women who already find themselves on the margins of society to support themselves in ways that fall outside the law. Of the women who are currently ensnared in the prison system, over 80 percent are being sentenced for crimes like theft, fraud, shoplifting, sex-work, and other non-violent offences they regard as necessary for their economic survival. The irony is that once in the system, the cost of imprisoning a woman in a federal prison ranges from a minimum of $175,000 to over $250,000 a year. One of the workshop facilitators put it succinctly when we spoke: “We have an obligation to look at the bigger picture and ask what their life is like – what responsibility does society have for putting them there?” Interesting perspective.
Additional Information The SociÉtÉ Elizabeth Fry du QuÉbec is a not for profit organization whose mandate is to create services for women in conflict with the law in order to facilitate their reintegration into society. elizabethfry.qc.ca Since 2002, Engrenage Noir / LEVIER has supported Community Art and Creative Humanist Activism projects in response to proposals from individuals and groups dealing with a wide array of concerns. engrenagenoir.ca
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David Martel
I’ve had this scar since I was 8 months old. I’ve never known life without a scarred right arm. My parents tell me I did it to myself, but I’ve always wondered!
photos by maxyme g. delisle
SCARRED FOR life
Vanessa Velkoff-Woo
My scar is a cleft lip that originated from a cleft palate. Because of this congenital disorder I’ve had about a dozen surgeries from the time of birth until the age of 16. My cleft palate has taught me how to survive people continually asking me to repeat myself!
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I got this scar one night when my ex-girlfriend went a little crazy and stabbed me twice in the arm. But it’s all good, we’re still friends! D’Andro heat.
This scar reminds me of the fragility of the human body and a near-fatal South African motorcycle accident which I still today cannot remember. Marcel Mueller
Landscapers Words by Colin Throness Illustrations by Corri-Lynn Tetz Camille turns away from the house and takes a haul from his one-hit pipe disguised as a cigarette. He inhales deeply, squints his eyes. Offers it to me and I accept. One hit won’t get me too messed up, although my tolerance since I moved to Montréal from Vancouver has weakened considerably. Camille is back to work before I’m finished. He’s built similar to me, a little shorter, more wiry. He walks slowly alongside the wall; holds his shoulders back, left one floating slightly higher than the right. He looks at the wall from different angles; tilts his head slightly, plotting his next move. “Man, I love smoking pot with this kind of work,” he looks at me and smiles. His French accent is subtle. “It really helps me to get creative,” he adds. I nod. “I like it too, as long as I don’t overdo it,” I say, knowing I’ve made that statement many times before. I follow it up with another verse: “I think it helps me find an inner monologue. A small shift in perspective to absorb the work in different ways. Almost makes it more challenging – more exciting in a way.” What I don’t say is the real reason I smoke pot at work is because I’d rather be somewhere else.
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ing a “lawnboy” in the summers. It was more enjoyable than it had been before. It felt more like I was working towards something. The end of my career as a labourer was in sight. I would zip around the lawns, earplugs in, whipper snipper held effortlessly at my side, red socks pulled up to my knees; I was a superhero. I’d let my mind wander into the stories I was working on. Line after line behind the mower, I’d revel at the endless landscape of my imagination and the freedom I had to explore it. Eventually the appeal wore off. I had finished my second degree and was starting to feel trapped again. Smoking pot on the job became a prison and no longer a novelty. I had to quit the West Coast. Leave the lawnboy behind. Make my move. “I guess I can’t avoid this front section any longer,” says Camille, reaching for the hammer and chisel. “Hey look, this one’s Africa.” He picks up the long slab of stone; flips it around and starts hammering away. Rock chips fly in every direction. His fingers are dusty and grey with the work. He’s a part of the stone. Part of this wall.
Camille looks at me, smiles again. “Yeah, exactly, man. So true.” His eyes return to the wall, scanning it slowly from one end to the other.
I join Camille beside the wall as he places the chiseled piece. Pick up the scraps, throw them towards the discard pile. We take a moment to look at the stone sitting there in its new home.
I used to do a different kind of landscaping. Mowed lawns on and off for ten years. It was a good summer job; paid well. After my first seven seasons and a long degree in English Lit, I tried to put landscaping behind me. Found work serving and bartending. That industry wore on me too. Four years ago, around the time I started writing, I went back to be-
We spend a lot of time staring, looking for the next shape, admiring our work. Or often – in my case – doubting it. The wall is made of long, heavy slabs that bleed an orangey rust colour. It slopes gently away from the house and then dives sharply near the front walkway, the part we’ve been avoiding. We use a long taut string as our guide and every
stone laid is carefully leveled. We often talk about how beautifully straight the line of the wall is even though the individual pieces aren’t perfect. The thin gaps and fissures bend and bow betraying the wall’s integrity. You almost have to squint your eyes to see that it’s true. But it is true. At least for now. This is my first rock wall. I follow Camille’s lead. He places the façade pieces. I fill in the empty spaces behind that won’t be visible, but are nonetheless crucial to the structure. I secure the filler pieces with cement because they rarely sit perfectly. I take my time. Don’t trust the cement yet. I imagine the wall a year from now, crumbling in sections, spilling out into the driveway. I look to the house again to see if I can catch a glimpse of our patrons watching us as we sneak tokes off the one-hitter, while we stand and stare at the wall for minutes on end, while we build the wall that I don’t believe in yet. I have to learn to trust the cement. And to trust Camille. He knows and loves this work. Takes pride in his wall. We’ve been taking pictures of it for his portfolio. This is his career – landscape architecture. He’s nearly finished his degree. Like me, it’s his second undergrad. Camille goes to the palettes of rock and starts his search for the next piece of the puzzle. I leave him to it and wheel the wheelbarrow over to the bags of cement mix. Making cement is a lot like making dough. You need just the right consistency: not too
thick, not too soupy. I’m getting better at eyeing it. I empty the bag into the wheelbarrow; turn the hose on; watch the water pool around the small mountain of dry powder. Take the shovel and turn it over and over again until it’s close to homogenous. Add more water and repeat. It’s a good arm workout. I like the rhythm. Hard to find at first: I stabilize the wheelbarrow with my legs and then bend down close; hold the shovel wide for more control; then I turn and turn until my arms are too tired to continue. I’ve gotten into the habit of saying the same thing over and over again in my mind while I mix it: “Ça se mange, le beton? Ça se mange, le beton?” Can you eat cement? Can you eat cement? Sweat pours down my cheeks and my shirt sticks to my chest and back. I feel tough. I feel hard. A labourer. Perhaps for life. Landscaping work seems to follow me around. This job found me. I was out of money, couldn’t say no; unfortunately, writing work doesn’t fall out of trees. At least I won’t be humping a lawnmower all summer. I’ll learn new things. How to build a lawn. How to plant a garden. How to make a rock wall. Stone by stone. I wheel the cement over to Camille and ask him if the stones he’s laid are there to stay. He tells me they are. He looks at them as if to make sure, just a hint of doubt in his eyes. Or maybe just in mine.
Trapped When I made these photos, it was just because I felt sorry for the plants. I was at work on a Saturday and I thought about how sad it must be to be here all the time. ~ Alexi Hobbs
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'Trapped' photo series by Alexi Hobbs 1. 2. & 4. Monstera Deliciosa 3. Dracaena Cincta alexihobbs.com
Rosemary · Helps improve memory and can stave off Alzheimers · Good for upset stomachs, digestive disorders and headaches
Lemon · Blood purifier, good for the liver,
Cayenne Kind of a wonder drug
helps the body eliminate toxins
· Natural antiseptic (use on cuts)
· Good for digestion, circulation and the heart
· Helps boost energy levels
· Boosts liver functions
Drink lemon in water every morning to help cleanse the body.
· Good for colds and sore throats
· Improves hair quality and can help ward off baldness
Add rosemary to your cooking (great with lamb), throw some in the bath, and start washing your hair with rosemary-infused water.
Eucalyptus oil from Australia · Disinfectant and insect repellent · Helps with respiratory problems including asthma (it helped me!) The water-hungry plants are used in marshy malaria-plagued areas to help drain the soil and stop the breed of mosquitoes.
Natural Remedies words by hannah byrne photo by carla warrilow
Honey · Boosts energy and improves ath-
Day-to-day survival can be hard. Who has time to eat and sleep properly in these days of t he i nter net a nd time travel? Here are a few natural remedies to keep your little engine running. Get your health on!
· Apply to cuts and burns – acts as
· Helps repel insects, fight acne, lower cholesterol and blood pressure
an inflammatory agent and prevents infection
· Potent antibiotic, effective in fighting bacteria, fungi, and viruses
· Hangover cure speeds up oxida-
· Has anti-carcinogenic properties
letic performance
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tion of alcohol
· Helps you sleep – try milk and honey before bed
Garlic Your one-piece survival kit
“A nickel will get you on the subway, but garlic will get you a seat.”
COMING TO NORTH AMERICA OCTOBER '09 www.pistolsatdawn.com.au
MTL SURVIVAL GUIDE How to survive is anyone’s guess but we tried to get a grip and gathered some clues for the everyday stuff. From finding the best spots open 24 hours to saving dosh at the city’s cheapest haunts to getting your costume sorted once Halloween rolls around again. Let this be your SURVIVAL guide to MTL whether you are new here or an old hand just trying to make it from one day to the next. All words and research by Sara McCulloch
banquise sunday 3pm
CHEZ claudette wednesday 10pm
rapido monday 2am
Open 24 Hours Words by Sara McCulloch Photos by shayl prisk The love-it-or-hate-it metro system in this city seems to have fronted a new trend: all-night hangouts in Montréal are dwindling everywhere. First the small dépanneurs, then bowling alleys, and now diners “only open until six.” Apparently night-crawling is becoming limited to an “almost 24-hour” timeline. How sad. We did our best to get together a list of places open late if not all night, for the partiers and insomniacs among us. Here goes:
24/7 Chez Claudette · 351 Laurier E Out late and need a snack? Chez Claudette serves up many choices: burgers, hot dogs, poutine, clubs, and “guédilles.” Also serves many vegetarian options. Supermarché Quatre Frères · 3701 St.-Laurent Stroll the isles for artichokes and melons at three in the morning. Really, the cashier isn’t judging you at all...
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Battlenet 24 · Various locations When your internet decides to stop working the night before your paper is due... Café Noir · 440 Mont-Royal E & 3685 St. Laurent Wi-Fi, coffee, pizzas and a salad bar, this is the pit stop before your night bus back to suburbia. Pharmaprix · 5122 Côte-des-Neiges Even doctors and nurses will tell you that this is the only Pharmaprix open 24 hours – so go pick up that much needed prescription! It is also the nearest to the main hospitals... Fit For Life · 7503 St.-Laurent · fitforlifegym.ca Midterm stress and eating literally weighing you down? Well Fit for Life gym is open all day and all night long. Loads of space and equipment - no more excuses! Memberships available for all times of the day, including your more productive times, day or night.
Almost 24/7
Rapido · 4494 St.-Denis For some goshdarn swell times: a retro-styled setting for a late night feast. Gee golly! This Italian-based eatery also serves up Greek food.
Blanche Neige · 5737 Côte-des-Neiges Sunday to Thursday: 6:30AM to 3 AM Friday and Saturday: 24 hours
Banquise · 994 Rachel E If you are in need of a breakfast for champions, try the “T-Rex”: a poutine filled with various meats, on top of the usual gravy and cheese.
Restaurant Salonica · 5261 St. Denis A quiet diner far away from the hoards of crowds you just danced with, but “only open until six in the morning.”
Fairmount Bagels · 74 Fairmount W Pick up some oven-fresh bagels or matzah any hour of the day or night.
Décarie Hot Dog · 953 Décarie This stand stays open from 5:30am to 1am and boasts freshly peeled and cut potatoes for their $1.75 fries, $3 cheeseburgers, and $1.25 hotdogs. All prices have tax included.
Cheap, Cheap, Cheap Words by Sara McCulloch Illustration by Aimée van Drimmelen Moving to a new city means changes, but hopefully not too many charges. After you have paid your rent, holding onto the tiny leftover crumb that is your savings account need not be so pinching and painful. We compiled this list of awesome cheap spots across the city to help you make every dollar stretch further.
Blanche Neige · 5737 Côte-des-Neiges It’s no wonder customers must be reminded that refills and jam are not included: a $1.99 breakfast consists of two eggs, one meat side (bacon, ham, or sausage), toast, home fries, and one cup of coffee! Try the booth under the Snow White mural. Juke boxes at every table? That’s included. Malhi Sweets · 880 Jarry W For authentic Indian cuisine with vegetarian and non-vegetarian options, Malhi Sweets is your destination. Owner Malhi could barely narrow down favorites from his extensive selection of treats. Here you can order starters, which include vegetable samosas ($1.50), vegetable pakora ($ 2.50) and lentil soup ($2.00) along with an Indian draft. Le Clafouti · 2122 Drummond Tucked underneath the green awning is a garden of fresh sandwiches and salads. Your choice of a small egg salad sandwich ($3.20) or large version ($5.50), and a large salad for ($2.75). Taxes are included, you can mix/stack different salads within the same container, and everything is made fresh daily. Bofinger Barbeque Smokehouse · 5667 Sherbrooke W The meat is slow roasted over charcoal from 4 to 24 hours, then glazed in a house BBQ sauce over the grill. If this doesn’t make you salivate then maybe your choice of sauce and side with the meat will? $7 for the lot and an endless supply of napkins for your saucy fingers. Le Zigoto · 5731 Parc · lezigotocafe.blogspot.com With organic, free trade lattés for $2.60, Le Zigoto is also trying to infuse local, fresh ingredients into their menu: “Any fresher, and you’d have to hunt for them!” says coowner Laurence. This young space is flourishing into a small venue hosting vernissages, poetry readings, and local shows.
Pâtisserie Kouign Amann · 322 Mont-Royal E Located in a fresh, colorful space, Aurore from the bakery explains, “We make everything here with love.” You can try their popular “Kouign Amann” or their spinach quiche ($2.45) and fresh juice ($1.95). Take your meal while everything bakes in full view before you. Dragon Beard Candy · 52 De la Gauchetière W Spend four dollars, “come back in exactly five to seven minutes” and you will have a huge paper bag filled with fresh pressed waffles (they call them ‘egg balls’!). Yeh! · 3804 St.-Laurent A self-serve yogurt stand that does not charge for toppings, but for how much your personalized concoction weighs: at 48 cents an ounce, mix some strawberry cheesecake with Captain Crunch. Owners Grace and JeanDaniel used their design backgrounds to model a concept easy on the tastebuds, eyes, and wallet. Buanderie Royal Plus · 946 Décarie “Come by foot, car, métro, or bus - the price is right” says the sign, and at one dollar for any laundry load, this has to be one of the cheapest spots in town! Saco · 4895 St.-Laurent A hairstyling academy originally based in London, Saco offers haircuts from diligent pupils for $11. A cut from graduate students (“Coiffeur junior”) starts at $35 and increases from then on until you are seated with the Maître coiffeur (prices vary). Clothing Swaps A great way to not only refresh a wardrobe, but to meet people – that is if you aren’t all wrestling over the same sweater. Shops and neighbours hold swap meets anywhere, and the rules are just as diverse: pay a small fee or donate a bag of your oldies. Keep an eye out for flyers and postings in universities, bookstores and cafes across the city to clue in to grass-roots swap-meets. Dollar Cinéma · 6900 Décarie · dollarcinema.ca “Every movie comes here,” repeats owner Bernie Gurberg. With quality projectors from the old Odion Cinema, the only difference is you pay $2, not $10. This is Gurberg’s way of helping others – especially families. If you prefer a different film era, step into the Living Room to relive The Blob.
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Halloween Costumes 101 Words by Sara McCulloch Photo by IMogen eveson The process of hunting down these costume havens was a struggle straight out of a horror film: heavy rain, crackling thunder, electric-blue lightening, and hailstones. Missing from the plot line: haunted mansion, ghouls, and a maniacal monologue from Vincent Price. We soldiered on and put together a short-list to help you track down the perfect costume for your Halloween parties this year.
Moulin Rose Boutique · 1119 StE.-Catherine E › price starting at $70 Located next to Cabaret Mado and filled with bold masks and bright wigs, this store provides an endless supply of costuming inspiration! Image In · 34 Mont-Royal E › price $3 to $50 Every possible accessory stored under the same roof, you can navigate through temporary tattoos, Marie Antoinette wigs, or just goofy sunglasses. More is more is more. Quiz · Place Alexis-Nihon, 1500 Atwater (Métro level) › price $50 to $150 (for full costume) This small store boasts big costumes selected from Halloween trade shows. Stop by the windows in October to view the slideshow of costumes and pick up your Rocky Horror tickets. Johnny Brown / La Maison du Costume · 7300 Hutchison
› rental $20 to $200 › purchase $30 to $250 From fantastical costumes to delicate tutus from the dance section of this store – the possibilities are endless. Introverts swing out of their shells, while grown men find themselves fitted into tiny dance ensembles. Good times!
Folles Alliées · 365 Mont-Royal E › rental $40 to $100 Storeowner Isabelle has searched far and wide for her vintage pieces and the story also holds true for her costumes: from haute couture to theatre pieces collected over many years, with special interest in the small embellishments and details. Isabelle also stores a wide variety of accessories and Victorian ensembles. Joseph Ponton Costumes · 480 St-François-Xavier
› rental $35 to $200 › purchase $70 to $3000 From as far back as 1865 this company has mastered the art of the thriller costume: with ghoulish masks hanging everywhere to hand-tailoring on your rental – this is the destination for lost souls…in the costume department, that is...
Eva B · 2013 St.-Laurent › rental starting at $35 A favourite for fripperie, Eva B also indulges an endless imagination when it comes to Halloween: you can mix and match from different costumes, add some vintage, and engage in some folly. Warning: customers usually return their creations after dominating costume contests the night before. Linda Morisset · 2063 St.-Denis
Malabar · 5121 ave du Parc
› rental or purchase: $65 to $85 An established costumier since 1905, this shop houses costumes old and new, a multitude of accessories, and a love for dressing up – whatever the occasion.
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Atelier › prices vary While her clothing designs are reserved for corporate clients, higher budgets, and Cirque de Soleil, Linda Morisset’s creativity can inspire many who choose to construct their own costumes. Her specialty is air foam: she has built a wearable couch complete with ringing phone, and confectioned small motorcycle hats for babies.
SNAP! channels our inner Stevie Nicks and goes earthy and mystical.
In this issue we greet the season change with a witchcraft themed accessories series, an essay on death imagery in fashion, and urban-warrior inspired editiorials. Maude Tremblay captures the Indian summer and the duo MarquisMontes go tribal in the name of SURVIVAL. xx Pascale
the voodoo you do photoS by marilis cardinal styling by pascale georgiev special thanks to dane gerous
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p45/ necklace: arielle de pinto p46/ clockwise from top left/ charm necklace: arielle de pinto; perfume bottle pendant: vintage; necklace: les Êtoffes p47/ star of david necklace: vintage P48/ necklace: arielle de pinto; belt: les Êtoffes, rose pendant: stylist’s own, charm: vintage
Fashion And Fatal Appeal Words By JESSICA GOLDFOND photo by marilis cardinal It seems over the past few seasons that fashion has taken a darker turn. It could be a reaction to the global economic crisis or maybe that we are just tired of looking so refined. Shredded, torn, and deconstructed are all the latest ways we define chic. It seems hardly a day goes by that one style site or streetwear blog isn’t highlighting a girl whose clothes have seen better days. Femininity has been balanced with hard accents creating an edgy appeal that would make even The Road Warrior proud. The fashion industry has decided to stop taking itself so seriously and relax a bit, even indulging in trends that once seemed taboo. We have become a casual culture not only in what we wear, but how we act, what we discuss, and our relationships with one another. It is no surprise that nothing is off limits, even death. The recent infatuation with vampire culture has only enhanced and romanticized this macabre lifestyle. It is no longer solely associated with Nosferatu or Lestat, but as part of mainstream society. Black is synonymous with death, and is at the same time the epitome of sophistication. Is it a desire to express some cynicism through our wardrobe, or perhaps that we enjoy taking a risk and vamping it up? The fashion industry’s continued fascination with such motifs makes for some intriguing choices by fashion mavens everywhere; from the gothic lolitas of Japan to the hipsters of Brooklyn. It is surely a statement for anyone who plays a little harder with their wardrobe and pulls out tough, macabre looks. However for some designers this isn’t merely a look, it is a major part of their brand appeal and aesthetic. Alexander McQueen and Rick Owens have both referenced these ideas time and time again. Many of McQueen’s theatrical collections often paint a twisted view of fashion through his choice of models, make-up, clothing and narrative. Like Rick Owens, McQueen doesn’t need to stamp his clothes with a skull and crossbones for you to understand his influ-
ences. These clothes are coveted by women who take no prisoners and aren’t afraid to be themselves. If you have ever seen a Rick Owens runway show then you would understand why he is the ideal designer for a post-apocalyptic generation. Monochromatic, hairless and leather are three things that come to mind when looking at his collection each season. He designs for the warrior in all of us with body conscious layering that walks a fine line between masculine and feminine. It is life’s grey area that has become popular nowadays. Ever since Yves Saint Laurent debuted his ‘Le Smoking Suit’ for women in 1966, menswear has become a recurring theme on women’s runways each season. Forty years on we still flirt with this concept, but as tomboys or bikers or warriors. Androgyny enables any generation of designers to embrace the darker side of fashion and not be confined to the world of optimistic floral patterns and matching skirt suits. This movement shifted what was acceptable for women to wear and created a new definition of sex appeal. It’s exciting to witness the domino effect this shift has caused over the past few decades, as fashion became more about expressing your individual style and yourself. We are a generation of people who have been liberated from the social conventions that once plagued our fashion culture and have embraced this liberty both in what we wear and how we act. This new ‘uniform’ is empowering, expressive, edgy, experimental and sexy. As we have seen on celebrities and fashionistas alike, this kind of style isn’t all about doom and gloom. Dabbling in macabre references and playing with norms only exudes a sense of confidence, stability, and style. From blood red lips to perfectly destroyed outfits, it’s not about what wearing black means, but about incorporating recognized symbols into your personal wardrobe and then making them your own.
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Photos by Maude Tremblay Creative direction and Styling by Pascale Georgiev Hair + Make Up by Braydon Nelson for Orbite Model Iris Campo
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P51/ camisole and wrap: vintage; leggings: topshop; neckpiece: stylist’s own P52/ dress: vero moda; necklace: vintage; feather clip: h&m; headpiece: urban outfitters
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P54/ skirt (worn as dress): dane gerous; boots: minnetonka; necklace and headpiece: customized by stylist P55/ tshirt: urban outfitters; tunic: only; boots: minnetonka; necklaces: arielle de pinto; headpiece: customized by stylist P57/ camisole: vintage; leggings: only; necklace: arielle de pinto; bangle: h&m; bag: les etoffes; headpiece: stylist’s own
desert storm PhotoS by MarquisMontes · Styling by Jeanne B. Leymonerie · Hair by Jason Williams · Make-up by Jennifer Dionne Models: Vanessa Pilon, Nicolas Bélec and Orphée the dog
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P59/ on her: dress and leggings: french connection; jewelry: aqua skye P60/ on her, dress: french connection; boots: models own; jewelry: aqua skye / on him, coat and hood: simons; t-shirt: urban outfitters; pants: un monde; jewelry: aqua skye P62/ on her, top: french connection; vest and shoes: olam; leggings: betsey johnson, jewelry: aqua skye / on him, t-shirt: urban outfitters; pants, un monde; jewelry: aqua skye
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AFRICA In this issue we chose to explore the majestic and scarred continent that is Africa. As troubled and torn as she is, she remains striking, beautiful and rich with culture and history. Four of our contributors touch on Africa through travel essays, interviews, stories and photos and SNAP! intern Carla Warrilow helps us discover some African culture in MontrĂŠal through a neighbourhood, restaurants, and event guide.
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THE END OF THE MURSI? Words and photo by Marcel Mueller She stares at me with such sadness and pain in her eyes. A small infant dangling from her back, held lightly with a dusty cotton cloth. With a click of her hips she swings her body backwards so that the child’s eyes pierce me. I stand still. She extends her son’s hand to me. His scarred forearm and sundried fingers immediately bring me back to her harsh African reality, a continent which evades me on each return. Without moving, I look at her intensely. I smile. Moving toward me, she abruptly punches me to the stomach while spitting words demanding me to photograph her. She screams the words ‘’Birr, Birr,’’ the local Ethiopian currency. I back up. Cornered between her aggression and the horizon, I feel another presence behind me. Her voice escalates, becoming stringent and enraged, almost deafening. I turn and quickly spot three Mursi women circling me. With ferocious and cold faces, they also insist for me to capture their portraits. Still smiling, delicately and diplomatically, I try to dodge between the last of these women toward an Acacia tree, something that might shade me from the torrent midday sun and its suffocating heat. My maneuver fails. I find myself now face to face with one of them, as she pushes me, screaming and clutching my arm. She grips the hand which holds my camera and points it directly to her face. Taking a few steps backwards, pushing aside the women in my path, I frame and click with precision. The clichés are already of the past and despite digital technology, this tribe woman knows she has posed for more than one image. The negotiation starts and her price increases exponentially. Delicately I hand over a few Birr with one hand as I sweep away the other Mursi with the other, despite their screaming and pushing. I finally isolate myself behind the Acacia and catch my breath.
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These are the Mursi, indigenous nomads of Omotic tongue bordering Sudan and the north of Kenya. The town is Jinka, a young Abyssinian village which serves as a gateway into Mago National Park
where I spent a long hot and humid night infested with mosquitoes before finally reaching the land of the Mursi. Only a few years ago the Mursi, Kalashnikovstrapped, swept the Omo Valley in search of markets to barter their merchandise (shells, honey, skins and guns) for food. They were at the time unconscious of the effects of modernization, having had very little contact with outsiders. When I returned seven years later, I was struck by how the Mursi had become one of the last tribes to be infected by the unfortunate spell of foreign tourism. It is a catastrophe to witness the decimation of this tribe, subdued by local and international tour-operators as well as independent travelers. I am quite conscious of my personal contribution just by simply returning seven years later. Yet a big part of the problem relates to the ridiculous sums of foreign currency that now change hands in these communities and the way this affects the indigenous groups socially and materially. When the Mursi men physically wrestle money from each other, abandon their families in search of the tej, a local alcohol, and become destructive and disconnected from their social groups, the reality becomes more than just disheartening. Before this circus type of tourism appeared, the Mursi lived off the earth they traversed and layed on the skins of their hunt. Today, with construction of villages and a sedentary life, and by permitting tourists to visit, their traditional nomadic life has been lost. Unfortunately, through lack of awareness and commercial exploitation we are witnessing the decimation of one of the most intriguing tribes on our planet. The heat and the dryness of the escarpment that the Mursi live on penetrates me. Two warriors intercept and oblige me to take their picture. I avoid them. I leave this place with sadness but I know I cannot escape their reality. I look back through the dust that blurs the two silhouettes, now far behind.
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Music Across Africa
Katie Kotler interviews Frank Gossner, a music buff who lived for three years in a number of West African countries.
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Frank Gossner, aka DJ Frank, is wearing a shirt from the Ivory Coast, showing me his tattoos and telling me how despite being German, he does not like soccer. He also doesn’t really like New York, where he currently lives, finding it ‘too over-regulated and boring.’ Frank prefers the New York of the nineties, when he hosted a French soft-porn themed night at Bar 16, which ran for four years. His wife, then, was one of his go-go dancers. Today, she works for the German Mission. That’s how Frank ended up spending 2005-2008 living in West Africa and collecting records. Right now he hosts the Voodoo Funk blog, many nights throughout New York and a radio show on WFMU. He is also the subject of the upcoming documentary, ‘Take Me Away Fast.’
What are the kids listening to now in West Africa? “Countries like Benin and Guinea listen to a lot of old music, while Ghana and Sierra Leone are more into new stuff.” Do they sample it in hip-hop? “Ghana does, Nigeria just started. Mostly modern pop music there is not sample-based, but cheap electronic, desktop music. Very horrible stuff. There are some really cool bands like H20, though, from Benin, who use real instruments.” How’s the music industry in general? Do people use MySpace? “There are a few, but only those who have some status in the West. There are no real local acts that I know of. It’s very hard for young musicians. All the problems that the West has, such as piracy, are much worse there.” What kind of clubs did you go to when you were in Africa? “I mostly went to the bars where they had live bands. I went to a few discotheques, but it’s very tough. I was always traveling by myself. You attract so much unwanted attention and get harassed by girls. Nobody takes no for an answer. Ghana was the most aggressive. In Benin, you definitely can go out without being bothered. I’ve seen some dark stuff, as far as the ex-pat community goes. You have lots of old and ugly guys picking up cute young girls there and it doesn’t really constitute as prostitution because they engage in a relationship, but still it’s obvious that these girls are not with these guys because they have such a great character.“ What are the biggest differences between audiences in the West and those in Africa when you play this music? “Here it is easier to get young people interested in this type of music and there it’s difficult. Everybody is so oriented to western culture. They also don’t want to listen to what their parents and grandparents listened to.” How do you think the political situations in each of these countries affects their music? “Each country has their own government which is very different from every other country. Guinea was very much influenced by music from Mali, because it was part of the Malian empire. The president of Guinea, Sekou Toure, kicked out the French in ‘58 and started a government-run record label, Syliphone, which ran from the late sixties until the early eighties. Syliphone paid a lot of money for local bands to record, travel around and play. They even had bands from Ghana come and teach people how to play their instruments. Toure wanted people to feel proud of their own culture and get over the influence of colonial power. He started as a liberator and had support from all over the world. For example, (South African singer) Miriam Makeba went to Guinea to record because they had some of the best musicians. Later, Toure became a madman, completely paranoid. He ended up kill-
ing and torturing lots of intellectuals, artists, close friends and family members.” What’s the music like in Liberia? “I only have two records from there, because the Civil War was so devastating. It is the same with Sierra Leone. These records sound very high-lifey, with very little drumming, mostly guitar and singing. There’s something wrong with getting records from places that have been so destroyed. In Sierra Leone, they used to have a big radio station in Freetown, SLBS, ‘Sierra Leone Broadcasting Services.’ I did radio shows there for awhile. They had this huge house, filled with records, which the rebels burnt down during ‘Operation No Living Thing.’ There were hundreds of thousands of records, the largest in the entire African continent.” What do you think is the future of African music? “The bands who are really good don’t have much of a chance. The stuff they play on the radio is usually commercial crap. There are countries, like the Ivory Coast, for example, where they have this horrendous kind of style of music Coupé Décalé. It starts with young guys who have ties to the government or military. There is this one guy who hands out money at his gigs. The guys in the video clips pose with fancy champagne bottles, sports cars, green screens in the background...” Did you feel like they were trying to take advantage of your money? “Sometimes. You’re in a country that’s really poor and everybody is trying to make a buck. Some people are clever, or friendly about it. If you go around and somebody invites you to their house and then it turns out that they don’t have anything of interest, you still have to buy something. If you leave some money behind, then you can make them happy. Whenever I go to Benin, I always go across the villages and we have a voodoo ceremony and sacrifice chickens for good luck, so that we can buy many records. It’s always a lot of fun.” What do you think is the biggest misconception about Africa and African music? “Most people can’t believe that there were records made in Africa. Most people think that it’s just a desert, dry, unfertile, everyone’s starving and it’s super poor. It is poor, but it’s also very rich. There are lots of resources. It’s very fertile. Everything grows there. This is not just an accidental misconception. That’s the way governments want us to think. If people would know how many resources there are in West Africa, they would start to wonder, ‘Why do we have to put in so much money and yet it is still so poor?’ It’s only poor because it’s being exploited by big corporations, who go there and buy the resources for less than ten percent of the market value and pay money under the table to some government official and take off with it. It’s the same kind of model with how all of those other record dealers/collectors op-
Paying For Our Respects words by Julia Pyper erate. They buy their records for fifty cents, or a dollar and then sell them on eBay for $200, 300, 500. This is neocolonialism, which, in a way, worked pretty well for me, because I paid my people well and it was easy to convince people to sell their records to me instead of all those other guys.” So how much would you pay for a record? “That depends on from who I buy it and what sort of condition it is in. Sometimes there would be a random guy on the street who had just grabbed his grandfather’s records. I would also employ buyers who travel around Nigeria and Ghana, then they send me big packages of records. Almost every week I get like 100 records in the mail. I sort through and what I need for myself, I pay $50. And what I don’t need, I give to a record store in the city and if he doesn’t sell them in a few weeks, he puts them on Ebay and 50% of the final sales price goes to Africa. I don’t make any money from those sales. My advantage is that I get first pick. I have this one Nigerian buyer and we have so far sent him $20,000 in the past six months. He’s a wealthy man.” voodoofunk.blogspot.com
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The word “obruni” sounded so much nicer when the kids said it. No one cared that they called us “whitey,” and frankly, we liked the way our skin colour was addressed in an affectionate way. Our volunteer organization, IVHQ, abandoned 18 of us at an orphanage in rural Ghana, and the enthusiastic “obrunis” some kids would shout were one of the few things that made our presence feel justified. The orphanage administration made it clear: they didn’t care about our help – what they wanted was our money. They only wanted our money. One of the most upsetting times we heard the word “obruni” was at Emmanuelle’s funeral. The Bishop, and founder of the orphanage, kept referring to us white folk in Twi throughout the seven-hour funeral service. We finally figured out why he was talking to the congregation about the volunteers when he turned to us, narrowed his eyes, and spat in English, “It’s so hard to get foreigners to pay their respects.” And he did have a point. None of us were keen on going to the funeral, especially since half of us had been the first to find the 21-year-old Emmanuelle dead in his hospital bed. Everyone had been worried that one of our volunteers might have had malaria since she had been fainting and ‘losing it’ from all ends. We were about to take Megan to the hospital when we found out that the orphanage’s young French teacher had also fallen ill a few days prior, and that he was only getting worse. For all that the men who ran this orphanage were supposed to be good caring Christians, they didn’t seem to give a damn about Emmanuelle’s health. They also made it clear that unless we paid for all of Emmanuelle’s doctor’s fees, his transportation to the hospital, gas for their van, and lunch for the Pastor who would accompany us, they were going to keep the suffering Emmanuelle at the orphanage. As for Emmanuelle, he had been more worried about losing his teaching job than getting to a hospital, but when he started throwing up blood his anxiety turned to pure fear. That was the part that shocked and scared me most: Emmanuelle’s fear. He was a boy from Togo and had no family in Ghana. He was abandoned by his friends and employers during his time of need. He was poor and couldn’t afford shoes, let alone healthcare. And at the hospital he was diagnosed with malaria. We pooled the money we had with us and paid for Emmanuelle’s appointment with the doctor, his tests, and his IV, but when the Pastor mentioned that he might also need a blood transfusion, we volunteers literally had no cash to pay for it and no way to get more money out at the decrepit concrete hut that was their hospital. The Pastor who came with us refused to pay a cent and all he said
to us was, “You’re the obrunis, you’re supposed to pay for things, and if not, you should have stayed in Canada.” There was nothing we could do so we left Emmanuelle in the care of the hospital workers. On the way home, the Pastor bought a drink – and when he went to pay for it, we all caught a glimpse of the fat 50 cedi bills in his wallet. We returned from the hospital having found out that Megan didn’t have malaria but that clearly Emmanuelle did. Then only five hours later the same fat and ugly pastor came jogging over to us claiming that Emmanuelle had taken a turn for the worse and that the Pastor needed 50 cedi (1 cedi is equivalent to $1 CAD but goes a lot further in Ghana) for Emmanuelle’s blood transfusion. He insisted that without it Emmanuelle might die that night. Shocked and a bit confused, we decided we would pay for the treatment, but also that six of us would go to the hospital to oversee the process. Then it was the Pastor’s turn to be shocked as a group of us jammed into the orphanage van and told him to step on it. He was disgruntled that we hadn’t just given him the money, so he told us to pay for his oil change or he wasn’t driving us anywhere. He also told us that he didn’t have the contact information for the hospital that had apparently just called to let him know Emmanuelle had gotten worse. With the help of friends and family back home – and an ingenious iPhone – we finally found the hospital phone number, begged the staff to go ahead with Emmanuelle’s transfusion, and told them we would be there with the money shortly. Their reply was that they had no blood in reserve at the hospital. The rest of the hour-and-a-half ride was extremely tense; we psyched ourselves up in case we had to give blood in a rural African clinic. We thought that that would have been the worst of it. We were wrong. It was hard to tell that Emmanuelle was dead at first. I remember feeling a pulse when I touched his neck, but I soon realized it was my own heart-
beat thundering throughout my body. What made it clear was how cold Emmanuelle was. It was almost 40 degrees, and he was icy. He was also stiff although he looked almost relaxed and calm lying on his back with his hands clasped together in prayer. As I looked around the room I remember thinking that this was one of the loneliest, saddest and most painful ways for a young person to die. I thought about how scared I would have been and how helpless Emmanuelle must have felt. We were all crying and distraught, but the Pastor wasn’t surprised and upset so much as impatient. He told us to hurry up and get back in the van then stormed up to Emmanuelle’s body, slapped it on the stomach three times and said, “look, dead, let’s go!” The funeral was arranged for a week later. They asked us to pay for it. They also told us we were to pay for the embalming of the body, but we refused to do both. The way we view it, malaria didn’t kill Emmanuelle, the Pastor did. He was communicating with the doctor, he knew the severity of Emmanuelle’s symptoms and he had the means to give him a transfusion when he needed one earlier that day. He is a disgusting man. He is also a liar. Emmanuelle was stiff, and it takes four to six hours for rigour mortis to set in. It is extremely unlikely that when the Pastor asked us for the 50 cedi that Emmanuelle was still alive. One life was snuffed out far too soon, one orphanage administration has blood on their hands and one group of “obrunis” were caught up in the middle of it. The lives that do go on, however, are those of the orphans. The little kids who scream and shout and jump up and down when they see us. The kids who braid our hair and make us bracelets. The kids who write us letters and say “I love yous.” So if my African experience has taught me anything, it’s that life is delicate but it’s also tenacious. And even after us “whiteys” have gone back to our air conditioning and public healthcare, Ghanaians will continue to survive and thrive in their environment.
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Global Apartheid A story of one young family’s struggle against the Canadian government. Words by Daniel Douek Photo by Maxyme g Delisle Canada can be so much less than a wonderful, progressive, multicultural society. My good friend Allen Stack is doing his PhD in political science here at McGill. He lives on the Plateau with his wife Alima and their adorable, rambunctious twoyear-old son, Amos. Alima is pregnant with a little girl, due any day now (they’ve already decided on a name for her but are keeping it a secret until she’s born). The couple met in Burkina Faso, Alima’s homeland, where her family resides. Allen is from Pennsylvania. Since neither of them have any family in Montréal and raising two little ones is hard, they applied to the Canadian embassy in Cote d’Ivoire, neighbouring Burkina Faso, for a twomonth visa that would enable Alima’s younger sister Guiato to come join them. It would be so perfect: Alima and Guiato could spend time together, little Amos would have an auntie, and Allen could balance double fatherhood with the need to keep his work rolling. Except that the Canadian embassy in Cote d’Ivoire denied Guiato a visa. They said there wasn’t enough proof that she wouldn’t stay in Canada as an illegal immigrant. Allen got together letters from various members of the community, including a doctor’s testimony about how extended family can help to alleviate postpartum depression in new mothers, and did everything he could to appeal the decision. A few weeks later he got the embassy’s reply: no. It’s disgusting.
We discussed it. “Global apartheid,” said Allen. So true: the embassy’s decision has all the ugliness of a racial slur, but with an impersonal, bureaucratic face. Imagine if Alima (who also happens to be a naturalized U.S. citizen) hailed from Australia or Norway or Portugal, instead of West Africa. Can you picture the Canadian government denying her sister a visa to come help out the young family? Consider Allen, choosing to do his PhD at McGill over any number of American schools, and as such contributing to Canada’s prestige and value. Now consider the Canadian government notifying him that he and his family are basically second-class people. Finally, consider the Canadian government’s arrogance in assuming that a visitor from Burkina Faso would prefer to remain here – putting up with the wintry bigotry of people like themselves – instead of returning to live with her family and culture under African skies. It’s an outrage. But when Allen graduates, he and Alima will have the last laugh: they plan to move to Burkina Faso permanently. And in the meantime, they may not have any family in Canada, but they’ve got friends. And mark my words: we will babysit.
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A TASTE OF AFRICA Carla Warrilow researches some African venues and events based in Montréal. WORDS CARLA WARRILOW PHOTO BY IMOGEN EVESON
NEIGHBOURHOOD › LE PETIT MAGHREB Jean Talon East between Pie IX and St Michel is home to a thriving North African community. Named Le Petit Maghreb after the region in Africa, the neighbourhood offers an insight into the culture and traditions of Northern Africa right here in Montréal. The neighbourhood is filled with bakeries, tea shops, grocery stores and restaurants, all offering foods and products from the French-speaking countries of Northern Africa: Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. Sip a cup of tea, a drink enjoyed at all hours of the day in the Maghreb. Stop by a bakery and have a traditional pastry, like the Algeriose, an almond and lemon tart that is a staple in Algeria. Take a stroll through this small neighbourhood, relax on a sunny terrace, and enjoy the friendly people and music that will surround you on any given day.
RESTAURANTS › DJOLIBA · 4520 DU PARC This Senegalese restaurant is small and casual and sits on the corner of Mont Royal. Their specialties include Yassa, a delicious chicken stew, and their pungent ginger juice. Don’t forget to add their homemade scotch bonnet sauce!
MEKDELLA · 1222 BISHOP A popular destination for Ethiopian food lovers. Enjoy their famed yebeg key watt or the doro watt, a lamb or chicken stew made with their traditional berberé sauce.
AFRODIZIAC · 757 JEAN-TALON W A Ghanaian restaurant that has just reopened after renovations.
GRACIA AFRIKA · 3506 NOTRE DAME E A Congolese restaurant. 76/
RITES BERBERES · 4697 DE BULLION Serving traditional Algerian Bérber dishes like couscous with chicken or kabyle, a mix of lamb and spiced sausage. BYO.
LE NIL BLEU · 3706 ST.-DENIS Authentic Ethiopian food on the Plateau. Try their combo platters, the best way to sample several of their famous dishes.
AU TAROT · 500 MARIE-ANNE E This small cosy Moroccan restaurant serves dishes cooked on site by chef Nouredine Kara. Favourites include chicken with lemon and olives, briks (a combination of crepes and pastry filled with meat or vegetables) and pastilla. BYO.
KAMELA · 1225 MARIE-ANNE E A friendly and affordable Algerian restaurant serving many exotic favourites such as couscous royal served with chicken, lamb and merguez (spicy small sausage).
LE PITON DE LA FOURNAISE · 8W35 DULUTH E A one of a kind restaurant specializing in African, French, and Indian cuisines from l’île de la Réunion, a small island in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Madagascar. Seafood and curries are some of the dishes available from this award winning spot on quiet Duluth.
SOME EVENTS AND DISPLAYS › There are a couple of African events that happen in Montréal annually. One of them is the Pan-Africa International Film Festival, an African and Creole film fest that takes place in April. The much loved summer festival Nuit d’Afrique de Montréal is an African music event that happens in select venues across the city. There is also a permanent exhibit of equatorial and central African art at the Musee des Beaux Arts called “Sacred Africa II”.
Immigration And Cultural Identity How ethnic neighbourhoods help to preserve nationality. Words by Laura Kneale Illustration by Adrien Baudet
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They arrived in the middle of the winter. All six of them packed into the small 3 1/2 apartment off Pie IX where the four little boys ran around all day (unfortunately for the downstairs neighbours).
Tuesday nights at Café Campus are among her college memories. After all, it’s only a stone’s throw away from the pad she and her three sisters shared while getting their degrees in Canada. As they cruise the bars on St-Laurent, the colourful Haitian art on the walls guards their messy quarters. In Haiti, they had maids to clean up after them but here they have become responsible for all the tenants in their building. Sometimes money becomes an issue (pissing it away, it turns out, is easier than saving for groceries). Still when that happens it’s OK, they just stay in and watch movies lying all over the floor.
Only a winter later, they moved to Little Italy where they and many other Latino families were becoming the majority. As Omar would say “Latinos were having more kids than Italians. We were spreading like cockroaches.” Indeed the changes were visible everywhere, from the typical Italian cafés sandwiched between taquerias and pupuserias to the Italian-Salvadorian teenage couples that roamed the streets at night holding hands.
They have so many cousins, it’s hard to keep track. You can meet a different one at their house every time you go over. They know all the Haitian bouncers along St-Laurent and that always guarantees a good spot at Gogo’s; however, when I tell Sandy that I went to Montréal-Nord to meet with La Maison d’Haiti, she looks at me weird. “I would never go there, you’re crazy.” While there are thousands of Haitian immigrants in Montréal, these girls are the Haitians of Square St-Louis.
VISA n0 00123459 Country of origin El Salvador Arrival date 1986 Address 6630 Henri-Julien metro Beaubien
VISA no. 00993340 Country of origin Haiti Arrival date 2001 Address 3698 Laval metro Sherbrooke
VISA no. 00933405 Country of origin Algeria Arrival date 1998 Address 3445 Place Decelles apt. 8 metro Côte-des-Neiges
VISA no. 00234559 Country of origin France Arrival date 2003 Address 1590 av. Mont-Royal Est apt. 401 metro Mont-Royal
His French is good but sometimes he can’t quite remember the words he wants to say. All his friends are young, male and from Algeria, Morocco or Tunisia. They form part of a big extended family that lives, works and hangs out together all the time.
She walks down l’avenue listening to “M” on her iPod. She looks in the shop windows and thinks about the decoration of her new place. She really likes the store Saummon. They sell sea salt and when she cooks with it, she feels like she’s back at home, on the north-west coast of France. Not that she particularly misses it, she’s in Quebec because she wants to be. She came here on an internship exchange for one summer and lived right downtown near Berri-UQAM and Chez Mado. Eventually, she came back to pursue her studies at HEC and to get a good job.
Their place of choice is the corner café. When this one bans smoking pre-emptively, they all switch to the next café up Côte-des-Snow. Actually it doesn’t really matter which café they are in, you can still be sure to find them there at any moment of the day drinking espressos, allongés and smoking (or sometimes chain-smoking depending on the subject matter). More importantly, you’ll be sure to hear them talking, and I don’t mean about the weather; almost any topic can turn into a matter of utmost importance and will be duly debated at great length and with thundering intensity. Many of these guys have been here for years and yet they seldom seem to leave the neighbourhood or even the café. Quite a few of them are also waiting to get their papers soon and maybe marry. It’s not always easy but this is not something to talk about openly. On the other hand, the grilled lamb that Farhat makes is still as good as it gets.
Why she likes living here: she doesn’t give a straight answer but generally speaking, quality of life seems to stand out. It’s just not the same in France in terms of the work and leading a nice, affordable lifestyle. Anyways, it’s really not that different from home with all the European people here on the Plateau and the language being the same. It’s the best of two worlds!
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The Shoestring Artist And How He Thrives In Montréal Words by Ben Pobjoy Illustration by Dave Arnold I often refer to Montréal as the ‘Berlin of North America’ since the two cities, while different in many ways, do share some overarching similarities – their infrastructures and urban landscapes are both quite grimy and crumbling, their markets are both fairly weak and small in relation to those of their geographically closest metropolitan neighbours, they’re both cheap cities to live in (especially in relation to nearby cities), they both possess and attract many talented artists who are typically young, emerging and fighting over the same, local scraps of ‘stale bread opportunity.’ Yet both cities genuinely appreciate local arts and culture and, to a degree, have earned international reputations as unique cultural hotspots. So, how do you reconcile a landscape that’s so incongruous – made even more rocky by Montréal’s language divide? One that loves art yet doesn’t overtly possess the monetary means to support it? And, more importantly, how can you harness it? I have wrestled with these ideas since I moved to Montréal in 2007. Montréal is like any other city – it has dusty, longstanding cultural institutions that engineer the popularity of certain artists due to their sway and influence. And, hilariously, most of these institutions, whether galleries or museums, are run by fuck-wad dilettante gatekeepers who take more pleasure in being exclusionary and hoighty toighty than in standing behind and pushing local talent. One of the reasons why? Money: it comes down to marketing and taking calculated risks to ensure returns. It’s a business and making money is pretty much the bottom line. So, how do you survive? Since setting myself up here and establishing a few of my own projects and businesses, I’ve figured out a few ways around the definite drawbacks for artists in Montréal. I learned to take advantage of this city’s cheapness; to also set my sites beyond Montréal; to carve out my own alternative space and to work with pre-existing ones; to partner with fellow artists, share tools and cooperate to create the necessary means for production (for example the shared studio spaces, dark-
rooms, silk screen set ups, etc.); to create the best fucking work I can, to be innovative and to harness the internet (free is the new capture point!). It is also very helpful to create viral content based on your own work so that it can become memes, penetrate the blogosphere and small press and win endorsement, align yourselves with local thoughtleaders, barter with others and leverage your skill set (trade your best artwork to a sympathetic designer in exchange for a banging website, for instance). You can even go so far as to organize cultural events that are progressive, experiential and inclusionary, to start a movement that’s fresh and see the opportunity in every obstacle. Montréal has its cons but with hard work and the right kind of spirit, the sky is the limit.
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Parenting And The Survival Instinct Words by Lauren Jane Heller
Even if you don’t think that you’re really cut out for the whole parenting thing, there is something that kicks in when your baby is born that just makes you want to take care of her. I’ve never really been a baby person. Don’t get me wrong, I smile at toddlers when they’re being all clumsy and cute, and I defy anyone to say that they don’t feel a little gooey when looking at a picture of some chubby little munchkin grinning a toothless smile. But until I had my daughter, I had never actually spent more than a few minutes holding an infant. I’d never changed a diaper. I had no idea how to hold a little person properly, never mind clean, feed and care for one. But then it happened. My little monkey popped out of me in a great burst of fluid and momentum. And that was it. At the same time as a baby is born, so is a parent. You don’t need a manual (although the hospital does provide you with one in Quebec). You don’t really need instructions at all. Like the whales and the penguins and the polar bears, we instinctually know what to do. Amazingly enough, it’s all pretty common sense. That’s not to say that this isn’t the hardest work you will ever have done in your life. You will be on call 24 hours a day. For the first six weeks of my little monkey’s life, she didn’t particularly like being put down. This meant that unless she fell asleep on me, she would start making really pathetic mewling noises, reminiscent of tiny kittens that don’t quite have their proper voices yet. That or she would cry so hard that no sound would come out for gasping. As a result, I would hold her, or feed her, or just hang out with her on the bed or the couch. I never imagined I would watch so much TV in my life.
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Then there’s the sleep deprivation. If you think you’ve ever been more tired, think again. Exhausted from a long weekend of partying? I have zero sympathy for you. I had no idea that one could become jet lagged without flying. But the great part is, it doesn’t matter. I think, in fact, that being a
zombie helps keep you focused on the single task at hand. You don’t need enough brain power to read when all of your time and energy needs to go into caring for a ten pound bundle. And despite exhaustion due to interrupted sleep, taking care of a baby is easier than you might think. Everything is incredibly basic. Eat, sleep, poop. If a baby isn’t crying from hunger, chances are she needs a little help moving some gas bubbles through her intestines. Unfortunately she can’t say “Hey mom... need a little help here. I’ve got some terrible gas, might you help me burp?” But once you try feeding and burping her, and if she won’t stop her wailing unless you cuddle her, then maybe she just wants to be held! And if she just won’t stop crying? Get a thicker skin and accept the fact that her immature digestive system is giving her trouble; it’s not glamorous but it’s all part of life. Even if you don’t think that you’re really cut out for the whole parenting thing, there is something that kicks in when your baby is born that just makes you want to take care of her. And there are ways to avoid becoming one of those parents. You know? The ones who move to the suburbs and buy a minivan as soon as the baby bump appears. As hard as it may seem (and expensive) you really don't need a whole lot of stuff. Just patience, and lots of it. Oh right, and there is a little time for fun and games. I made up a new rule. When baby sleeps, mommy and daddy get sexy. It's a goodie – I would recommend it to all new parents. Who cares about dishes when you haven't done it in three days? Since we instituted the rule, life has become significantly more enjoyable. Even exhaustion seems a little less well, exhausting, when you're getting the requisite endorphin rush.
East End Blues words by Roberto Cialdella If the struggle makes the man, then what of the environment that breeds it? At 23, I’ve yet to move out of the family domicile in Montréal-North, the northeastern borough nestled between R.D.P., StLeonard, St-Michel and Anjou, or what many in the west may accurately refer to as the boonies. I don’t need to cite any stats for you to imagine it was never easy for me to grow up in these rough parts of town. My mother raised me as a Jehovah’s Witness, I was also gay and the only white kid in all of my elementary school years. I grew up in the throes of race relations, which hastily got me acquainted with the nuances of human nature. I don’t mean that as a negative, in fact it made me aware of my differences as opposed to everyone else’s, as well as how many of us fail to see the parallels that exist between us. But before you pat me on the back you should know that these experiences also led me into the trap much too common these days among those who struggle with being a minority: I grew up angry and bitter. While I don’t advocate riots or retaliation I can feel and understand the anger that would set off violent sparks. My problem is I’m often too confrontational myself. In some strange pseudo act of defiance, I roam the neighbourhood running errands or waiting for the bus in my bourgeois-cum-I’m-betterthan-ya’ll stance, intentionally raising flags by way of my red suede loafers and tight delavé skinnies in places where hoodies and street culture know no bounds other than their own. It’s almost like I have an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ mentality. I have found myself in the street repeatedly yelling “I have a dream!” when some guy called me a fag at a St-Leo McDonald’s. It’s an other-worldly way to live. My family is exasperated: as many people know I’ve been monikered The Gay Warrior (or G.I. Gay, depending on
my severity at any given moment). I wouldn’t be so obstreperous, would have some tact and perhaps learn how to be constructive with my anger but hey, I’m the guy who started smoking because he desperately needed change in his life. I don’t mean to capsize the gay column into a race relations digression but as the prop 8 debacle demonstrated in the U.S., racial and LGBT issues are far more intertwined than we’d like to think. Most minorities (who would know a thing or two about being marginalized) actually voted against gay rights. It is telling of human nature that the oppressed can so easily turn into the oppressor when given the chance. Hate breeds hate, a vicious cycle indeed. Tensions simmer until they come to a boil and we get angry – not unlike the Villanueva shooting and subsequent Montréal North riots, looting and vandalism. It becomes apparent that many of us who struggle with being different will at sometime be prone to confrontation. Interestingly enough it seems I am noticing more and more of my people on my side of town. And they’re, gasp, acting out! Let me tell you, when the east end shows any indication that tolerance has become la soupe du jour, a new day has come. But not so fast, so far we’ve not seen much newfound tolerance but rather a new willingness to put ourselves out there. Be it through a pair of teenage lesbians or two dudes sharing a kiss on public transit and not in the village, not downtown, but near my home. For some reason these isolated incidents fill me with such glee. It must be noted that gays are generally pacifists when it comes to tackling these issues: and so it’s by these everyday incidents that they show incendiary acts of courage and defiance. If you think I am kidding, you should walk a mile in my neighbourhood.
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Some of the designs submitted Andreas Dagman, Maxime Francout, Jeremy Dabrowski, Kirsten McCrea, Cedric Taillon, Aurelie Grand, Daniela Roessler, Marc Beauchamp, Andreas Sundgren, Chiali Tsai (clockwise from top left)
FORENSIC ART WORDS AND IMAGE BY IMOGEN EVESON
“I once read that some people study faces in a
crowd in hope of finding their predestined lover. I used to flirt with such intentions too, but that was long before I started searching instead, for faces that steal dreams.” Faces haunt me: every nuance, every angle, every shadow, every line. I slip through the world sizing up their shapes and colors and textures. At a glance I notice if eyes are wet or iced, if they’re squinty or withholding, if scars are new or smooth, if skin is oiled or abused.
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Jeanne Boylan wrote these lines in Portraits of Guilt, an account of her career as one of the world’s leading forensic artists. She would tackle each case with a psychological slant and create portraits drawn out
of witnesses’ latent memories. Her projection of the so-called Unabomber was among her high profile composite sketches; and the art is still topical today, in all its traditional and digital manifestations. An official (and dubious looking) police efit of highwayman Dick Turpin has been unveiled in England, while a Scottish university that boasts the world’s only degree course in Forensic Art has eked out the features of Arsinoe, the sister of the last Egyptian Pharaoh. Meanwhile, on these shores, Montréalbased forensic artist Victoria Lywood has produced a 3-D facial reconstruction of a Saskatchewan woman, killed over 90 years ago, in the hope she will be identified when a Discovery Channel documentary on the process is aired this fall. Talk about being good with faces.
SECRETS
SNAP!
POCKETBOOK
Editor’s Note Contributors Shayl Prisk Concept & Creative Direction Vanda Daftari Rebeka Pelaez Design Karin Demeyer Lead Photography Adrien Baudet Guest Photography Shayl Prisk Dane Coogan Writing Pascale Georgiev Styling
For this issue local boutique brand Little Burgundy approached us and asked us to suggest some of our talented contributors to collaborate on their Fall arts publication. Adrien Baudet, Maxyme G. Delisle, Robby Reis, Maude Tremblay, Meredith Erickson and Katie Kotler are some of our talented friends who were chosen to submit content for the SECRET themed issue, now available in ALDO and Little Burgundy stores all across Canada. Thanks to Catherine, Andrea and all the crew at Little Burgundy! We’ve put together this SNAP! Pocketbook with the same SECRET theme in mind. We hope you like it! SP
For the launch party of our Summer issue we baked a giant cake and then asked our guests: “ for a slice, tell us a juicy secret.” Here are some of the responses we got that night!
I have daddy issues i never pay for the bus I read my boss’ emails I like it rough I like to pick my nose I cried when I got my last haircut I’ve cheated on my boyfriend 3 times I don’t have herpes but I gave it to someone else I masturbated at work in th e bath roo m I th o u g ht about killing my mother today I cheated on the transcript that got me into my M.A. I have no hair on my upper back calf I never flush when I pee I want to win the Pulitzer Prize I slept with a manager of a gay club I had a threesome and it sucked I eat meat but say I’m vegetarian I like to kiss my cat on his lips I tagged ‘Dickchicken’ on the way here Everything I love will leave me in the end I got a nose job in Mexico I gave my cab driver a blow job because I couldn’t cover the fare I love Meg Ryan films
From the beginning the nature and limitations of street and stencil art have created a particular aesthetic and directive. The subversive element of this kind of practice and the urban subculture attached to it means that the artist will operate underground and on the fringe of the creative world- usually with an alias to protect themselves from prosecution. However today the increasing popularity of the graphic style associated with street art and block stenciling means
that brands from Coca Cola to MAC Cosmetics have been incorporating the visual characteristics (and, they hope, the urban edge) of graffiti art into their marketing concepts. Likewise the divides that once existed between street art and gallery art are narrowing, with artists like Banksy, Alex Hornest and Hamilton Yokota gathering acclaim and selling well in competitive markets like London and New York. And yet the pseudonyms stick, and the inherent political and provocative spirit of the art remains,
Dane Coogan looks at the evolution of street art pseudonyms IN STREET ART. Peru pictured here before the mural he recently completed for public art program MU. peru143.com
Bruce and RAGE5, members of graffiti crew DHS flickr.com/photos/ bruceisaretard flickr.com/photos/ rage5
blazened on streets, underpasses and all available surfaces. Bruce, a local artist working in the crew DHS explains “At first I was interested in the late night missions, sneaking about, the cloak and dagger of it all. Over time it has become more about the creativity – different styles all gelling together nicely on one wall.” While the subversive might not play as much into the dynamics of street art now that there are permits, commissions and murals built into the city’s visual identity, the practice remains embroiled in the politics. “It is this more than anything that has allowed this style of creativity to flourish. Had all of this been legal from the start there would never be big blocky characters appearing on the streets. The rapid in and out necessary in most situations has resulted in a low-fi simple form where complexity
is stripped away. You have a short amount of time to get your image up in a clear and concise manner.” Along with the process related to the subversive in street art, the use of an alias also allows an artist to develop a strategy for building a persona and a style. “My pseudonym gives me artistic freedom. When someone sees a piece signed with my alias all they can judge is the artwork itself” explains RAGE5, also a member of local crew DHS. Another local, the wunderkind Peru, is an example of a graffiti artist moving comfortably between underground and commercial work while maintaining a pseudonym and the style he established early in his career. Recently completing a fresque commisioned by MU on St. Denis south of Sherbrooke, Peru lives off the contracts he gets for public and mural art, has exhibited in galleries and
Zema and Frank Lam, the duo behind Montreal street art collective La Paria zema-ink.com franklam.net
had his illustration featured on the cover of Print Magazine for their Design Youth Culture issue. Peru is part of one of the largest street artrist collectives in Quebec, La Paria. Founded by Zema and Frank Lam over five years ago, La Paria is inspired by the social exclusion that underground movements such as skateboarders and graffiti artists have traditionally experienced. Today street artists are inclined to celebrate their status on the periphery rather than to fight against it as insurgents. The struggles of artists in the past remain rooted in the ethos of the communities that still create on the street today. Legal means to oper-
ate are now regularly sought for practical purposes and as an attempt to coexist with the values of their larger society. While contention will always be entangled within this world (indeed the majority of artists we met with for this story have had brushes with jail time), the continuation of the pseudonym as part of the code among artists may be less and less a legal caution and more a way to salute the culture of street art and the freedom alternate identities have given them in creating. As RAGE5 says “my alias has no skin color, it is not tall or short and it certainly isn’t male or female. It is just a name...or a symbol like Batman.�
Spill It Photos by Karin Demeyer Styling by Pascale Giorgiev Bags by Little Burgundy
UNSPOKEN Photos by ADRIEN BAUDET FOR LITTLE BURGUNDY