PASSAGE (FALL MAGAZINE, 2023) by The Varsity

It’s me – 22 –

A bumpy road – 10 –

Time travel on the tracks – 23 – Cowboys & growing pains – 12 –

Cultural identity – 14 –

A love letter to nostalgia –6–

Binaural beats – 26 –

Harmonizing changes – 16 –

Ghar waali monsoon – 18 –

Walking to class –8–

The surveyor – 31 –

Interchange/Exchange – 34 –

Entro-tea – 19 –

RIP Line Three – 36 –

On girls – 52 –

Cherry – 41 –

I’m 19 & I’m on fire! – 42 –

Reclaiming myself – 55 –

Miles behind for UTSC – 44 – Sleep paralysis – 58 –

Levelling up – 46 –

Getting it together! – 60 –

Letters

Article Folio

from the editors

A year ago, a friend and I walked through an abandoned railway tunnel an hour outside Thunder Bay. As the tunnel drew on, I felt a chill through my bones and my stomach tightened. The late afternoon sunlight that lit the way didn’t reach this far in, and the light from the other end — merely the size of a thimble — didn’t help me see any better. The cold, damp air smelled dank from dirt that hadn’t seen sunlight in decades. All I could do was keep my eyes fixed on that spot of light at the end of the tunnel and watch it slowly grow bigger, as the sound of my friend and my footsteps ricocheted and echoed off the tunnel’s towering stone walls. When I reached the other side, I let out a sigh. I didn’t even realize I was holding my breath. I think that’s what Passage is about — the middle part. The neverending transitions, struggle, and discomfort it took for things to turn out the way they are today. When I think of Passage, I think of the endless changes nature undergoes, the awkward emo phase 4

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we have in high school, or the often-flawed transit systems that help take us to our destination. But I also think about the warm afternoon sun touching my cheeks after I walked out of the tunnel. Going through change is hard, and I wish I could’ve been kinder to myself when I was feeling the uncomfortable and sometimes painful phases of growth. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for picking up this magazine, and I hope that after reading it, you feel more okay with still growing as well. I think about that abandoned tunnel a lot. The sensation I felt when I fixed my eyes upon that thimble of light is something I remember when I’m undergoing a significant challenge. I wish I could tell you that I’m standing at the end of the tunnel, that I’m finally feeling the sun hit my cheeks. But in many ways, I’m not. This time, however, I’ve remembered to breathe. — Alice Boyle, Magazine Editor

Passage

On August 20, 2020, I boarded a plane and flew across the continent to start university. Despite the uncertainty of the times back then, I felt nothing but excitement and anticipation. Nothing could go wrong asbecause I spent the last 18 years looking forward to this moment. I peered out the plane window, watched the southwest’s sandy, burnt orange desert floors fade into the past, and waited for the shimmering waters of Lake Ontario and deciduous trees to appear before me. In the three years since, I’ve been both the loneliest and the happiest I’ve ever been. I’ve spent my midnights afraid that the creak in my wooden floors would be my only friend, alone on the shore of Lake Ontario, staring into the ever-watching eye of the moon. On other midnights, I’ve eaten ice cream straight from the pint, surrounded by joyful laughter. I couldn’t have been more excited when Alice told me this magazine would be called Passage. This magazine encapsulates the essence of what it means to be a young person today. We are constantly moving, shifting, growing, and experiencing transformations.

Passage tells the story of transition, both within us and around us; of the times we feel stuck in the past but yearn for the future; of the places we exist within for only moments; and of the roads we take to get from point A to point B. Conveying this through visuals has sparked so much joy; bringing writers’ beautiful stories alive through illustrations and photos makes this magazine complete, so thank you to everyone who wrote, drew, designed, and photographed for this magazine. It takes a village. I don’t expect you to pour over every square inch of it like Alice and I, but still, I hope you can find something to connect to, just as we have while piecing together everything that makes a magazine complete. The process of making this magazine feels both like a dream come true and hell on earth, and even though it still doesn’t feel real to me as I write this, I hope it feels real to me by the time you read this. — Caroline Bellamy, Creative Director

Fall 2023

A love letter to nostalgia

Hippocrates said that healing is both a matter of time and opportunity

Writer: Amelia Macintosh Illustrator: Jessica Lam

s I began writing this piece, excited to tunnel my way into the research of nostalgia and fond memories, I didn’t expect tears to well in my eyes. Nostalgia is a joyful longing, painful yet beautiful. The smell of your mother’s perfume can transport you to that tight hug before your first day of elementary school; a song can haul you to the back of a school bus after winning a tournament with your team; the taste of late August blackberries can carry you home to your grandparents’ kitchen. Just the concept or explanation of this gripping emotion can send me into

feelings of hope, anger, and yearning. We have all felt it — it lives within us. For some, this is especially true as a new year begins. Many first-years are walking this campus for the very first time, searching for a sense of home and belonging that has recently been stripped away. So how do we, as burgeoning young adults, challenge the grief of leaving behind our childhood? Can nostalgia — this complex and sometimes contradictory emotion — be our safe haven? To further understand how nostalgia works, I read an article published by the American Psychological Association, where authors Erica G. Hepper and

Timothy D. Ritchie state: “The term ‘nostalgia’ derives from the Greek words nostos, meaning [a] return to one’s native land, and algos, meaning pain or suffering: literally, suffering caused by [a] longing to return home.” While home looks different for everyone, I would venture to say that one can hold nostalgia for moments and places. I would push even further and say that we have a word for 6

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nostalgia because it covers broad moments in a person’s life. I have found myself grieving the loss of childhood magic and the safety of my youth: the jitters of excitement when I knew Christmas was coming or my biggest worry

being who had a crush on who. Being foolish and young was a security I didn’t realize I had until it was gone. As I’ve grown older, I’ve watched that childhood view of the world slowly fall away. A simple sound that carries memories for me is the sound of an old wooden floor bracing under the weight of feet, along with the sound of pews cracking. It reminds me of a place that I consider to be my second home: my old high school. Weekly, the entire student body would pile into our beautiful chapel. It was more of an assembly than a church service, but I loved being surrounded by my friends and the people who truly knew me. Even on the mornings when we were tired or bored, we sang hymns and listened to that week’s

Passage

announcements. I graduated four years ago, but I miss my former second home often — it shaped so much of who I am. No matter how much I wish I could go back, I can’t. I could walk those halls and say hello to my teachers, but I will never be able to go back and be there with the exact same people at the exact same time in my life. Going back now doesn’t fit. We don’t belong to that time or to those feelings like we did before — the moment only belongs to time and memory. Throughout the last few years, I haven’t had much direction. This lack of structure had me collapsing back into the memories that I hoped would bring me comfort, only they had stopped giving me comfort because I couldn’t go back — but I also couldn’t move forward. It was like being stuck in nostalgia purgatory.

I find difficulty balancing on the fine line of nostalgia. Some days, it can be a small smile dancing on my lips as I’m reminded of my best friend’s favourite song. On other days, I could hear something, smell something, and the pain of remembering becomes almost paralyzing. For me, nostalgia is so wrapped up in the existence of the people I love and people I’ve loved. It feels like some cruel joke to have such brilliant, kind, and important people in my life and not be able to exist right alongside them all the time. Somewhere along the way, grief began to sit in the same place as nostalgia. I am curious if there is an opportunity to divorce them and instead use my gratitude for those special moments to overcome some of the uncertainty that lies in the future. I held this ache so close to my heart for so long, and now have a desire to shake it, change it, and use all that love for something good. In Janelle L. Wilson’s book Nostalgia: Sanctuary of Meaning, she says: “The experience and expression of nostalgia need not be merely an escape, nor does the past need to be viewed as static. Individuals decide — in the present — how to recall the past and, in this process, imbue the past with meaning, which has evolved over time and is relevant in the present.” She says that we have a choice: we get to decide how to look back and absorb our own history. We can practice self-compassion, and we can understand that feeling so strongly about something that no longer exists doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Wilson points out that we can have some agency in how we view our memories, and that we can actively try to find comfort and joy within them and not just sadness. Those strong feelings, that longing,

it exists as proof that overwhelming love exists. Nostalgia has been my best friend and my enemy, but I wonder if nostalgia is the core issue at all. Maybe it is the act of growing up that is painful. Perhaps to allow nostalgia to become my safe haven, I have to fling myself headfirst into gratitude. They say grief is love that has no place to go, but I think it is also a guiding path that reminds us what love really looks like. I think fading into nostalgia is only dangerous when you let yourself decide that nothing could ever make you feel that happy or loved again. If love and joy from the past have enough of a hold on you that it can bring you to your knees, who is to say you cannot find it again? What if we look at everyday life as an opportunity for nostalgia in the future? I’ve spent time observing those around me, searching for a living example that there is such a thing as a stable, comfortable existence, but I don’t know if that is what the journey of life is really supposed to be. There is beauty inside the pain. There is glory in the discomfort of being alive. It is exciting, isn’t it? It is terrible, beautiful, exhausting, and exhilarating all at once. I think nostalgia is a perfect encapsulation of what it means to live life with an open heart and a hunger for connection. It is brave to know that there is pain in growing up and deciding to be hopeful anyway. The next time nostalgia sweeps through my hair, I will stand up straighter and breathe it in. I don’t think I’ve figured out exactly how to carry the pain of it with grace, but I think I can scrape off that agonizing top layer and know that I am who I am, where I am, because of all that has come before. As I navigate it all going forward, I will share the memories when I can and keep hoping for more. A love letter to nostalgia: The playlist

Fall 2023

Walking to class

Writer: Max Zhang Visuals: Caroline Bellamy & Andrea Zhao

eelings change, but St. George stays the same. Impersonal. When I first arrived here, even until well after I started writing this piece, if I were asked to encapsulate the essence of my collegiate experience, ‘impersonal’ would have summed it up. I go to classes filled with hundreds of people who I don’t know and who don’t know me, passively listening to professors who don’t know my name and may never, crunching assignment after assignment graded by mysterious upper-years and grad students. Day in and day out, the same story persists. Soon, the filled lecture halls slowly bleed out pupils, burnt out from burning the midnight oil. 8

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What differences does it make which of the many I am? Who would care if I didn’t make this one class, or two, or any at all? I walk from lecture to lecture, as impersonal and indifferentiable to me as I am to them, unnoticed and unmissed. Departing each lecture is freeing and suffocating. Change is never comfortable — who ever really wants to leave? I filter out of the theatre, lost in the endless stream of formless others. I leave one place that doesn’t know me and head toward another that cares not whether I arrive. Tasting the fresh air is freeing, but suddenly I drown, unable to stand alone. Your presence won’t be missed. Every hour on the hour till 10 past, the

streets of campus are flooded. Backpacks and bookstore merch, orange bikes and overcast expressions. Everyone is alive and on the move, but never in the same world as you, never going to the same place. Everyone has such purpose, their own destination set on a path that you will never be a part of. Surrounded by so many people yet forever in solitude. Unable to fall over yet forced to stand alone. We wait at crosswalks, uncomfortably pressed against one another at intimate proximities with total strangers. There are stages of life that force us to take pause: unfamiliar, uncomfortable, yet unwilling to leave. Who wants to be alone again? College seemed so far away — 2023 a made-up year —

Passage

The journey for connection in an impersonal crowd

making time an irrelevant and unreal concept. The present moment seems so far, time so permanently damning. Adjustment is difficult, change tumultuous, life never constant. All that I have ever known has been left behind. I only know of four people from my entire home state at U of T: one fourth-year from my school with whom I have exchanged a dozen Instagram messages, a friend of a friend at UTSC, one mystery Ohioan I’ve never met, and myself. Lost. In my expression, I find myself a bit unsure. I am scared to dare to hope in the crowd. We march on, solemn solitary pilgrims each towards our own destination.

I don’t experience things like I used to. The changing leaves, the slow progression of time, the blow-torched crème brûlée of the colour-changing leaves, falling away with the summer haze. In the tumult, it becomes hard to process and fully live, the hum and din of life marches on, a ceaseless step into the future and an obliviousness to the present. So much has changed. These are the thoughts I have as I walk down the street, surrounded by my compatriots, most of whom I will never meet or truly know. With time that bothers me less and less. In my final days at home, my remaining friends and I visited a small liberal arts college that some of our other friends were attending. The college was in the middle of the woods, with a mere 1,800 undergraduates. It felt like a classical college from a movie. The campus was so self-contained and intimate that everyone knew each other. In the few hours we were there, there were people we must’ve walked by half a dozen times. A little part of me wondered if I would have been better off there, saying good morning and living the small-town life, far away from the rush of St. George. Oh, such different lives we live. No one can truly impart that fact of life onto you. It is a conclusion, a stage of maturity that everyone must recognize on their own. To live somewhere, at the same school, with the same 100 people your whole life, seeing only one page of the world’s story is helplessly blinding. Suddenly, the world changes so fast and you begin to feel nothing at all, comfort in the chaos. I think I’ve begun to settle in. Truthfully, it’s not too different from home; after all, we still see the same sky whether we are here, at home, or halfway across the world. As I settle into a rhythm I begin to try and accept, walking stops feeling so lonely. The world begins to anchor itself again. I’ve made some good friends here. Now it’s us lost in the lecture of shapeless faces, us emerging to bask in the fleeting sunlight from the dim auditorium, us pressing through the moshing sea of class-bound students. And as time goes on, more friends begin to emerge from the amorphous, cloudy sea of characters marching down St. George. Time heals. Every time I walk, with each class I go to, it gets easier. I begin to recognize people in my classes, remember people I look forward to

seeing, and remember people I am happy to be around. As the leaves begin to fall, campus is beautiful and as peaceful as downtown Toronto gets. Why do we have to rush? Time will always slip away — it is inevitable. Why chase it? In the chaos, among the people, unable to fall, I lose myself. I know why impersonal hurts so much. Truth is, I’ve

always known, I just don’t like it. It is difficult to carve your own path. Being surrounded by people is so much easier, having the clamping pressure and the reaffirming hand of a group validating your choices. It’s hard to walk alone. To choose whether or not you show up, whether or not you keep trying. One foot in front of the other. Remember who you are and why you are here, whatever that may be. To walk alone or to be in the crowd will always be a fact of life at some point. These days I try to enjoy these walks, to find comfort in anonymity. The colours of fall are so beautiful; why not stop and watch the time go by? Fall 2023

A bumpy road

A bumpy road Learning to drive while afraid

Writer: Yasi Faubert Photography: Albert Xie

he first time I ever sat in the driver’s seat, my mom and I were in an empty parking lot — all I did was turn the car on and off, but my hands shook the entire time. She gently asked me if I wanted to press on the pedals a little, but I couldn’t feel my legs. When I felt solid enough to move again, we switched seats, and I tried not to cry as she drove us home; she was proud of me, but I felt a sense of unfathomable dread and frustration. How was I supposed to learn to drive if something so simple nearly sent me into hysterics? By nature, I am a very anxious person, and when I sat there in that empty parking lot, I became overwhelmed. There are so many factors you have to keep track of on the road, things you can’t control, and it hit me — I could kill someone if I wasn’t careful. Normally, I’d say that driving has three parts: getting in the car, the driving part, and getting out. But when I was learning, I felt like my mind faded into the journey; I couldn’t allow myself to be present in fear of the deadly consequences.

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Of course, in the process of actually getting your license, you’re not just thrown into a car with no guidance. Ontario has a Graduated Licensing System, which is supposed to help new drivers gain experience and build up skills in low-risk environments. In general, the process

experience: think about the ride to school for field trips, taking an Uber with friends, or the mundane trip to the grocery store with your parents. The list goes on. When I’m a passenger, I forget that I’m in a car; the responsibility to get us safely from one point to another doesn’t fall on me, and the experience is one long, unbroken journey. When I started driving, however, no one with me could have that experience — there was no music, no talking, no distractions.

“Cars aren’t just a tool to let us physically move from one place to another; they’re Getting in the car thing is, I never wanted to get my driver’s a vehicle for conversation, The license, but leading up to my 16th birthday, my adventure, and community.” mom became more insistent that I at least try in its entirety could be completed in a little less than two years, with a maximum of five years before the process needs to be started over from the beginning. See, cars aren’t just a tool to let us physically move from one place to another; they’re a vehicle for conversation, adventure, and community. The time you spend in transit is an

to get my G1. She argued that it was just the practical thing to do because, even if I didn’t immediately need it, there was no harm in at least having the option to drive myself around. She was right of course, and getting started wasn’t even particularly difficult. What’s one more test to take during high school anyway? But if it were up to me, I’d have just kept putting it off forever. This obviously didn’t happen, and in 2017, I got my G1 license. Two years later, my

Passage

mom would pay for a government-approved education course, trying to set me up for success; they’d have in-class components, e-learning, and in-car lessons. The first thing I told the instructor when I got in his car was that I had an anxiety disorder and that if at any point I felt like I could put us in danger, I would pull over. He agreed, and we sat there in silence as I stared straight ahead, the car still off. With some gentle coaxing, I turned it on, and we very slowly drove around an almost empty neighbourhood. A large portion of our early lessons went like this until one day, he asked me if I was comfortable driving on a slightly busier road. I said “absolutely not, that’s terrifying,” and he seemingly dropped it and asked me to do a three-point turn. We kept talking as he guided me through different maneuvers when, eventually, he told me to turn right onto a familiar street I’d seen every morning on the way to school. I’d been tricked, duped even, as here I was on a main road! These lessons had flashes of the in-between parts of driving, of the experience I felt I couldn’t have, but they showed me it wasn’t impossible. With my instructor’s help and my mom’s support, I managed to get my G2 on my first try. The driving part This was not the case for what came next. You need to have your G2 license for at least 12 months before taking the next road test,

but with roadblocks like COVID-19 and the fact that I was in Toronto for school without regular access to a car for practice, I lost a lot of the confidence I’d built up. In contrast, my sister had always been a more confident driver and managed to get her full license with relatively no problems. She became my new companion in the car, and I became her chauffeur; we’d drive to the dog park and the pet store, places she

“I can’t control the weather, nor can I control if pedestrians will jaywalk or if other cars will be nice and let me merge — but I can learn to trust my own judgment.” loved, and I learned a lot about her the more time we spent in the car together. I didn’t feel as disconnected from what was happening. Sure, being in the car was still mostly a no-fun zone, but with a clear destination in mind, I didn’t feel as overwhelmed. Things still weren’t easy, though. The first time I drove on the freeway, a downpour hit, and I felt my heart stop, my knuckles turning white against the wheel. The lack of ideal driving conditions was one thing, but

suddenly the road was alien to me again, and I thought of the worst case scenario — that because I was driving, people would get hurt. However, we pulled into a parking lot, alive and well, and my sister gave me a few moments before we switched seats and she drove us home. Getting out Stepping out of the car that day, my sister and I talked about where we’d go for driving practice the next day, and it hit me. I’d be driving again “tomorrow,” and the thought didn’t paralyze me. I didn’t feel frustrated with what had happened; I was ready to get back behind the wheel. Annoyingly, I can’t control the weather, nor can I control if pedestrians will jaywalk or if other cars will be nice and let me merge — but I can learn to trust my own judgment. These experiences have given me a solid foundation to build on. Some of the most stressful situations I could have ever pictured in my head have already happened, and no one got hurt. In the end, it took me three years and two days to get my full G license, and I don’t think driving will ever be easy for me; I’ll always be a little bit scared. But even if the journey takes a little bit longer, I don’t have as hard of a time picturing the destination anymore. And if something crazy happens, we can talk about it while I drive us home — or I’ll make my sister drive us, we’ll see.

Fall 2023

Cowboys & growing pains

Red Dead Redemption 2 gives me the sense of control I yearn for as a young adult

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Passage

Writer: Maryvette Tolentino Visuals: Caroline Bellamy

here is this one ridiculous thing I can never grow out of: a cowboy game. And I know it sounds silly. My friends are likely laughing in utter disbelief or shock that I am declaring it so shamelessly. PS4 also loves declaring my issues — I may or may not have spent 176 in-game hours, according to my homepage. Plus, I may or may not interrupt 80 per cent of my conversations with a much-needed ramble on why Red Dead Redemption 2 is the best game ever, and I may or may not have, like an insistent pest, forced people to play it like it’s the end of the world. Nevertheless, last summer, I loaded the cowboy game again to start a new playthrough. Same plot, same characters, same ending, same choices. Yet, it was unlike when I played it the summer before this one; with the tumultuous life change of my first year of university on the horizon, the game evolved into a realm of escapism as I attempted to salvage my memories of sweet nostalgia. In my growing pains, I found solace in the world of outlaws. However, it isn’t simply a game about outlaws. The game resonates with me — it’s the idea of redeeming yourself. There’s a sombre undertone of growth, change, and inevitability. Its attractiveness is not merely from robbing banks, harassing NPCs, sheer recklessness, or drunken spurs of madness across the vastness of pioneer-era America. It is pensive, following the main character through his solitude and yearning for peace as he stands firm amidst the inevitable paradigm shift he experiences, the destruction of his life as he knew it. I quite like the meaning of redemption. So far in my transition from high school to university, I’ve always felt like I have lost control of my life. I always see myself at the epicentre of chaos, and when I play this game, I find myself back in control.

My in-game choices reap no serious repercussions because the game’s ending is definite. In real life, I used to see my decisions as timid, lacking self-conviction or driven by apathy. And in real life, there is, unfortunately, no safety net or a replay button for mistakes. Adulthood is scary. The shifting weight of responsibilities is dizzying. My first year of university felt like whiplash. We’ve all been told that this is supposed to be a universal feeling, that this is adulthood. Yet sometimes, I crawl back to my game, playing the same story and making the same decisions because I hate feeling so overwhelmed now by the weight of my choices that reap significant outcomes.

“Sometimes, I crawl back to my game, playing the same story and making the same decisions because I hate feeling so overwhelmed now by the weight of my choices that reap significant outcomes.” I used to play it because I missed that summer. I miss not needing to think so much about tomorrow that my head explodes. I miss the childish fun that I know now, in retrospect, I took for granted. Or the fact that I had the possibility of being blissfully ignorant, of indulging myself in a fantasy world of outlaws and cowboys, robbing banks and trains, and going against society. I couldn’t deal with the change and the disorientation. As I grew older, reality became more mundane with the edge of potential catastrophe in every decision I

made. Change meant I couldn’t keep resisting this passage of life with a silly cowboy game. I guess I just grieved my childhood. But then again, I like the idea of redemption. I may not be so readily prepared to head on to this new phase, but there’s always a chance of growth — the good after the madness of everything. I am probably still in an era of absolute devastation, wrecked by academia and responsibilities, but I am also grasping onto optimism. I hope that in some time, I’ll look back at this awkward adjustment phase with a laugh. I like to believe that this painfully chaotic phase of my life is temporary and that I will have finally reclaimed control in the future, whether tomorrow or next year. I’ll be like Arthur Morgan, the main character, standing unflinching at the disorienting shift of the world. There is an element of solemnity this game teaches me, as stupid as it sounds, reminding me of the power of my choices, to seek to do right — whatever that means to you and me — above all else, despite my shortcomings and mistakes. Redemption isn’t about being unscathed. The way I see it, redemption represents the strength of growth that comes at the price of vulnerability. Anyway, I am still in chapter three of Red Dead 2, my third playthrough I restarted again for fun. I’d like to remind everyone, my good pals especially, that this stupid cowboy game is undeniably excellent, unparalleled, and the cowboy game that ends all cowboy games. So, maybe I’ll never grow out of playing it. Maybe I don’t have to. Above all, I cherish it, as it reminds me of the sweetness of my growing pains, and I am thoroughly entertained by the concept of wreaking havoc in nineteenth-century America. Yet, Red Dead’s bittersweet ending is what gets me through the most: redemption.

Fall 2023

THE WRONGS

Cultural identity

Mending the split within my cultural identity Writer: Durva Patel Illustrator: Cheryl Nong

can still remember the exact moment when I cried over a movie for the first time. I was six years old when the movie Kuch Kuch Hota Hai began playing in my basement. The heartbreaking family scenes brought me to tears, despite my young age. Since then, every movie I’ve cried over has been incomparable to that momentous day when I appreciated the bright colours and dramatic emotions typical of a Bollywood movie. I long to resonate with the feelings of the movies the way I used to, but there is a mental blockade. The distance from Toronto’s snowcapped city landscape to India’s acres of farmland feels greater than just the miles written on the map. Growing up in Toronto resulted in me growing further away from the culture my parents worked hard to preserve in this foreign land. I use the word foreign because it is the word most bandied about by my family, who are still in touch with their culture. However, what is foreign to me is not Canada’s snowshoes but India’s bejewelled slippers. Though I can’t wear those slippers in the dead of winter bravely, I yearn so strongly to be in touch with my heritage that I am moved to tears. As I recall the tales of my elementary school days, I remember being the only girl in class with brown skin, which caused an immediate, unconscious rift between me and the rest of my class. My friends in the class would meticulously explain their weekend plans of frequenting ski resorts with their families. Their lunch was store-bought Lunchables, while mine was the lunch my dad would wake up early to make. In seeing these differences, I began alienating myself from my own culture to suit the cultural reality of my friends. When asked where I was from, my answer turned to Canada. If a lunch did not pass my inspection, I would not eat it. Even when I was with my parents in public, I was careful not to speak

in my mother tongue. This disconnection caused me to doubt who I was. I’ve learned that culture doesn’t have to mean hiding your face every time it is mentioned, nor should it mean running away from it when it is connected to your name. My parents had worked hard; their immigrant work ethic was just as part of my heritage as the food, music, and movies. My mom and dad tried to acclimate to the culture of Canada as best as they could, speaking the language, joining the PTA, and making the food. But mac and cheese for lunch was always filled with the sizzle of spices that brought attention to a world that was otherwise unknown in the classroom in Toronto. My parents travelled to this country to give their children a better life — a better career, marriage, and a lifetime supply of happiness. So far, their eldest daughter hasn’t an idea what to do with her life, is single, and has a slight case of anxiety. To honour my parents is to revel in their pride, but where is the line between their patriotism and mine? Being exposed to Toronto’s multiculturalism at university has helped me learn about the country I left behind. To say that U of T was, at first, a huge culture shock would be an understatement. Acclimating myself to the city environment and its people was a tumultuous experience. But, once you recognize yourself as a part of the university, you find a home far away from home. The more people you meet whose cultural disparities you resonate with, the more you recognize the pride many feel about their origins. Now, fitting in meant being able to identify with my heritage rather than condemn it.

OF THE

Beginning the journey It is said that the most dangerous time to drive is the first 15 minutes of rainfall. It feels like I am stuck in those first 15 minutes, and there is a constant risk that I will skid and

crash into an identity crisis. Being the perfect fit in a group, or finding a group that fits me, seemed to be just out of reach. I was uncomfortable wearing coconut oil in my hair in public or putting a red bindi on my forehead. I was also uncomfortable abandoning my culture on Cultures Day when I should have brought food and dressed up to prove my country still influences me. To fit into both or none of the cultures made me feel like I was playing the children’s game where you had to work the correct shape into the right peg — except in this game, I am a misshapen cloud, where there are only square pegs. Though I am now learning to love what my parents fought to save, transitioning from discomfort to acknowledgement is awkward. Though I can learn to listen to other music, cook food that my mom made, and wear clothes that aren’t found in the stores in Toronto, is my heritage all that I am? Reconciling the divide within A survey from the Pew Research Centre estimates that 60 per cent of Indians pray daily; in Canada, only 29 per cent say they pray daily. The same survey further indicates that “about nine-in-ten Indians agree with the notion that a wife must always obey her husband.” Canada saw 93 per cent of respondents placing high importance on men and women having the same rights, as opposed to India’s 72 per cent. Statistics cannot fully explain the phenomenon of my identity, but it helps to solidify my uncertainty. The values inherited by my Canadian education are bound to be separate from the values my parents were provided with. Should I abandon my views and perspectives of the world to integrate the views of my country? Should I abandon my heritage and the attitudes that it exudes? Learning who I am in terms of my culture continues to flood my brain with questions.

RITE OF PASSAGE 14

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“I’ve learned that culture doesn’t have to mean hiding your face every time it is mentioned, nor should it mean running away from it when it is connected to your name.”

I often feel flushed when my knowledge at cultural events is proven to be not enough or too much in the face of my friends. If you put two skewers on either side of a wine cork, you can balance the wine cork on a single finger without any extra effort. I am

“Should I abandon my views and perspectives of the world to integrate the views of my country?” trying to balance the two counterparts of my identity on the wine cork of my life. Though it may take years to achieve uniformity, there is beauty in choosing how to piece together my mosaic. I can listen to Lana Del Rey and Arijit Singh; I can eat my mom’s homemade food and inhale poutine; and I can cry to The Notebook but also to Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. Fall 2023

Changing harmonies

A look into transitions within bands from decades gone by Writer: Shivangi Roy Illustrator: Jishna Sunkara

hen I went from being a high school student in India to being an international student at U of T, I was terrified, to say the least. I was scared of all the new changes I would have to undergo in this new phase of my life. But through this transition, I turned to something that would help me build bonds and cherish old ones: music. That is when I began wondering: what is the role of transitions in the field of music? The majority of my music taste lies in ’70s and ’80s rock bands, so I took it upon myself to find out how they dealt with the inevitable course of life. Through this piece, I will take you down the memory lane of rock bands from decades gone by, and how transitions in their lineups and body of work impacted them like they impacted millions of listeners. THE BEATLES The journey begins with a band loved by many — the Beatles. Along with changing their original band name from ‘the Quarrymen,’ the Beatles

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were to experience other transitions. These began with the departure of their former bassist Stuart Sutcliffe in 1961, shortly after its conception, to pursue a career in art — the painting kind. That left behind the founding members: John Lennon, George Harrison, Paul McCartney, and Pete Best. However, in 1962, the Beatles’ manager decided to replace Best with Ringo Starr as their drummer, thus giving us the wellknown ‘Fab Four’. This newfound chemistry between Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starr can perhaps be deemed as the main reason for the band’s rapid rise to stardom. The band gave us timeless albums considered some of the best of all time, such as Revolver, Abbey Road, and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, my personal favourite. However, since all good things must come to an end, internal tensions within the band and its members resulted in Lennon’s exit in 1969 and then Harrison’s departure in 1970, which was the last straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back, or in this case, the beloved Beatles. All the members of this band proceeded to have critically acclaimed success in their solo careers, but their time together as the four young lads from Liverpool shall be special to thousands of fans to this day. The band, while staying authentic and true to their essence, explored various genres during their time, making an initial switch from classic rock n’ roll to more experimental, unique compositions that always leave a mark on the listeners.

PINK FLOYD Pink Floyd was known for their ability to create timeless masterpieces and were appreciated by their listeners due to their sheer commitment to pushing the boundaries of rock as a genre. The original lineup for this band included Roger Waters, Syd Barrett, Nick Mason, and Richard Wright. The four of them created waves in their initial years, with masterfully crafted compositions with a touch of whimsy, courtesy of Barrett, their lead guitarist and songwriter. Their debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, demonstrates this excellence.

“The story of Pink Floyd describes music in its purest form: spirited by the whims of experimentation.” In 1968, Barrett brought in David Gilmour on the guitar and the five of them created A Saucerful of Secrets. The album has elements of psychedelic rock and can almost be considered a transition album for the band, since shortly after its release, Barrett left the band due to mental illness. A little-known fact: during this transitory period, the band wrote for a movie soundtrack called More, which switched their music from acoustics to a more avantgarde style. Post-Barrett’s departure, the reins of the lyrics went mostly to Waters, while Gilmour

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stepped into the limelight as the lead guitarist. This lineup went on to put out one of the most popular albums of all time, 1973’s Dark Side of the Moon. Considered one of the most defining rock albums of all time, the 43 minutes of pure glory did not just introduce a new genre’s feather to their cap. It also defined the power of lyricism, as this concept album delved into madness, music industry, and their former member Barrett’s suspected diagnosis of schizophrenia. In their later years after Barrett’s departure, Wish You Were Here — a tribute to Barrett, The Wall, and The Final Cut became some of the most iconic albums the band produced. In 1985, Waters decided to part ways with the band due to creative differences, leaving behind Gilmour, Wright, and Mason to create a few albums with distinct notes of exploration and experimentation, such as Division Bell. The story of Pink Floyd describes music in its purest form: spirited by the whims of experimentation. FLEETWOOD MAC The early years of Fleetwood Mac were characterized by their blues-inspired tunes and leads’ charisma — Peter Green, Mick Fleetwood, Jeremy Spencer, and, later on, Bob Welch. Together, they created blues magic that set the tone for Fleetwood Mac. However, in 1970, due to mental health issues, Green decided to leave the band, which left a major void in the band and their fans’ hearts. While the musical style never made much of a return, the band continued to make music, with the new vocals and guitar by Welch, supported by Christine McVie. The change in the band’s lineup resulted in a shift toward a more rock-oriented theme. This was in line with the times, which may not have been fresh, but was welcomed. In a surprising and unwelcome turn of events during the band’s 1971 tour through the USA, Spencer suddenly disappeared, and later resurfaced as a religious cult member, ending his status as the second primary guitarist in the band. Just as every low has a high, the band’s high came in 1975, when Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined the band. Together, they created some of the band’s most commercially popular music. After their arrival, the band’s taste and style transitioned to a more pop, radio-friendly approach which was perhaps one of the main reasons for their most popular 1977 album which skyrocketed them into stardom: Rumours. Fleetwood Mac’s music experienced much versatility throughout

“I will take you down the memory lane of rock bands from decades gone by, and how transitions in their lineups and body of work impacted them like they impacted millions of listeners.” the years, yet they still remained in touch with their roots. All three bands went through major transitions, yet, to this day, each of them holds a fan following that rises by the day! I believe that music has the power to bring people together and create harmonies from those differences. Change is a way of life, and for many, music has been integral throughout their personal changes. My love for rock and old music has given me countless wonderful hours and memories of jamming with my dad back home, and it gave me the chance to go to my first concert — Guns N’ Roses — with one of my closest friends in Toronto. If life is a series of transitions, music is the bridge that carries us from one phase to the next. Fall 2023

Ghar waali monsoon

Ghar Waali

Monsoon Writer: Devarya Singhania Illustrator: Jishna Sunkara Today’s Toronto breeze swift — swerves Through the naked trees that you see In front of these roads you cross, and tickles fickly To disturb the pages of your diary you carry In your palm’s qualm; it will be spring soon, it will be spring soon. On puddles on pathways in ripples, this tickle Seems to awaken the absence of Madhu’s call. Fall Was lost, and only under the evergreen dilli trees was Madhu free To meet, but under these glimpses of orange, he squanders his wander To a southern city less cold. Or so he told but the paranthas of the soon mid-June Too, now, tease and sleaze with the upcoming pouring under Toronto’s grey in May. Under Raman’s umbrella on school’s broken roads they never fixed, between The lovers who hid behind jackets and sneezed under trees, June would fall in the dilliwaali monsoon. But later in Toronto now, June won’t see puddles in slumber, and will encumber not the tunes Of Kishore Kumar loved by Arundathi. Boats of paper will caper not beside Girls in dampened skirts, or around boys with torn shirts. Across the path over a ledge in a jacket you see your blonde scrawny Pal who now dethrones the company of school’s lunch-break Gopal as he In his waves instructs you to enter the coffee shop with the rustic entrance, and entrance You must yourself into a momentary eerie glee. In memories of homesick conversations he spots your nausea not. And goes on he about a waterfall that would’ve had Adyanth enthralled. During games later you’ll see him again, and he’ll bring the other five who thrive Under conversation, and so can see none other speak. Bleak with wine but fine To be bathed under squabbles for none to remember but be a talk to dismember. Rehaan bathed in mud, in his shorts, fought during kabaddi but Tejas in his laughs Punctured Rehaan’s wrath, in the bedewed dilli fields outside school; Toronto though today, Alienated, can only invite an ill-fated day, which cannot see this group play. On the exit from the coffee place the Toronto’s breeze tickles you again — And Madhu still seems to not have called. A page from the diary lost in a quarry Which you must find in self’s time as the blonde sets voyage with his legs’ buoyage Forgetting the strands of his tissue and gum on your hands. In these roads, you find not the geeli sadkein of dilli. Summer’s for home, but first, it will be spring soon.

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Entro-tea The beautiful transition between two states

Writer: Kasia Kaczmarek Visuals: Caroline Bellamy & Biew Biew Sakulwannadee

have a story to tell you. It’s a good one. It’s one about you. Let us walk into a hypothetical café. It’s a quaint wooden building, wedged between the lengthy shops of Kensington. As you pass the door, the unique scents of burned nuts and peppermint introduce themselves to you. It’s late in the afternoon, the perfect time to snack on one of the warm pastries displayed on the side, but something pulls you away. You see me, waiting for you, in the reflection of the glass. The chair squeaks slightly as you move to our table, and you uncomfortably shuffle your bag underneath yourself. Everything is too small; the table, the chair, the personal boundary — it makes you uncomfortable. New information is always a little hard to approach, I don’t blame you.

But, I ask you: are you still in the mood for tea? You lower yourself down and sit across from me. Our order is placed, and together we sit in silence. The seconds stretch into decades. Nothing could be slower. You’re tense. I notice this, and as an exercise to pass the time, I ask: since we’ve sat down, what has changed? Fine. You close your eyes and try to cool your mind. You become aware of the steady rhythm of the clock. And then you try again. The open window makes the curtains sway a little bit. Sunlight dances softly on the windowsill. You can hear the soft shuffling of the barista as she wipes the counter. But it isn’t enough. Your order clocks in, and your tea shimmers in front of you. You reach to grab it, but I’m

not done. You stop. I say: just look at the world around you. This is what we’re here for Steam rises out from the tea kettle. Touch the ceramic hollow of your cup and it will be warm. Press your fingers on the surface. Isn’t it nice? Water evaporates from the cups on the window sill. Heat emanates from your skin. All of this is energy, transferring states. Irreversibly, to the tick of time. This is what we’re here for. This is entropy. But to make sense of this word, let’s zoom out a little. In physics, thermodynamics studies how energy transfers between systems, and changes from one form of energy to the other. Fall 2023

Entro-tea

In thermodynamics, there are two important laws to remember here: 1. The energy of the universe is a constant. 2. The entropy of the universe tends to a maximum. Our life revolves around the law of the conservation of energy. When we cook, the thermal energy of the stove doesn’t dissipate into the unknown, it transfers into the food to heat it. We eat this food so that its usable energy transfers to us. In thermodynamics, entropy is known as many things: the measurable disorder or chaos of a system, the probability distribution of a system, or the arrow of time. In our case, entropy is most usefully defined as a measurement of the energy spread of a system — a system being anything from the earth’s ecosystem to the physical interactions within a teacup. Energy in the form of sunlight or a heated cup is unstable. As a result, the energy gradually transfers into its surroundings and spreads out, either by being collected and used by plants or as heat through steam. Trace heat is transferred into

the environment, and is later emitted back into the atmosphere. All systems tend to spread out over time, from low entropy to high entropy — to a maximum. I grab the pitcher of milk on the table, and I point it toward my teacup, which has the curious quality of translucency. I implore you to watch carefully, as I introduce two concentrated systems, the milk and the tea together.

I let one drop fall. The milk falls into the tea and collides with millions of water particles. The milk doesn’t shoot straight like an arrow on its way to the bottom of the cup; instead, clouds appear and they swirl lightly. They maximize their entropy and mix into equilibrium. Instead of milk and tea, you have milk tea.

I smile and I tip the pitcher to pour in more. Emerging from the patterns As a first-year student, the first few weeks of university life are enthralling. Thrust from a previous world of familiar worries, every person enters university like a drop of milk into a cup of tea. A milky stagnant state becomes a burst of fluid cloud-like coordination as particles of opportunities collide. These particles, like people and ideas, bounce or absorb into each other to elevate and create something new. It’s beautiful, but it is in an unstable state. In orientation, people come into your life and leave just as quickly, leaving nothing but a warm spark of recognition. The lucky ones spark each other into a roaring friendship. In class, a new workload awaits you. Old patterns of study rupture under the stress of water pressure and a transition is required. But as the pattern peaks and grows, elements begin swirling together. At the end of the day, the exciting pattern of a creamy milk tea must dissipate and assimilate into a silky smooth colour. Entropy tends to a maximum: in other words, it spreads out over time. This is seen in physics: if life is the beautiful pattern that comes from the transitional stage, the end is the heat death of the universe — so spread out, so mixed, that nothing is identifiable from each other. The excitement is over as the particles stabilize and reach equilibrium. A necessity for creativity This fable of science brings two sentiments to mind: trepidation and reassurance. In these first few months, the world is ours — there are friends to make, clubs to join, places to explore, and positions to claim. The beginning

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of this school year is a blurry scramble to secure the cards we will be able to play for the rest of our lives. It’s easy to reinvent yourself and join the action, but just as terrifying to be too late. It seems that after the cards are dealt, your position is secured in the minds of your peers. During the first few months of university, the world is unpredictable, impossible to foresee, confusing to navigate, stressful, and bleak. But this change is necessary. Without introductions, we’re left stagnant and unnotable. With change comes uncertainty and pain. But from it comes a necessity for creativity. So, please. Take a deep breath. Look at the whirling patterns of opportunity around you. Don’t look to the past to define you. You’re not who you were, you’re always changing. Don’t look to the future to confine you. Possibilities you aren’t aware of will be in your way.

Isn’t this time, right here, right now, beautiful? You’re discovering yourself. You put energy into your life and it transfers over. It’s an original time, the best time to be alive. I love the idea of entropy, despite the fear that the heat death of the universe is attached to it. We’re in the middle stage of total equilibrium and it’s an irreversible pattern of creation. Entropy shows us that the most beautiful things to discover are all around us. It’s okay and necessary to experiment and enter the clumsy world of chaos in search of a bigger, better future. All the experiences you have build character. Every interaction you have here will have an impact on someone’s life — even if that someone is you. Like entropy, we all follow the track of time — exercising, studying, eating, laughing, sleeping. Entropy rises, and so do we. And the best part? Rest and stability are ensured in the end. You’ve done it before. You can do it again. And, if it’s your thing, you can always have a lovely cup of milk tea to accompany you.

Fall 2023

It’s me

It’s me Writer: Benjamin Shaw Illustrator: Zoe Peddle-Stevenson When I’m alone, I’m lost in endless thought I wander and ponder through all my dreams I get to be lazy — sleep and whatnot And all is really, truly as it seems With family, I become someone new A good son to my mother and father I become self-assured and charming too Turning into him is not a bother When I go out with my friends in the night I smile and laugh but feel apprehension This person is one I tend to rewrite He’s someone that needs some reinvention Transitioning through these ‘me’s, day by day ...is quite tiring, but I think that’s okay.

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Passage

Time travel on the tracks

Breaking through cyclical motions of time Writer: Laura Li Photographer: Ashley Jeong

ITY In the idle hours before dawn, my train pulls out of Union Station. I rest my head on the window pane, ignoring the bumps and shudders that plague the carriage. Seated near the back, I have a good view of the other weary-eyed travellers on board. I half-heartedly wonder what has brought them aboard. Perhaps it’s a business trip, a family visit, or a sporadic change of scenery. For me, it’s reading week — a five-day break that typically warrants the six-hour train ride back home. Whatever the reason, we’ve all gathered here in Car Four, embarking on the five-hour train ride that lies ahead. The city rolls by through the other side of the window. Even in these early hours, the Toronto streets hum with energy. The tune it sings takes many forms: the purr of a lone car, the echo of a morning jogger, and the flicker of a streetlight making room for the waxing sun. The high-rises blur as we begin to pick up steam — a glassy skyline framed by a rosy glow. The hum of the city grows fainter by the second — I have to strain my ears to hear

it. I think I’ll miss it a bit, even if it’s only for a week. I turn away from the window and close my eyes. Outside, the train whistles, drowning out what remains of the distant and fleeting melody. If I had a superpower, it would be to stop time. These days, I feel like I’ve been strapped to this unwavering, unstoppable force. It speeds forward at a pace fast enough to give light a run for its money. My legs spin in comically large circles and kick up Looney Tunes dust clouds as I push against it. It’s going too fast. I think I’m going to vomit. I scream at it, I pull at it, I try to make it stop. Of course, it doesn’t listen. Inherently cruel and careless, it left a long trail of casualties in its wake and has no plans to stop. On and on, the train carries on. I caught up with some old friends last week. We grabbed dinner at a restaurant that a coworker of theirs had recommended, one with four dollar signs on Google Reviews and a five-syllable name I couldn’t pronounce.

From my end of the table, I watched them trade laughs about things I couldn’t quite understand. They worked corporate jobs now and bonded over the woes of billable hours and proper Slack etiquette. Each new topic seemed to launch them another light-year away from me. When they asked me how I was doing, the distance between us had grown so large that I wondered if they’d be able to hear me. I guess that didn’t matter; I didn’t have much of an answer to give, anyway. I didn’t have a ‘real’ job lined up. I wasn’t considering grad school. I was still six years into a four-year program with no foreseeable graduation date ahead. So I told them I was doing alright. I let their voices fade into the background as my eyes wandered over to the other tables. When I saw her, my heart skipped a beat. A speck of yellow in a colourless crowd, a ray of light bouncing off a sliver in her hair. The city was massive — what were the odds? Why was she in Toronto? How long did she plan on staying? Time slowed down. Should I go up and say hi? Fall 2023

Time travel on the tracks

I watched as a server approached, and as she raised her head, time went back to normal. I shook myself back to reality and cursed myself for being so foolish. Still, my eyes lingered. On and on, the train carries on. SUBURB I am pulled out of my slumber by the pins and needles tickling my legs — an unfortunate side effect that comes with budget-friendly escape fare seats. Outside, the sun has finally broken through the horizon. It now cautiously looms above, casting a timid orange light across the terrain. It illuminates the neat rows of houses that snake down the winding neighbourhood streets. We pass through the railway crossing and the road that intersects the tracks. It is dotted with neat little establishments: a barber shop, a bakery, a veterinary hospital. A faint glow trickles through the bakery window, presumably overseeing someone preparing for the day’s opening. They weren’t always there, those shops. If I close my eyes and wind back three years, I can still make out the outline of the brick house that once squatted where the barber has now staked its claim. The details of the house are now fuzzy, a grainy photo eroded by the effects of time.

The first collision had been with the bedroom. My first visit back was for the fall reading week, nearly three months after I had moved out. Stepping foot into my room, however, I found myself somewhere foreign. A large blue desk, a filing cabinet — the bed, nowhere in sight. Fresh tubes of paint littered the desk, and half-painted canvases were propped against the wall. It was no longer a bedroom, let alone mine. “We needed more office space,” my father had said with a shrug. All this time, I had been oblivious to the recklessness of time. It wasn’t until it was in full motion, bold and wild and breaking all my stuff, that I was forced to take notice. It didn’t take long for it to pick up steam. It surged forward carelessly, knocking over everything that stood in its way. On and on, the train carries on. It crashed through the neighbours’ house one night. They fled in a U-Haul. On and on, the train carries on. It flattened the playground two blocks down. They covered up the crime scene with a layer of asphalt. On and on, the train carries on. I went to pay my respects after it uprooted the grove behind my house. I sat amid the

“All this time, I had been oblivious to the recklessness of time.”

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toppled trunks and watched them bleed. In my daze, I think I asked them if they were okay. On and on, the train carries on. They never answered me. On and on, the train carries on. I went for a drive with her a few years ago. We ended up on the freeway after a few too many I’m-good-with-anything!-What-do-youwanna-dos, cruising at 100 kilometres per hour on a course charted for nowhere. She wore her hair long now and had traded her butterfly barrette for a Pandora bangle. She lived alone and went on morning runs around Queen’s Park. She worked an office job and had gotten a paper published just the other month. In other words, she was doing alright. When Bruno Mars came on, I asked her if she remembered the dance we’d done to that one song of his. She smiled politely — no answer. She talked less now, too. On and on, the train carries on. The questions waned until all that remained was a terrible silence. It hadn’t always been like this. Whenever I closed my eyes, I still saw the friendship bracelets and summer bike rides. I could still picture the pillow-forts and late-night conversations behind those cushioned walls.

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Did she remember those conversations? Did she remember anything at all? My vision had gone red. I wanted to scream at her, to pull at her hair, to make her remember something, anything. More than anything, though, I wanted to ask what went wrong. What happened over the years for us to have ended up this way? In the end, though, I didn’t ask — I knew the answer already. I knew because earlier that day when we crossed the tracks, her eyes had fluttered shut. I saw the way her hand brushed the glass, the way her lips had parted just the slightest bit, and suddenly she was a photo, a postcard, a speed bump on the freeway. Nothing was wrong. Nothing had happened. We were younger when we flew over those tracks, and we were doing alright. Now, however, she was clearing her throat. “It’s getting late.” I nodded — I knew what she really meant. We kept our eyes on the road as the car sped on. I pressed a little harder on the gas as I searched for the next exit.

COUNTRY The earth swallows the houses an hour before arrival and replaces them with an endless stretch of honey sweet cornfields. They run far beyond where my eyes can reach and sweep up against the sky. The occasional farmhouse is speckled here and there, grazing the bright crops. Yellow, blue, a touch of red. It won’t be long before they return: the cars, the streetlights, the houses, the bakeries. Yellow, blue, a touch of red. But for now, all I see are colours. I can’t stop the unstoppable force, and I can’t stop time. Sometimes, however, I have the temporary power to rewind it. The TV flickers on. The cassette whirls to life. Under the static, a grainy portrait lights up. Orange leaves, gray skies — Pink Lake is beautiful around this time of the year. A portly figure waddles into sight. Comically large rain boots and a yellow sweater. Hair cleanly chopped into a neat little bob. They brought the stroller, but she chose to waddle on. She’s unsteady on her feet, but she insists on keeping forward. “Slow down,” the voice says off-camera. She doesn’t seem to hear them. “Go get her,” it mutters. It seems she’s gone too far ahead.

Click. The screen goes blue. The recording ends here. Even so, the tape whirls on. I thought about her last night. In my memory, we were younger, seated in the back of the car on our way to our weekly hip-hop class. “You say your favourite number and it gives you good luck,” she was telling me. “See, like this.” The railway was just up ahead. She squeezed her eyes shut as we crossed the tracks, smacked a hand on the window, kicked up her feet, and screamed at the top of her lungs. “Seventy-four!” Her dad scolded her from the front seat. How was he supposed to drive with all that noise? Our eyes met and we burst into a fit of laughter. In my memory, we were doing alright. “Ladies and gentlemen, we will be arriving at Fallowfield station in approximately five minutes. Please ensure the train has come to a complete stop before leaving your seats and collecting your belongings.” The train’s pace slows as we approach the platform. Five hours later, we finally made it to our destination. A small group of onlookers flocks over, patiently waiting for our arrival. For a second, I think I catch a glimpse of yellow.

“Nothing was wrong. Nothing had happened. We were younger when we flew over those tracks, and we were doing alright.”

Fall 2023

Binaural beats

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Passage

Fall 2023

Binaural beats

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Passage

Fall 2023

Binaural beats

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The surveyor

Passage

My summer in three acts

AWN At 5:30 am, I board the streetcar for work. This is not my routine — I will only have to do it a few times this summer. At this time of day, the streetcar clientele is exclusively those sleeping on seats and construction workers, so I respect their space and stay silent. I’ve walked around the city many times at this hour, although I would have called it “night” instead of “morning” at those times in my life. Over the TTC announcements, I hear stops called out, each now an old friend of mine that I visit. Finally, I step out. I wouldn’t normally call myself a surveyor, but for this story, that’s the easiest title to describe what I do. At least, that’s what I do on this day. I certainly wouldn’t call myself a scientist — I could “do” as much science as I wanted, but taking on the title would never feel right. I am meant to conduct a survey on the roof of a building once an hour, every hour, from dawn until dusk. I’ll leave the specific details of my job out for privacy. What’s important isn’t the surveys themselves anyway — it is how I travelled there. I take the elevator to the top floor of the building. It is conveniently placed at the far end of the building. After that, I enter a concrete stairwell and go up one flight of stairs. This is the first time, so I am only slightly winded. My severe asthma makes even

the most humble of stairwells feel like Jacob’s Ladder, so I hold my breath and jog up to the top to save all of the exhaustion for after the journey is complete. After this, I have two more stairwells to climb. At this point in the day, I can maintain my motivation, and I am excited about all of the reading that I can do between surveys. Once an hour, every hour, from dawn until dusk. The day begins. My summer began just like it does

Writer: Malaika Mitra Photographers: Zeynep Poyanli & Albert Xie

Fall 2023

The Surveyor

for most people: I decided to streamline my brain, turning my reality of a full-time job and full-time school into forgotten blocks of time. I was constantly under a state of compression until I nearly burst — then decompression left me progressively more crumpled than I was when I started. In June, I moved all of my stuff into my boyfriend’s place. I was living with my boyfriend. The change passed over me gently, as I had already spent enough time at his place to qualify as living there in most senses of the term. I tend to adapt to places by rationalizing them to be places I am familiar with. Sometimes though, I look over at him at home, and it washes over me. This is my life now. This is what it will be. It’s pleasant in a way that makes me extraordinarily paranoid. I say, “Come home safely!” repeatedly until he leaves the house. I had lived with a diagnosis of OCD, short for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, but I was ambivalent toward it until I realized how many of my behaviours were out of place. Having someone to care deeply about also meant having someone to worry about, so days that were previously shaped by a strong fear of mirrors were now shaped by a strong fear of having my loved ones die. I had kept

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telling myself it was normal; that it was easier to cope with. AFTERNOON It’s 1:00 pm. I have seven or eight surveys left, and six under my belt. This is the hardest part of the day — I’ve been here for the longest time and have the longest stretch in front of

“I tend to adapt to places by rationalizing them to be places I am familiar with.” me. I begin my ascent up the indoor steps. By the top, I am out of breath and ready to quit. I pause at the outdoor staircase, unsure of how I will get to the top. As I go up, I look around, getting as full a view of the landscape as possible. I know this is a rare experience; I should store this memory like a photo in my head. Instead, I get — The view of the lake, the warm metal stair rails, white tiles, swaying grasses, steps

sticking to boots, the empty feeling in my head that I get when my brain is running on two coffees, thinking about why I want to quit science, thinking about the tops of buildings, thinking about nothing. When I took this job, I was still convincing myself that I could double major with an ecology and philosophy degree and maybe even go to graduate school for science. I think I still try to convince myself of that, which is why I’ve been involved in some kind of research position for every year of my university career. Every year, I learn beautiful, valuable things about nature, and I discover more that I can’t do when it comes to scientific research. My hands shake while pipetting; I follow protocol too much and yet I don’t follow protocol enough. The rules are exact — but to me, they seem opaque, filled with hidden inconsistencies between courses and labs, labs, and other labs. By the middle of the summer, I had accepted the death of my scientific career, choosing to destroy it entirely instead of giving it a burial. I can’t exactly say that I experienced growth. Instead, there were only spikes of pain I had plied into submission with clumsily-placed numbness. I used to be great at placing this

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numbness at exactly the right moments so that it would anesthetize the pain sufficiently. I allowed myself to become worse at this in the name of feeling my emotions, feeling all of my emotions. I accidentally coerced myself into a constant state of overwhelm. It was easy to do this — it’s always easier to bumble into wreckage than it is to fix things. At a certain point, stretching yourself too far will snap your tendons. After a few great months of my rescue inhaler doing its job, it stopped making a difference. I found myself in an hours-long asthma episode. My boyfriend wanted me to go to the hospital. I reluctantly agreed to go, on the condition that we use public transit instead of an ambulance. I can’t remember the walk there — my body was probably so shocked that I went on a walk during an asthma episode that it refused to remember the ordeal. I spent one hour in the main waiting area and three hours in a room with nearly no other people. The doctor said that my rescue inhaler seemed to be working — of course it did; it had been six hours since I had used it and an hour since the attack

stopped — and I was sent home with a clean x-ray, a pill, and no further instructions. For some things, I have no choice but to not dwell on them. This ordeal made its way straight to the brown sludge of memories. DUSK In the last hour of daylight, I make my final trek. My brain loses focus with each step, the act of climbing becoming less a feat of physical endurance and more of mental stamina. When I reach the top, the sounds of the city wash over me. Never before had they been so loud, so all-encompassing. I can hear every car honk, a grind of a construction vehicle, and a creak of metal all the way to the lake. The dying sun feels like it’s beating down on me, and I check my arms every few seconds for a sunburn. I do the survey, and then it’s done. Time stretches out into infinity, yet I have no awareness of its passage. I make my way down the steps, clutching my things more tightly to my chest than I normally do, afraid that a day’s work will leave my arms and float

into the nests of birds, jam into whatever was making the constant creaking sound, and disintegrate where the Harbourfront was a thousand years ago. When I was a teenager, I heard a teacher say that we would realize how silly our worries were when we were older. But retrospect can’t teach me how to deal with things in the moment. There are some days when I’m filled with the deep dread of someone in the last legs of their life and with nothing to show for it; there was some innate rhythm to life that I couldn’t pick up. But I know that things will change; things will always change by slips of chance that tumble you into best-case and worst-case scenarios. My ex told me that seasons change — sometimes you’re casting stones, and sometimes you’re gathering them. When I met my current boyfriend, I didn’t know which season it was, but things became so natural. My catastrophizing melted away until memories of it didn’t just feel silly but entirely foreign. I know that this will happen with what I’m feeling now. But it hasn’t happened yet. Fall 2023

Interchange/Exchange

Photographer: Arthur Dennyson Hamdani

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Fall 2023

Feature — RIP Line Three

The death of Line 3

How Scarborough’s transit crisis amplifies the government’s neglect Writer & Photographer: Arthur Dennyson Hamdani

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one, but never forgotten. RT — 1985– 2023.” This was one of many farewell messages written on paper cards and tied onto a blue railing behind Ellesmere Station — one of the six stations that made up Scarborough’s Line 3. From among the crowd, a group of six people carried an interconnected line of blue cardboard boxes to the parking lot’s centre. As they placed the boxes on the ground, people saw a miniature version of Scarborough’s iconic blue Rapid Transit (RT) line emerge. It was a rainy Wednesday afternoon. August 23, 2023 marked the end of my summer semester as I finished my last exam. Little did I know, it also marked the end of my time with the RT line. On my way home, I saw an Instagram post inviting the public to attend a memorial for the RT system later that evening, and I rushed to grab my camera and hopped onto the

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next bus to Ellesmere Station where the memorial was being held. Near the station entrance stood a volunteer from the TTC Riders — a grassroots volunteerbased organization advocating for better transit in Toronto that had planned the memorial. Customers held signs in tribute to Line 3. One read: ‘RIP SCARB RT.’ The pathway led to the east parking lot of the station, where people dressed in black gathered to mourn the death of Line 3. Attendees brought posters and signs that exclaimed their frustration and demands for better transit in Scarborough. Media cameras pointed toward an open microphone where representatives from nongovernmental organizations, student bodies, and MPPs addressed how deeply embedded Line 3 was to life in Scarborough. “[The] RT rally was… a call to action. Because we wanted to

see solutions happen to make life easier for people who use the Scarborough RT, and it’s now shut down,” said August Puranauth, a community planner with TTC Riders. As the event became a news story broadcasted to other parts of the GTA and Canada, the word “Shame!” reverberated through the air as the crowd reflected on the municipal and provincial government’s dismissive attitude towards improving transit in Scarborough. The derailment On July 24, 2023, tragedy haunted the Scarborough community when an RT train car derailed. The derailment caused minor injuries among five people with no casualties. According to a CBC article, Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) CEO Rick Leary said that loose bolts on the tracks were the cause of the derailment. After

the accident, the TTC launched a one-month investigation into the deterioration of RT infrastructure before officially ending Line 3’s life early. Initially, the TTC had planned to decommission the RT in November 2023. Line 3 had been running for 38 years, since 1985 — 13 years past its design life. The extension of its lifespan was a result of the lengthy debates and indecisions between city councillors regarding how the City should build public transit in Scarborough. As someone who lives in the heart of Scarborough, even when Line 3 was running, a normal commute to St. George took me approximately an hour and 10 minutes on a good day. I would take a bus to reach McCowan Station — the terminal of Line 3 — and ride the RT to Kennedy before transferring onto Line 2. Although rickety and loud, the RT was an important link for me to

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reach other areas of Scarborough and the GTA. In place of the departed Line 3, the TTC deployed shuttle buses starting August 26 to take residents between Scarborough Centre Station and Kennedy Station. According to the TTC website, it runs up to 70 shuttle buses per hour. Unlike RT, however, shuttle buses do not have a designated path separated from road traffic. Inevitably, commute times slowed down. Red lights, traffic congestion, and waiting times have created a loop that significantly lengthens my commute time by at least 20 minutes. With Line 3 permanently closed, residents are stuck in this loop with no other solution than to accept the circumstances of their reality. The death of Line 3 is emblematic of a bigger issue. This aging route operated far beyond its years — it had to be decommissioned at some point. However, the lack

of a concrete plan ready to be implemented after the death of Line 3 reflects a longstanding pattern of City Hall treating Scarborough with neglect. Shuttle buses: An inadequate replacement The barrage of shuttle buses is only a temporary solution while a subway extension is under construction. In place of Line 3, Metrolinx is building the Scarborough Subway Extension. This project extends Line 2 into the heart of Scarborough with three additional stops: Lawrence, Scarborough Centre, and Sheppard. According to Metrolinx, this project aims to provide “quick and seamless transit” for those travelling between Scarborough and downtown Toronto. This might sound like an ideal plan. However, according to the Metrolinx website, the project only began construction

in January 2023 and will not be ready until at least 2030. As of now, Scarborough residents face at least seven years of being forced to rely on shuttle buses. Ruan Negi, a first-year Rotman Commerce student who grew up and lives in Scarborough, believes that the disadvantages of the shuttle buses outweigh the advantages. Despite the buses arriving approximately every one to two minutes to mimic a subway system, their route is not separated from road traffic. Consequently, factors such as road congestion, traffic lights, and rush hour impact commuters. “It’s more stressful now [to] commute to St. George,” Negi says. For his 9:00 am classes, Negi has to wake up three hours before and ensure he leaves home at 7:30 am. Despite leaving an hour and a half before this class, Negi has to take more precautions than usual in case of unpredictable delays on the road. As a result, he faces the

likelihood of spending more time on the road than expected due to factors outside of his control. The 70 shuttle buses do not compensate for residents’ reduced transit access. Many transit riders live in an area that does not have a direct route to a TTC station to catch a shuttle bus. Ashley Heng, a recent UTSC graduate, takes three transit routes to get to her workplace near St. Andrew Station. Heng lives in a neighbourhood with only one bus route. When the RT was functioning, the 54 bus would take her to Lawrence East Station, where she could take Line 3 to reach Kennedy and transfer to Line 2. Without the RT, the 54 still runs, but the shuttle bus does not stop at Lawrence East Station. Rather, it stops less than an intersection away, and she has to walk the remaining distance. Commuters’ waiting times have ballooned as transit timing has Fall 2023

Feature — RIP Line Three

become more crucial. One slight delay could

“After all the was elected on July 27, 2023. In years of neglect in an interview with The Varsity, she reflected on how the fallout of the transit investments SRT derailment felt like another occurrence in a long pattern of Scarborough “The government only has faced, this is neglect. remembers us at voting time,” she said. “Diversity, equity, and really just a big We’re the number one slap in the face to inclusion. [part of the] city for [diversity]. So… transit riders in if we are needed by the government when election time comes around, Scarborough.” why aren’t we important [when

add up and significantly lengthen commute time. For Heng, it’s now more convenient for her to take a bus to Guildwood GO station and go from there on the GO train to Union Station. However, transferring to GO Transit from the TTC prompts her to pay two fares. Some could argue that driving is always an option. However, if a significant amount of people switched to driving cars, congestion and pollution in the city would only get worse. Puranauth further notes, “Many riders in Scarborough cannot afford to switch to cars.” 38

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Although the shuttle buses have been a decent solution to compensate for Line 3, the City already had tangibly better alternatives it could have put in place. “After all the years of neglect in transit investments Scarborough has faced, this is really just a big slap in the face to transit riders in Scarborough,” Puranauth added. “The forgotten land” Line 3’s death is not the only issue for Scarborough’s transit crisis. It only exposed the government’s dismissive attitude

towards the city. Scarborough is proportionately more racialized compared to the rest of the GTA. Plenty of residents migrated to this city for countless opportunities to start a new life. Still, Heng believes that most people living downtown are still unaware that Line 3 ever existed. Something that was so integral to the residents of Scarborough is but a myth in the minds of Torontonians. “I still don’t think that people understand the full extent of all of this [neglect],” they added. “We’ve been left to just figure it out as commuters. How do we put trust back into the TTC if we’re being treated like this?” said Andrea Hazell. Hazell is the MPP for Scarborough-Guildwood, who

it comes to] living with quality?” she added. Hazell has family members who depended on the RT, like her son who goes to UTSG. Together with Heng and Ruan, Hazell expressed her concern over the unexpected delays when riding the shuttle buses. She mentions that her son sometimes takes an Uber to Kennedy “because he cannot risk waiting for the bus [to] get into Kennedy.” Suddenly, being on time comes with an extra cost. Commuters are left to figure it out by themselves. It’s evident that Scarborough has been going through a transportation crisis. Unfortunately, this crisis impacts not only people’s commutes but also other parts of their lives. “Businesses want to come into Scarborough to start

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“Despite the deafening roar of the train, and the fact that it The LRT, and what could have been was operating on Scarborough residents were not doomed to live in today’s infrastructure that reality. Nearly a decade ago, was truly on its last city councillors started talking legs, Line 3 was about RT replacement plans. One of these plans was a Light Rail central to life in Transit (LRT) system. Scarborough.” The LRT could be compared to their businesses and invest. [But] we have a transportation crisis, and it’s impacting our economy,” says Hazell.

downtown Toronto’s streetcars. “The big benefit of the Light Rail plan was that it would have more stops. It would have been cheaper overall to build [than the subway.] So, really, what that means was a lot more access to transit,” Puranauth said. According to a 2013 Toronto Star article, the LRT would have cost $1.8 billion to build and spanned 10 kilometres with seven stations. The subway extension, however, cost $2.3 billion for 7.6 kilometres of track and three stations. So, what happened? Why did this plan not turn into a reality? Although the LRT would have greatly benefited Scarborough residents, Rob Ford seemed set against the concept. Under Rob Ford’s mayoralty, politicians like Ford pushed the idea that the subway system was superior to the LRT because it was entirely underground. Puranauth personally argues that this decision was not made out of concern for the future of Scarborough or for its betterment, but rather as a political decision to “[keep] transit out of traffic.” The LRT discussion was so drawn out that the City failed to implement a solution before Line 3 permanently closed. Eventually, city councillors rejected the LRT plan, contributing to a manufactured transportation crisis that the government continues to dismiss. Significantly, city councillors and government members are not the ones facing the ramifications of their decisions — transit riders are.

The problem of winter It has been about two months since the shuttle bus system completely replaced Line 3. With temperatures fluctuating this fall, more problems are on the horizon. Negi and Heng expressed concerns about commuting with shuttle buses in the winter. Negi noted that regular drivers tend to rely more on public transport in the winter due to harsher driving conditions. On top of the existing transit riders, people who usually commute by car will add to the volume of people taking the shuttle buses. Not only will each bus be more congested but the buses will inevitably drive slower due to the snow. A more crowded and slower commute is a serious issue for riders with work, school, and other commitments. Arguably, an underrated element of Line 3 is the stations themselves. Heng noted that when the RT was operational, Lawrence East Station acted as an enclosed space where commuters would wait for their next bus. Now, of the six RT stations that made up Line 3, only Scarborough Centre and Kennedy are still functioning transit stations. The other four stations are no longer open. With the current shuttle bus route, passengers get dropped off at an intersection where they will have to wait for their next bus in the cold.

the RT are embedded in road traffic. City councillors have had discussions about solutions to alleviate transit commuters’ stresses. On September 3, the TTC implemented red bus lanes, a designated path for buses with the intention of separating the bus routes from regular traffic to accelerate commute times. This path was initially set to be completed late in November 2023, in time for the original Line 3 decommission date. Despite the red bus lanes giving buses their own path, this route is still not separated from the road. Heng notes that she once took a shuttle bus to Lawrence

East Station, only to be dropped off on another street due to road construction that was obstructing the red lanes. Another planned solution by Metrolinx is an integrated fare between GO Transit and TTC. Unlike MiWay, York Region Transit, and other transit systems in and around the GTA, the TTC does not have an integrated fare system that allows riders to transfer to and from the GO for free. Instead, riders have to pay two fees, which means the alternative GO Transit route that Heng uses is not an accessible and affordable route for everyone. GO Transit serves as an important link for commuters living outside the downtown core. Thus,

Current solutions The irony of the LRT cancellation is that the shuttle buses replacing Fall 2023

Feature — RIP Line Three

it is ironic that the transit system of the largest city in the GTA does not have a fare system integrated with GO Transit when many riders commute from outside the city. According to a CTV article, former Associate Minister of Transportation Stan Cho stated that the City will launch an integrated fare initiative by the end of the year. This has since been delayed to 2024. Being able to improvise alternative routes on the go is not an ability every commuter has. If anything, it’s unfair to expect commuters to figure out transit routes when a delay happens. Heng reflects that not everyone is proficient in using navigational apps and understands their transit routes well. A busway could be one solution for transit to be simpler, more reliable, and more convenient in Scarborough. Such a busway would completely operate separate from street traffic. Theoretically, this could save 10 to 15 minutes of commute time, according to Puranauth. Politicians like Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow have endorsed it, and Chow has committed to building one. 40

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As convincing of a plan as the busway sounds, the provincial government has yet to fund and start such a project. While city councillors, Metrolinx, and the TTC have been discussing the political and economic sides of Scarborough transit, freedom of movement around the GTA remains an overlooked conversation. The current 70 shuttle buses, the red bus lanes, and a possible integrated fare are great options, but they’re not enough for a quality life. Pushing forward The seemingly constant neglect Scarborough receives from the municipal government may seem disheartening. Still, advocates are fighting to make their voices heard in City Hall and change Scarborough for the better. “[As a representative of] Scarborough, I’ve got to give that loud voice at Queen’s Park for Line 3 and the busway,” Hazell said in my interview with her. Since the start of her term, Hazell has strived to bring the voices of Scarborough onto the table in provincial parliament conversations in Queen’s Park. On October 5, 2023, during a

parliament session, she posed a question to Provincial Minister of Transportation Prabmeet Singh Sarkaria on why the government won’t fund the busway plan, only for him to dodge her question. “That was my first question. It’s not going to be my last question,” Hazell told me. She also revealed that she intends to meet with Vijay Thanigasalam — Ontario’s associate minister of transportation — to discuss the transportation crisis in Scarborough. Puranauth explained that the Line 3 memorial that I witnessed on that rainy afternoon had two purposes: not only was it a call to action but the rally also invited people to share stories about line three. Despite the deafening roar of the train, and the fact that it was operating on infrastructure that was truly on its last legs, Line 3 was central to life in Scarborough. Hazell puts this importance into perspective. She cited a 2018 report, which stated that in that year, about 35,000 Scarborough residents commuted to a different city each day. “In those 70 buses, [there were] 35,000 commuters per day. [Doesn’t the City] care?

About that massive commuter [population] in Scarborough that travel on these buses to make a living for their family?” This, in part, is why Hazell and TTC riders fight so hard for a solution beyond the current bus service. And this advocacy has made progress for Scarborough’s transit. Puranauth notes that had it not been for the recent advocacy of TTC riders, the busway plan would not have even been considered. “The city [might] as well have just ran the buses in traffic for several years instead of building the busway, but the busway was put on the table with the help of advocates, and now we just need to get funded,” Puranauth said. Hazell emphasized how important it is to get involved in advocacy instead of simply toughing it out with poor transit infrastructure, like the residents of Scarborough have been forced to do time and time again. “Let’s get down to Queen’s Park and let’s [make] this happen. That’s what you do when you need to get things done. You stand up, you take action, and you get the results.”

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Cherry Writer: Keely Boyle Illustrator: Evelyn Bolton It is too warm for spring. I climb syrupy stairs up into the kitchen, where a basket of cherries, half ripe, half rotten, sits lazily up on the countertop. Some go in the batter. They tumble in reluctantly, bleed streaks of red into a dull slurry — sink. The rest I leave for the crust, cold the night before, now sweating under careless hands, a pulsing sun. It is too warm to bake. The morning melts into noon by the time I tuck the thing away. Jim has come twice to ask about Julie. I tell him she’s on sabbatical. She’ll contact him in a month or two. For now, let me pull up a chair for you, wait with me ’til the pie is due. His voice like the buzz of a gnat Takes an edge off the mounting heat. I let him speak. If Julie hadn’t left so suddenly — Is that the pie I hear, burbling? The tang of cherries snakes through the warm air, filling the lungs with a numbing sweetness. His buzz fizzles out into a hum… When did she leave? Last night. Oh. Yeah. Julie Julie Julie. Now’s about right. I stand the heat of the oven, just long enough to fish out the tin. I cradle a misshapen mess of red, my ruptured artery, an inflamed gash. Perhaps it was too warm to bake.

Fall 2023

I’m 19 and I’m on fire!

Writer: Audrey Lai Illustrator: Cheryl Nong

“A

Music chronicling the bittersweet transition of 19

ll my life I’ve been obsessed with adolescence, drunk on it,” Lorde wrote in a Facebook post on her album Melodrama a day before her 20th birthday. “Even when I was little, I knew that teenagers sparkled… Since 13 I’ve spent my life building this giant teenage museum, mausoleum maybe, dutifully wolfishly writing every moment down, and repeating it all back like folklore. And now there isn’t any more of it.” It’s only two years after the “peak” of girlhood — “dancing queen, young and sweet, only seventeen” — when we reach 19, and at the cusp of adulthood, we must acknowledge the death of our teenagehood. The uncertainty of finding your place in the world coupled with the value society places on youth leads to a year of mourning our teenage years and childhoods. As I savour the last days of being 18, I find myself turning to albums written by 19-year-old girls for guidance on my final year of girlhood and subsequently revisiting the gone-by years of my teenagehood. I hate the headlines and the weather / I’m nineteen and I’m on fire Melodrama by Lorde came out in 2017: it was the soundtrack to my middle school bus rides as I stared out the window, contemplating a coming-of-age that had not yet come. I glamourized the glimmering soundscapes of “Green Light” and “The Louvre,” finding aesthetic boards of the album on Tumblr. I loved the titular melodrama of “Writer in the Dark” and “Supercut.” What I didn’t know about Melodrama is that it’s much more than a heartbreak album

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— it’s a goodbye to adolescence and a love letter to how this period is a time of self-discovery, in making mistakes and in isolation. Though I wish it wasn’t, I’ve always found “Ribs” from Pure Heroine to be the quintessential coming-of-age anthem: “This dream isn’t feeling sweet, we’re reeling through the midnight streets / And I’ve never felt more alone, it feels so scary get ting old” Growing pains are inevitable in getting older, but I much prefer the outlook in Melodrama’s “Perfect Places”: “All the nights spent off our faces / Trying to find these perfect places / What the fuck are perfect places anyway?”

Maybe chasing this ideal of adolescence — these “perfect places” — isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. What if we just accepted the growing pains? I’ll blow out the candles, happy birthday to me / Got your whole life ahead of you, you’re only nineteen GUTS by Olivia Rodrigo came out only recently. It’s strange to see a rising pop sensation who’s your age after years of idolizing a generation of stars a decade older than you. It’s a sobering reminder that you’re not a kid anymore. The album is a delightfully fun and vibrant celebration of teenagehood to the tune of poppunk melodies reminiscent of early 2000s Avril Lavigne, but it hides an honest and vulnerable underbelly confessing the embarrassment and anxieties of girlhood.

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Rodrigo opens the album with the riot-grrrl inspired “all-american bitch,” a lively yet scathing retort against the impossible standards imposed on women: “All the time / I’m grateful all the time / I’m sexy, and I’m kind / I’m pretty when I cry” Sandwiched between the playful choruses of “bad idea right?” and “get him back!” is the lively “ballad of a homeschooled girl”, chronicling the embarrassment of adolescence: “Each time I step outside, it’s social suicide.” But her endearing honesty and infectious choruses almost make it sound fun.

“At the cusp of adulthood, we must acknowledge the death of our teenagehood.” In the stripped-down “pretty isn’t pretty,” Rodrigo emotionally reflects on the neverending list of beauty standards for women and how the expectation to be perfect has tarnished her own body image: “I could change up my body and change up my face / I could try every lipstick in every shade / But I’d always feel the same / ’Cause pretty isn’t pretty enough anyway” Rodrigo finishes off the song in exhausted indignation, crooning:

album, Fearless, was at times playful and flirting with its fantasy imagery, Swift makes it clear in Speak Now that you should hold onto the magic of teenagehood because it doesn’t last forever. I viewed the subject matter of Speak Now mostly through the lens of someone else until I began to approach the cusp of adulthood. “Long Live” played in my head as I graduated high school and said goodbye to my high school friends: “We were the kings and the queens / And they read off our names / The night you danced like you knew our lives / Would never be the same” “Never Grow Up” played in my earbuds as I moved into my first-year dorm: “So here I am in my new apartment / In a big city, they just dropped me off /… / Wish I’d never grown up” When Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) was released this summer, my family was in the middle of moving out of my hometown. I was sitting on the floor of my childhood room with boxes scattered everywhere when Swift softly sang the bridge of “Never Grow Up”: “Take pictures in your mind of your childhood room / … / I just realized everything I have is someday gonna be gone”

Don’t you think nineteen’s too young / To be played by your dark, twisted games / When I loved you so?

I fought back tears when I read what Swift had written in the liner notes of the album: “When I think back on the Speak Now album, I get a lump in my throat… This period of time is so vibrantly aglow with the last light of the setting sun of my childhood.” When I got to the final non-vault track, though, I found myself almost foolishly hopeful. There’s something peculiar about listening to Swift’s re-recordings: it feels like you’re listening to it for the first time even though you know all the words — it’s the knowledge that both you and Swift have experienced more than a decade of growing up. “Long Live” is an acknowledgement of the magic of teenage girlhood and adolescence in spite of its ephemeral nature. I’ve always seen it as a sister track to “Never Grow Up,” telling her that there will always be grief that comes with change but to go on, unafraid:

Speak Now by Taylor Swift was released when I was five and I lived with the album throughout the years — including chickening out of a talent show performance of “Mean” directed at my elementary school bully. While her sophomore

“Singing long live all the mountains we moved / I had the time of my life fighting dragons with you / And long, long live the look on your face / And bring on all the pretenders / One day, we will be remembered”

“I chased some dumb ideal my whole fucking life / And none of it matters, and none of it ends / You just feel like shit over and over again” The final track of the album, “teenage dream,” was a sucker punch to my stomach. Like Rodrigo, I have an unending list of worries for a future past my teenagehood: “When will it stop being cool to be quietly misunderstood? Will I spend all the rest of my years wishing I could go back? They all say that it gets better… but what if I don’t?”

Fall 2023

Miles behind for UTSC

UTSC’s nonexistent shuttle bus With no shuttle bus, UTSC’s transportation is miles behind its counterparts Writer: Mekhi Quarshie

eople usually say time is money — but at U of T, time is marks. Squeezing in an hour or two to study, read, or relax can be the difference from a great exam and a bad one, and an up to two-hour commute between downtown Toronto and the Scarborough campus warrants some Trivagolevel trip planning to fit everything needed to get done in a school day. Considering that UTM has a shuttle bus that goes to and from campus and a U-Pass that makes travelling more affordable, why isn’t there a shuttle bus to make the commute to and from UTSC quicker? Hopes about a shuttle bus aren’t commonplace on campus. As students with busy workloads and even busier commute times, we become subsumed within our current contexts and forget to question the overarching logistical constraints that govern our lives. But hope does exist in the shadows, among the downtown residents talking in Reddit forums. With the demand for better transportation growing — propelled by the worsening of Scarborough’s transportation — The Varsity looked into the history of the fabled UTSC shuttle bus and talked to some key stakeholders to figure out why there is a lack of one today. The journey to the answer turned out to be more convoluted than a TTC subway map. The history The last time a shuttle bus between UTSC and UTSG existed was in 1990, almost 30 years after the establishment of UTSC. Funded by the university’s operating budget, the bus operated 44

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for about a decade before it was shut down due to inactivity and high maintenance costs. Almost two decades later, in 2006, U of T conducted a study to gauge interest in reinstituting the shuttle. The sample included undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, and staff. Out of the sample, 6.3 per cent of subjects stated that they would use the shuttle. The U of T Office of the Vice-Provost, Students & First-Entry Divisions reported that the next step to determining the usefulness of a shuttle would be “to obtain the data necessary to inform the next steps.” The Varsity has not found a survey completed after the 2006 one, but a spokesperson for U of T stated in an email that UTSC’s leadership “regularly consults with students, faculty, staff and librarians about transit and transportation through town halls, meetings with student groups, governance committees and other forums.” “Leadership tries to address issues by working directly with transit agencies and various levels of government. For example, if there are scheduling issues on a particular bus line, administration will talk to the TTC about service adjustments,” the spokesperson explained. Students have long been advocating for a shuttle bus. A 2014 Varsity article revealed that even after the city implemented the 198 Rocket TTC express bus — renamed to the 905 Eglinton East Express in 2018 — some students continued advocating for a more direct shuttle bus between the Scarborough and St. George campuses. Despite the visible interest, the

Scarborough Campus Students’ Union (SCSU) at the time stated it could not implement the shuttle due to the TTC’s monopoly on Toronto’s transportation. A spokesperson for U of T said that UTSC has explored the idea of a shuttle service, but any such service would directly overlap with and be in direct competition with the TTC. “The key is more rapid transit in Scarborough. The Scarborough RT has been replaced by buses until the Scarborough Subway Extension is in service. The government needs to prioritize projects such as the Eglinton East LRT in Scarborough,” wrote the spokesperson. It’s important to remember that time has passed; people have changed, and the demographics of UTSC have too. Today, UTSC has about 14,000 enrolled students, a 60 per cent increase from their 8,700 students in 2006. Furthermore, students can take up to 10 credits counted toward their degree at other campuses, meaning that UTSG students may seek to take courses at UTSC and vice versa. Since the demographics of the satellite campus have changed, have the opinions of students changed as well? The status quo If you are a UTSC student frantically looking for better transit options, look no further than r/ UTSC. The subreddit has numerous students complaining about transit options to campus. The confusion around good transit options does not only limit itself to the dark corners of Reddit. In an interview with The Varsity, Abby

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laws, however, because it operates in the space between the City of Toronto and the City of Mississauga, carving out a convenient loophole. Thus, unlike public interest or cost, the legal obstacle to a UTSC shuttle bus is imposed due to something students can’t control: the location of the campus itself. Despite these concerns, currently and for the past couple of years, the SCSU seems to be working diligently to pursue all options for improved transportation to and from UTSC. Palaparthy mentioned that an SCSU team is researching whether a rapid shuttle service between Kennedy Station and UTSC would be feasible, especially considering the closure of Line 3, an increase in student population from the new Scarborough Academy of Medicine and Integrated Health centre being built, and an increased amount of faculty commuting between the two campuses.

Photograph courtesy of University of Toronto Scarborough Library, UTSC Archives Legacy Collection Russchen, a second-year journalism specialist at UTSC, said that there was a great deal of confusion around the potential of a shuttle bus when she was in her first year. “When I first started here, I thought they had a shuttle running from [UTSC] to Queen’s Park, but they don’t,” Russchen said. “I would pay for a U of T shuttle because you have to pay for PRESTO anyways. It’d be so much easier.” Russchen also said she found it difficult to constantly make her way to and from campus due to the cost of transport. The current PRESTO adult fare is $3.30, but for downtown-residing UTSC students, it adds up. “I put $50 on my PRESTO card. Two weeks later, it’s empty.” Despite the wait times, the high expenses, and the cost, the TTC remains the sole option for many UTSC students. Demands like the ones that Abby brought up are commonplace amongst U of T students, yet they often go unheard. Political roadblocks So why did these demands never materialize? The Varsity discussed the issue with current SCSU Vice-President of Operations Akaash Palaparthy, who listed monetary, logistical, and

legal concerns as the main reasons a shuttle bus project hasn’t seen any momentum. Palaparthy said that, according to 2016 numbers, the shuttle bus would cost approximately one million dollars, excluding maintenance throughout the years and the possibility that that number could be even higher in the current context. Additionally, a route that goes directly between UTSC and UTSG would most likely use the Don Valley Parkway (DVP) and would thus be heavily exposed to traffic. The rush hour traffic of the DVP could lead to a shuttle bus, according to Palaparthy, that is “slower than the TTC during peak hours.” The legal framework is the final pothole in the road to better transportation for UTSC students. The 2006 City of Toronto Act delineates that no party is allowed to operate a passenger transportation system other than the City itself. The exceptions to this law include taxicabs, sightseeing tours, and buses used by school boards or private schools — but not UTSC shuttle buses, rendering UTSC unable to collect fares on its shuttle bus. Therefore, the shuttle would have to, in large part, finance itself. The UTM shuttle bus is not subject to such

A look into the future The roadblocks to a shuttle bus may slowly be getting less obstructive. The Association of PartTime Undergraduate Students (APUS), a group that has been instrumental in the advocacy for a UTSC shuttle bus in the past, noted in an email to The Varsity, that the change in the City’s leadership, as well as the decommissioning of Line 3 both provide strong arguments for a re-evaluation of the shuttle. APUS also stated that it is, in part, up to U of T students to advocate for improvements to the current transportation system. “Students at Scarborough Campus may need to utilize services at the St. George Campus such as Health and Wellness, counselling services, and even some of their classes if we are looking at bridging gaps that students face at their respective campuses.” While the University has noted that UTSC has been in communication with Metrolinx about the implementation of a fare-based pilot program for the Toronto, Durham, and York Region — the first step toward a working U-Pass for UTSC students — nothing is currently being done to re-establish a shuttle bus from UTSC to UTSG. Many of the obstacles to a fast commute for UTSC students who live downtown seem immovable. The TTC bylaws are daunting. The cost is insurmountable. However, the road to better transit has already been softened by the trials and tribulations of generations of UTSC students that came before. And with a student union now actively advocating for change, a student body that is more vocal about such change, and the worsening transportation conditions in Scarborough, it might not be long before UTSC sees a shuttle. Fall 2023

Levelling up

The Varsity Magazine

Passage

Fall 2023

Levelling up

The Varsity Magazine

Passage

Fall 2023

Levelling up

The Varsity Magazine

Passage

Fall 2023

On girls

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Dissecting the paradoxical and unattainable nature of early womanhood Writer: Cypress Chernik Visuals: Caroline Bellamy

hat does it mean to be a woman? I often ask myself this, and most of the time, I feel more like a creature than a woman. Being a person and being a woman are two different things, and I slog through every day struggling to be either. Girl-thing, she-animal — those are about the closest things I can approximate my existence to. Because being a woman is a job that gets stapled on a girl the minute she shows any symptom of adulthood, yet it’s a requirement that we never manage to fulfill. I want to talk about the difficulty of this period. The handful of years where we are meant to go from being happy, curious, and energetic children to serious and responsible women. I’m tired of talking about how difficult it is to be a woman — I want to talk about the trap that we fall into just by trying to be women. Why do we emerge from adolescence, a period allegedly meant for growth and self-discovery, needing to recover from it? What is so volatile about being a teenage girl? And why do we never, ever, stop being teenage girls?

The girl in media Girls are often raised without freedom and then pushed out into the world, where they fall into the arms of restrictive relationships and environments. As we move into a digital age, we increasingly immerse girls in a world that objectifies, degrades, and romanticizes them. It’s not as though media hasn’t always fetishized femininity, but now beauty standards, social media lifestyle “advice,” porn, and “adult content” in entertainment are readily available to girls, even in elementary school. An example of this is the Netflix series Sex Education. It’s a generally endearing show that attempts to portray the awkwardness of navigating sex and relationships in high school, with the main character being vastly inexperienced at the start of the show but very knowledgeable due to his mother being a sex therapist. This show was successful when it first launched in 2019 because many people found it entertaining and engaging. However, I find it a sinister and accurate representation of how society views sex — in particular when it comes to women’s experience of it. Male-identifying characters in Sex Education

experience a plethora of emotional struggles, including issues surrounding self-harm, anxiety, sexual orientation, self-expression, and difficult upbringings. While female-identifying characters also struggle with issues, their complexity is reduced because their issues are romanticized. The main character and his best friend both make mistakes, behave awkwardly and stupidly, and are always forgiven for their idiocy because the show is about teenage flaws and errors. Male-identifying characters are also often shown having disgusting “adolescent” experiences — such as compulsive masturbation in car parking lots and public bathrooms — and are excused for it on the basis of being teenagers. Furthermore, this show depicts the multidimensional and universal struggles of men. On the other hand, female-identifying characters in Sex Education, like in other pieces of media, are portrayed as victims of their own gender. Women’s struggles often deal with being harassed, sexualized, or even just having vaginas. And this is not to say that these aren’t real or valid struggles, but the problem lies within the endearing way in which fictional girls seem to float through these issues: rage, sex, depression, and trauma. Even abortions are portrayed as beautiful. At one point, a love interest in the show gets pregnant; the scene of her positive pregnancy test takes place in an upstairs bedroom at a house party, the lights dim and blue, the character with her eyes smokey and appearance camera-ready as always. None of the graphic, gruesome, or unattractive parts of the pregnancy test or the abortion are ever shown; she remains beautiful and sanitized. Thus, women’s experiences, however traumatic, are shown as feminine. The girl and the girl in media Sex Education is just another show in a long line of media that misconstrues teenagers. Someone, somewhere, at some point, decided that teenage girls are beautiful, sexual, and have charming personalities. Women’s adolescence sees no accurate portrayal in the media. An age where life is carefree and desire runs wild is appealing: teenager-centric and comingof-age media emphasizes the value of having certain experiences for the first time. In a girl’s life, coming-of-age is often represented as a

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necessary loss of innocence — such as exposure to things like sex or death — that maintains a certain element of romanticism. However, there is dissonance between what is romanticized in media and what is valued in the real world — and the idea of purity is a good example of this. Being pure and chaste is still considered a valuable thing for a girl to be. Adults often have a protective instinct when it comes to maintaining the innocence of their girls, but the same cannot be said about boys. So rarely does one see someone referring to boys as ‘corrupted by the world’ or ‘stranded from their inner child,’ but girls experience a jarring shift. On one hand, we have our parents, who want to keep their zestful little girls safe from the stress and confusion of the real world. On the other hand, we have the media telling us that the years to come are going to be a collection of liberating, exciting, and most importantly, beautiful experiences. Coming-ofage is expected to be beautiful even though it is often awkward and

confusing in real life. First times having sex and drinking are usually messy and forgettable memories, but submerged in expectations of beauty and glamour, girls experience a sharp disconnect between what they’re supposed to feel and what they actually feel, causing a lot of shame, guilt, insecurity, and fixation on the way one appears to the world. In art and media, women’s coming-of-age always stems from a place of desire. As Mary Pipher describes in her book Reviving Ophelia, Shakespeare’s Ophelia is at first a bright character with potential until she is driven mad by Hamlet’s deceptions, at which point she drowns herself in a river, covered in flowers. Since then, countless

artistic renditions have been made of Ophelia and her gorgeous death. Love and desire are supposed to drive girls off the edge. But what really drives girls off the edge is the media’s expectations I mentioned earlier. To label what hurts teenagers as love and desire would be to reduce a world of messy experiences

Fall 2023

On girls

and ugly emotions to a romanticized and inaccurate characterization of adolescence.

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The girl in real life So, what are teenage girls like in the real world; what really torments them? I graduated from a Toronto high school a few months ago, and what I saw there surprised me — girls cried over accounting tests and English essays instead of boys. Many of my friends expressed the desire to be independent, free, and successful but also to be loved and approved of. These desires aren’t necessarily conflicting, but girls, in particular, are raised to see them as contradictory, which creates anxious attachment styles and commitment issues. The current trend of successful women on social media portrays ‘girlbosses’ and ‘it-girls’ who have their goals and life paths sorted out. The women in film and television have strong personality traits, flaws, and depth, yet somehow they have still managed to do it all. Snow White’s and Cinderella’s happy endings were marriage and family, but Mulan’s and Tiana’s happy endings were marriage, family, and successful careers. The women we look up to are beautiful, and stories of success are important, but they convey the message that women should have it all. In a way, it is desire that pulls girls apart, but the desire for conflicting achievements and lives createss a profound sense of aimlessness and confusion among young girls.

The more expectations that society places on the emerging woman, the more conflict and unease prevails in the minds of young girls. That’s the main incongruity of progress — there are so many layers of expectations that are entirely impossible to meet when they shouldn’t even be attempted. Yet, we do. We watch YouTube videos that teach us how to paint ourselves pretty. We cry over grades instead of beauty, but neither has any real value aside from a meaningless rank the world can staple onto our foreheads. We self-deprecate, turn away from mirrors, and stay up late looking at the ‘perfect’ people on our phone screens. I recently saw a video on social media where a conventionally attractive young woman plays a series of clips of herself and describes her long-standing insecurity with her facial features. Then, she shows the results of a recent nose job. The top comment under this video, having received tens of thousands of likes, is just this: “Society has ruined girls.” So, as one of the victims of this crime, I ask, what is it like to be ruined? In Reviving Ophelia, Pipher refers to a quote attributed to Simone de Beauvoir: “Girls who were the subjects of their own lives became the objects of others’ lives. Girls stop being and start seeming.” I find this to be the most accurate description of what it means to behave per the laws set down by the social myth of the woman. At some point, a girl begins to intuitively understand that she herself is irrelevant and that she rather has to mould herself anew by shrinking into a form that cannot possibly encompass her entire being. It’s impossible, really, to fit oneself into the cookie-cutter jail that is the woman, and doing so results in deep, cavernous internal damage. ‘Woman,’ as we know her, isn’t real — she is a shadow that girls strive to become and can’t. In a sense, the idea of a woman is almost divine; though nobody ever acknowledges her presence in the minds and emotions of girls, she exists as a strange, contradictory ideal. We go about our lives telling ourselves that, soon, we will be right — that when we are finally ‘woman,’ we can stop pretending to be it. We go through our lives, seeming. And it’s a loss. There isn’t and never will be, any true value to seeming — to pretending to understand what it means to be a whole, successful woman. Womanhood is the moments when, alone in our minds, we allow thought and sensation to run free. We allow desire to heal from the wounds that carved it. We allow ourselves to bask in the act of existing, and we release the trapped human being inside us. We allow ourselves to be.

Reclaiming myself

Passage

Changing my name helped me break barriers and step beyond the gender binary Writer: Sultan Nessa Visuals: Zeynep Poyanli

hen I was born, my parents — and the sociocultural body behind them — made two primary decisions intended to define who I would be: my gender and my name. The first decision may seem intuitive because it is routine, but gender is rarely as neat as it seems. It may not seem like a significant identifier, but this decision would influence the course of my life. I say this questioning why we gender at all, why we celebrate gender reveals, and what it is we mean when we call a newborn a boy or a girl. My name was decided in the same vein. Names are more than what we’re called; they carry significant information and identifiers.

Names can signify association with a culture, nation or region, religious affiliation, caste or status, occupation, the day or context of your birth, a story and mythology, what your parents had in mind for you, and, of course, gender. They indicate a history and codify who you will be. The name I received at birth was intentionally feminized, creating an emphasis on how my gender marked me. Carrying no indicators of my family history or affiliations to the culture and religion I was born into or any context to my coming birth, my name carried no other significant identifier than my gender, leaving me anchored to a choice I would not have made. This choice was followed by a series

of other unspoken decisions: my sexuality, what I would look like and how I would dress, how I would speak, my relationships, how I feel and what I should think, how I should behave, what my hobbies and interests would be, what professions were available to me, how safe I am, how I would be punished, when I should be married and have children, and what I’m capable of. I’m sure I could list more, but what they fundamentally decided was who I will be and my potential. These unspoken decisions decided my fate. The term ‘claim’ is both a noun and a verb. A claim is an assertion of the truth while making a claim is the action of asserting something is the case, but in both definitions, there is no offer of evidence — it is not a definite reflection of what the truth is. In other

Fall 2023

Reclaiming myself

words, as we interact with other people, we don’t just make assumptions — we make assertions of who they are. Just as my parents decided I was to be a girl, people I encounter routinely make this decision as well — they decide I am a girl, and they decide how to respond to this assertion. As I talk about claims and making claims, I am speaking to these assertions of truth, these decisions we make on behalf of others. Decision may seem like a strong word, more active than judgment perhaps, but I make this distinction because we, as people, can become very upset when someone challenges the decisions we make on their behalf. This can be seen very clearly in the context of gender, for example, when we decide what someone’s gender is and, thus, which bathroom they can use. Because ultimately the core idea here is truth — what we decide to be true about others means what we decide to be true for our world and ourselves. I come from a Bengali-Muslim family, so there were many assertions of truth that were implemented without challenge. Claims about how life worked and how it should work. No one spelled any of it out for me, but they didn’t have to. I think about the 1 Million March 4 Children rallies that have been happening recently across Canada, fighting against LGBTQ+ education, particularly surrounding gender identity. I think about all the Muslim parents at the forefront of these marches, examining my own experiences with my Muslim heritage. I think about how we try to decide other people’s identities, particularly those we think belong to us. In my life, how I performed as a girl reflected my family and how I was raised. Deciding my gender was a decision that affected my family as well, and it would determine our family’s fate as much as mine. I then found my gender to be relational and performed heavily based on my dynamic with another person. Because I spent my youth under the keen, 56

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watchful eye of my household, my family regulated my mannerisms and habits by discouraging what was seen as inappropriate activities and shutting down any aspect of expression that was not seen as stereotypically feminine. Clothes were selected for me. My family closely monitored my behaviour. I remember my mother even cried when I cut off my hair. To tie it all together, I was denied the exploration to be more than who people claimed me to be, the ability to expand my self. My intention is not to make my family out to be oppressive. In fact, my point is that we all make claims, and we all have perceptions of each other. We decide the nature of relationships and their parameters. We claim how we believe another person to be, whether that be their gender, race, or characteristics like kindness or humour. Sometimes, our self-assertions are accepted, and sometimes, they’re not. Of course, it’s not wrong to make claims or have perceptions — that is how we navigate the world — but we sometimes forget that our perceptions of people are not all of who they are, if at all. We often forget that even when perceptions don’t change, people still do. I don’t necessarily reject or dislike the claim of ‘girl’ that my parents made about me — I just wanted to be able to change. Growing up, I resented being perceived as a girl. I rejected anything related to what was conceived as girlhood or femininity. I wanted to be a boy. My father always wanted a son, and my mother’s traumabased fears doubled with two daughters. The casual misogyny of my peers, community, culture, social, and political systems around me sparked a deep-seated rage and confusion I didn’t know how to handle. Once adolescence came around, I felt my body betraying me. Resentment quickly led to detachment. I did not have the time to understand how I felt about my body before being sexualized as a woman with what was decided to be a woman’s body. To understand that if I woke up the next day in a different body, I would accept it and that if I reverted, I would accept that too. I used the label of agender, choosing to reject the claim of gender altogether, not only the claim of ‘girl.’ Yet, as I chose not to gender myself or my body, it didn’t stop others from doing so. Entering the dating scene, I came upon new scripts, expectations, and assertions of truth. I came upon new rules for how to be a girl, how to be likeable, and how to behave. I was very stringently claimed to be a ‘girl’ as people unintentionally insisted and assumed things about me. At some point, I realized that

my body never felt like mine; if it couldn’t change, neither could I. The freedom that came with moving away for my undergraduate degree set in motion an urge to try to do and be anything and everything I could, which included adjusting my body to make me feel like I had some measure of control and comfort. Some measure of claim, an attempt to find my truth. I tried binders, packers, STPs, strap-ons, and clothes that didn’t fit me. I went even further and chopped and dyed my hair, pierced my face, and accumulated tattoos. I looked into hormone therapy and started to save. I tried on labels like I tried on clothes in the men’s section — feverishly. All to make my body more mine and perceive it the way I wanted it to be perceived, as something other. Nothing quite worked. What I finally realized was that, in some sense, I did want to be a boy, but what I really wanted was to be free — free to choose, and free to change. I wanted to decide who I was on any given day or decade. I wanted to have the final say on what I wanted, what I liked, and who I wanted to be, whether that lasted for five minutes or a lifetime. I wanted to challenge fate. Both the fate of a girl and of a boy. Throughout my whole life, I have been searching for fluidity. I have constantly yearned to be more than how I was perceived. I was stuck in a dark, feminine, little body in a world of gender binaries, so challenging perception was often a monumental and exhausting task. I continued to struggle with understanding who I was, how to act, and simply how to feel at ease with other people. How do I comfortably signal to others that I wish to be acknowledged as fluid? How do I present and relate in a way ‘true’ to myself? What does it even mean to have a true self, let

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alone share it? Most importantly, how do I reserve the right to change? Harrowed by questions, on Trans Remembrance Day of 2018, after shouldering the weight of gendered suffering, I claimed myself. I chose a name. A name that would represent my change and signify my fluidity. A way to reorganize perception and a way to own the body I inhabited: Sultan. It was as if I was living poetry which could have no other title. This name carries gender, history, a story, what I want from myself and what I see in myself. By giving myself my own name, I afforded myself control over my fate. The power of a name, whether chosen by or assigned to us, is not to be underestimated. Some people would tell me with whatever name I had, whether it be my birth name or Sultan, that the name suited me. I don’t know exactly what they meant, but it taught me that we associate someone’s presence and energy with their names, and specific names can be disruptors — I left people deeply perplexed when I introduced myself as Sultan. A decidedly bold and masculine name with regional connotations disrupted the perception of a tiny, feminine person of unknown origin. Naming concretizes concepts. Naming concretizes roots. Naming concretizes identity. In my name, I captured concepts of gender, persona, and energy. I took pride in my heritage and created a statement between the interaction of my Muslim heritage and gender fluidity, asserting that they work in tandem, not in opposition. Finally, I understand it’s difficult to concretize fluidity; that would seem to be counterintuitive. But what I did was give a vulnerable little girl the name of ‘king,’ and in that, I provided a range of being. I created the potential for something more,

something beyond dichotomy. I changed my fate. Nevertheless, the struggle continues. I have yet to be free from the bounds of other people’s claims. To be honest, I’m not sure what that would look like or if it’s achievable. Still restricted in presentation and performance, I nurture my potential to be anything I want to be, especially my own gender, and to nurture my potential to lead a life I want to lead. It used to cause me great distress not to look a certain way or do certain activities, but someone once told me: “Gender is not your hair.” They were right. My fluidity is steadfastly holding my own truth in the face of claims I

don’t authorize and decisions I wouldn’t make for myself. It’s in my choices, and it’s in the moments of freedom I gather for myself. It’s in the freedom I exercise by existing in ways that bring me joy, regardless of how that joy is claimed. My greatest solace is that my fluidity lies in giving myself the freedom to change, no matter how small. My decision to change my name was a happiness unlike any other. I didn’t reinvent myself — I recognized myself. It was a giant leap toward making more choices that would lead me to recognize myself and access the freedom and fluidity I found in my inner world to slowly realize it in my outer world. In this internal mess of gender dysphoria, identity issues, trauma, and severe resentment for relentless claims I do not accept, I often can’t define myself. But the point is I don’t have to. No one does. I am Sultan, and I change.

Fall 2023

Sleep paralysis

o e

ev e r c o n t r n l l i w I ol ... e c by cho pa s i ce ne s will always

My sleep paralysi

Writer: Eleanor Yuneun Park Illustrator: Biew Biew Sakulwannadee

friend of mine has an irrational fear of accidentally letting her bare feet peek out of the safe boundaries of her bed frame while she sleeps. It’s apparently an act so dreadful and well-embedded in her psyche that she is physically able to shake herself awake from her slumber to hurriedly shove her naked feet back under the covers. While I have seen the same sort of fear and immediate recoil from friends who accidentally post their feet on social media — understandably so, when unapologetic foot fetishists online are seemingly proud, conflating their cultural significance with that of Tarantino — the exposure of feet outside the bed in an empty bedroom seemed too safe to fear. When asked to justify this angst, my friend sheepishly muttered, “I mean… ghosts.” So, the story from my friend of 21 years of age followed that some childhood storybook she read 15 years ago graphically portrayed a ghost, resembling Munch’s screaming man, grabbing the exposed ankles of a sleeping child — all for the abhorrent sin of not wearing socks to bed. This anticlimactic story had apparently overwhelmed her six-year-old self so much so that, for the rest of her life, she associated bad 58

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I’m okay d n a , sp ra g y m be barely within

behaviour with exposed ankles and the object of fear with the faceless ghost under her bed. I found this comical, but I simultaneously found myself envious. My exposure to an object of fear during sleep did not occur through a children’s storybook ghost but through an unwanted visit in my room. Everything started happening on a ridiculously banal night after I just turned 14. Still heavily religious at the time, I had just finished praying — asking God to keep my family and me safe — and closed my eyes. Little did I know that this was the last night I would lay in bed with the comforting assurance that I was going to fall asleep with ease and wake up in the morning without having seen my ghost. My ghost does not resemble Munch’s screaming man, nor does she appear when I have supposedly done something bad. And — for the record — I always wear my socks to bed. I have actually never seen my ghost’s face because her face is always hidden behind her long, black hair that covers both her face and the entire front part of her body. Come to think of it, I have never seen her arms, legs, or any other body parts for that matter. When she first appeared during that mundane, quiet night, I was awakened by her long hair that grazed my face — so eerily but softly. She was floating right above me, but

with it

I still couldn’t see her face behind all the hair. The moment I tried to lift my hand to cover my face, I realized — I was completely frozen. No matter how hard I struggled to move my arms or legs, I was entirely held back by what I later realized was sleep paralysis. I can recall this moment without difficulty, only in retrospect, because it was the most petrifying day of my life. It was not merely the presence of the hair of an unknown ghost but the chilling realization that I was in total loss of control in a space where only she and I existed. Since that night, I began entering this space every other night and soon lost count of how often. For years, she remained hovering above me, but at a certain point, she relocated to the corner of the room. Her appearance was not confined to my room: she was always there, standing at the corner of a hotel room, school nurse’s office, and my parent’s room. For the longest time, I tried to test out everything that could get rid of her. When I was younger, I tried sleeping beside my mom purely out of fear. My mom could take care of everything in my life, so you can imagine my horror when I realized that she could not chase my ghost away. I tried sleeping with earbuds in or a sleep mask on, but my paralysis defied the devices. I also attempted to leave the light on before sleeping, only to realize that the

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paralysis brought me back into an unlit room. I could not escape this nightly ritual. Alongside the sleep paralysis, I was diagnosed with narcolepsy. The symptoms caused me to fall asleep at random times of the day — whether it be while talking, eating, or walking — but also made me struggle to fall asleep far past midnight. I was, however, lucky enough to find a prescription that worked for me, and the narcolepsy symptoms are relatively well-controlled to this day. Unfortunately, I could not indulge in my sense of control over my symptoms because I still fell back into that space whenever I closed my eyes at night. I could never learn how to escape this ghost, but I learned over time how to get rid of her quicker than before. I discovered how to control the tips of my fingers and toes and wiggle them to wake my body from the space. I taught myself how to stop crying when it happens. And, for a fleeting moment, I thought I had regained control of my sleep. As if my subconscious had read my assurance, my paralysis soon started taking me outside of the room I was sleeping in. In recent years, the paralysis happens less often but occurs in a place that I can only describe as resembling both a playground and a passenger boarding bridge between airplanes and airports. For a while, I would be placed there without context and only with an uncanny sense of impending

doom — until I woke up. I would always be looking at something, but to this day, I cannot understand what I was looking at. Only a couple of months before writing this piece, I was growing familiar with the new setting of my paralysis again. I occasionally saw my ghost, but for the majority of those nights, I would return to the peculiarly uncanny passageway. One night, when I was finally starting to get comfortable with the discomfort, I slowly opened my eyes to see the same

“It was my moment of epiphany and acceptance of having control over no control.” passageway — except I also saw myself on the other end. I was on the other side of the passageway, and I could see what I always saw in an entirely different light, with the addition of my body. It was a transcendental dream and, for the first time in my life, I was fascinated. I vividly remember the morning I woke up from this dream. I wasn’t out of breath, sweating, or scared. I couldn’t believe that I

wanted to fall back asleep again. I wanted to fall back into the exact moment in my paralysis and feel it again. At that moment, I understood that I had gained a sense of control over my emotions and an eagerness to go to sleep. It was my moment of epiphany and acceptance of having control over no control. Since I was 14, I struggled desperately to grasp the ever-so-elusive sense of control over my sleep, my dreams, and my sleep paralysis. The space that I enter when I undergo paralysis is so frightening, not only because I am paralyzed but also because I am entirely isolated from whichever room I am in or whomever I am sleeping with. It’s only me and my ghost. But things are changing. I can’t say with confidence that I am no longer afraid of my sleep paralysis, because I am. There are still going to be countless nights where I lay awake after the most traumatizing paralysis and roll out of bed with two hours of sleep. But I am fascinated. I am fascinated with how far my paralysis will go to escape my yearning for control. I am intrigued by my condition’s nature, which reminds me that — no matter how tightly the body in my daily life is controlled — my mind is always one step ahead of me. There’s no escaping now, I’ve realized, so I might as well accept what it has planned for me.

Fall 2023

Getting it together!

The story of how I got it together

Writer & Illustrator: Andrea Zhao

tep 1: Hate your life In high school, I used to think that life began at 18. Being a teenager felt like a computer simulation of how pointless one’s life could get: wake up, go to school, go home, do homework, sleep, repeat. On the weekends, it was karate and piano in the mornings and violin and more homework in the afternoons. Sometimes, the simulator would throw in a couple of episodes of television or a few hours at the mall before looping right back into the seemingly endless cycle of nothing ever being fun or new. The idea of university was my respite from the boredom of daily life. I used to dream of moving to someplace far and unfamiliar for my post-secondary education. I conjured up visions of quaint cafés, red brick buildings covered in 60

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ivy, and towering libraries that I could make my second home. I carefully marked my calendar with the dates on which the universities I applied to would release their admissions decisions and counted down the days until I would find out where I would spend the next few years of my life. I was never supposed to come here. If not for a worldwide pandemic, I would have most likely decided on a school in another city, and you would never have read this essay. As it turns out, though, life finds a way to throw a wrench into your plans. A few days after the Canadian government put lockdown restrictions into place, I committed to U of T, my hometown school — something I always promised myself I would never do. Choosing to come here felt like the only practical decision I could make at

that moment. Although I knew that my choice was the most reasonable one, I could not shake the thought that I was making a mistake and that I was headed straight for disaster. Step 2: Stay the same In June 2020, I graduated high school on a livestream, with no cap or gown. My diploma arrived in the mail a few weeks later, slightly curled at the edges. My classmates and I never got the final farewells of senior year that I had so eagerly anticipated, but somehow I could not find it in me to be upset. When I turned 18 in August, I was alone, but that did not bother me either. I do not remember my first day at this school, but I do recall that in my first week, I took an online tour of Victoria College and sat through

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a number of welcome speeches, which mostly talked about unprecedented times and times that were unprecedented. I spent most of that year at my desk, in front of the family computer, desperately cramming chemistry lectures the day before each test and poring over problem sets hours before they were due. I whittled away time playing mindless trivia games and retained more information about capitals and flags than I did about derivatives and integrals. Although I found most of my classes uninspiring even if useful, and enjoyed none of the freedom I expected to have in my young adult years, this period of my life was surprisingly tolerable, and the year ended just as unceremoniously as it began. Step 3: Hit rock bottom My second year of university was pretty unforgettable. After a fairly routine summer, I had installed myself in my new dorm, checked in at my job, and prepared for what I thought would be the best year of my life thus far. I finally made it out on my own, and nothing could stop me from making the most out of what I had. However, what I did make of that year, now that I look back, was a string of seemingly endless misfortunes, one piled on top of the next.

Second year pushed me to my limit. Although I was a diligent student in high school, I lost that discipline in my first year, when classes were entirely online and I could get away with being a slacker. My lack of study habits caught up to me when my first few assignments and closed-book assessments rolled around in the fall semester, and I experienced proper, genuine failure for the first time in my life. When I got my first important grade back on an assignment, I contemplated dropping that course. When I got my midterm grade for another class, I debated the merits of dropping out of school entirely. I read articles online about how to take a gap year in the middle of your college career and make it not look like a desperate accident. In the span of two years, I had gone from being upset over anything less than an A to a certifiably middling student. I fought through and finished the term, much less successfully than I would have liked, and slept away my winter holidays.

Fall 2023

Getting it together!

My second semester was plagued by much of the same, except that my accursed lifestyle had also gotten to me, and I was riddled with constant headaches and unending illness. It appeared that a diet of iced coffee and cream cheese bagels — and a complete lack of a sleep schedule — was not enough to sustain the life of a human being in the long term. I contracted COVID-19 a few days before my final exams were scheduled to begin in April, which felt like an appropriate cumulation to a year of neverending disaster.

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Step 4: Get it together My third year was much of the same, to a lesser extent: I went to class most of the time, I crammed for exams, I passed, I promised myself to do better next time, and I did not. The difference, though, was that I very much wanted to change. After several of my professors told me, kindly but with clear disappointment, that I needed to get my life together, I was determined not to waste any more time. I started going to the gym again, I tried to eat as healthy as I could, considering the realities of the dining hall, and I did my best to go to bed on time. I made lists of tests and assignments, kept an agenda of study sessions and work commitments, and promised myself I would stay on track. I went out with my friends and called my parents. I thought I had it figured out. None of it was enough. Whenever I thought I had figured out the key to a happy, successful life, my carefully curated plans and routines would all unravel within a couple of weeks, and I had to start over again. It took only one piece of the puzzle falling out of place for all my work to be undone. I spent hours online, searching for articles on studying, exercise, and self-improvement. I enviously watched videos that other students made of their morning routines and days at the library.

When I got sick again in my second semester of third year, I did not start feeling better until seven weeks later, and that was just about enough to make me give up on improving my life entirely. Still, I felt that I had to keep trying before I could call it a lost cause.

“I am just happy to be alive with whatever I have in front of me, without the immediate need to fix, alter, or fit things into a grander scheme — and if things go wrong, I can always try again.”

I had a summer job lined up beginning at the end of May, so when I finished school at the end of April, I decided to do something I had never done before: absolutely nothing. There would be no structure and no demands on my life. I would not force myself to be healthier or happier or more productive. I would not live my life by certain rules to please anyone else or because a stranger on the internet told me it was the right thing to do. For the first few days, I slept until the early afternoon, ate when I wanted, and re-watched mind-numbing television shows from my high

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school years. In the second week, however, I discovered ways I could fill my time that were more meaningful to me. I read a book that I had started a year ago and never got to finish. I played the piano again and learned a song on the guitar. I went on runs and ran as slowly as I wanted because it still made me feel stronger. I got up early not because I felt like I had to undo the disarrayed state of my life but because I wanted to appreciate the simple beauty of a sunrise and I had not done so in many years. It was a good summer, perhaps the best one I can remember. My job was demanding at times but wholly fulfilling. After I finished work, I would wander around downtown and then go to the gym or library with friends. On Friday evenings, I would have a cocktail at an espresso bar, where I became a frequent guest. When I turned 21, three weeks before the start of another school year, I had never been happier. So here we are, in the here and now. I still have my problems, and there are plenty: I trip

constantly when I speedwalk to class, I do not always wake up at the very first alarm, and I cave to the temptation of buying coffee even when I repeatedly tell myself that I should make it at home. Although I love to complain, these are problems that I am grateful to have. I no longer wake up grappling with a sense of pointlessness, always in need of someone else to tell me how to live. On most days, I am just happy to be alive with whatever I have in front of me, without the immediate need to fix, alter, or fit things into a grander scheme — and if things go wrong, I can always try again. I wish I could leave you with some grand metaphor for life, about how to look for meaning and how to give up finding it. I have nothing of the sort, and even if I did, it would not be anything that you have not already heard a hundred times. So I leave you with this: just live. It is the only thing that we all ever do, in the end.

Fall 2023

Magazine Editor-in-Chief: Alice Boyle Creative Director: Caroline Bellamy Varsity Editor-in-Chief: Sarah Artemia Kronenfeld Managing Editor, External: Andrea Zhao Managing Editor, Internal: Shernise Mohammed-Ali Managing Online Editor: Mekhi Quarshie Senior Copy Editor: Ajeetha Vithiyananthan Deputy Senior Copy Editor: Kyla Cassandra Cortez Design Editors: Arthur Dennyson Hamdani & Kaisa Kasekamp Illustration Editor: Jessica Lam Photo Editor: Zeynep Poyanli Magazine Assistants: Sophie Ramsey & Kyleeanne Wood Associate Senior Copy Editors: Ozair Anwar Chaudhry & Lina Tupak-Karim Associate Design Editor: Kevin Li Cover Art: Jessica Lam Endpaper Art: Arthur Dennyson Hamdani & Kaisa Kasekamp Letters from the editors photography: Zeynep Poyanli Copy Editors: Divine Angubua, Manreet Brar, Paris Chen, Athen Go, Ikjot Grewal, Ann Jacob, Anuraag Kumar Nair, Elizabeth Li, Cindy Liang, Sofia Moniz, Leofwin Pu, Sara Russo, Vanessa Salvati, Momena Sheikh, Nandini Shrotriya, Margad Sukhbaatar, Michael Tripodi, Madison Truong, Carter Vis, Despina Zakynthinou Additional editing by: Caitlin Adams Special thanks to: Andrea, for bringing us homemade tiramisu on our roughest production day. Rise Kombucha, for helping us feel human when we felt like mere husks. Rosewood Dim Sum, for providing us with the most epic and gratifying post-production dinner anyone could ask for. Alice, for a banger mag playlist. Jadine, for your belief in our ability to complete this project. The TTC, for helping Alice come up with a theme. And last but definitely not least, to everyone who believed in us before we did, thank you. We are now going to take an extra long nap. The Varsity Magazine has a circulation of 4,000 published by Varsity Publications Inc. It is printed by Master Web Inc. on recycled newsprint stock. Content © 2023 by The Varsity. All rights reserved. Any editorial inquiries and/or letters should be directed to the magazine editor-in-chief. The Varsity Magazine reserves the right to edit all submissions. Please recycle this issue after reading. 21 Sussex Ave, Suite 306 Toronto, ON M5S 1J6 (416) 946-7600 passage.thevarsity.ca