Capilano Courier | Vol. 53 Issue 1

VOLUME 53, ISSUE NO.1

SEPTEMBER 2020 RE-EDUCATION - U-PASS NEGOTIATIONS FOR FALL SEMESTER CONTINUE - CSU RELEASES 2020-25 STRATEGIC PLAN - YOUR BODY IN A SPACE MATTERS: A Q&A WITH ALY LAUBE - QUARANTINE CUISINE: WHAT COMFORT FOOD LOOKS LIKE IN A PANDEMIC - BURNING SUGAR: A Q&A WITH CICELY BELLE BLAIN - GOODWILL HUNTING - BREAKING THE ICE - ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS—SO WHERE ARE THEY? - THE GREAT FATIGUE - HANDS - HOROSCOPES - MORE

Jason Ar kel l -Bo l es

@jasonarkellboles

letter from the editor

Navigating Transformation The weekend before Dr. Bonnie Henry announced a province-wide state of emergency, I went on a trip with the CSU Surf Club to Tofino. I had just broken up with someone I was still very much in love with.

I felt broken and incomplete in Tofino, but the land, speaking through the untamed ocean and old-growth forest, tried its best to soothe me.

On the way there, we spoke of the petition that was circulating at the time to shut down CapU. We gushed about how nice it would be to not have to go into class, to put the suffocating workload of our courses aside for a bit. I signed that petition.

We returned on Sunday, and on the ferry back we learned the news: Capilano University would be closed for the rest of the semester. It felt like waking up from a dream. Silence fell over us; we shared an unspoken understanding in that moment that things would be changing—a lot.

The lockdown that followed destroyed my pillars of comfort and love. Still reeling from my breakup, the normalcy and consistency of my daily life disintegrated over a weekend. The change was too radical, too quick for me. I plunged into a deep and poisonous depressive episode that tangled its grip around me. My patience thinned; I became insecure, hyper-critical and irritable, lethargic and foggy. Navigating my online classes felt impossible.

I longed for things I never really noticed or acknowledged before. I missed school, badly. I missed observing the curiosities and happenings in class. I missed the crowded bus rides to campus and the faces of the students on them—quietly gazing out windows, lost in thought, listening to music I couldn’t hear. I missed the presence of my classmates, their smiling, smirking, frowning, puzzled faces. I missed their voices. I missed the sun and the trees on campus. I missed my professors and their lectures.

The changes brought on by COVID-19 transformed my way of looking at the world.

I recognized, for the first time, the once-invisible aspects of my day-to-day life that made it so fulfilling. But as painful as this change has been, it’s also been intensely inspiring. During the week the lockdown was implemented, I read a tweet from Ryan Knighton (@ryanknighton), a writer and creative writing professor at CapU who recently delivered a speech addressing diversity in the workplace at a NASA forum.

“People with disabilities understand that a radical transformation must be met with an equally radical change in perspective. The way things were cannot be the star by which you navigate such a seachange. It is a metric of loss, not hope,” he wrote.

The months since the COVID-19 outbreak have shattered our conceptions of ‘normal’, but maybe that’s not such a bad thing. The idea of implementing a universal basic income has resurfaced in Canada and beyond. Calls for defunding police have gained widespread popularity across North America, and the Minneapolis police department has been abolished after the killing of George Floyd. It seems as though, in a somewhat collective spirit, people are seeing this world in a new light, and changes that seemed impossible before now feel very much feasible.

Given that our sense of kinship has been so disrupted, I believe the Courier’s role has become all the more crucial to CapU’s students and communities during this time of radical transformation. I want this publication to be a space where we can connect together creatively (see page 54), where we can start conversations that need to be had (see pages 41 and 42), and where we can demand better from the structures and systems that shape our lives (see page 34).

ANA MARIA CAICEDO

Editor-In-Chief

editor-in-chief Ana Maria Caicedo capcourier@gmail.com

features editor Sarah Rose specialfeatures.capcourier@gmail.com

Managing Editor Alisha Samnani manager.capcourier@gmail.com

Arts & Culture Editor Claire Brnjac arts.capcourier@gmail.com

news editor Alisha Samnani news.capcourier@gmail.com

Opinions Editor

associate news editor Bridget Stringer-Holden associatenews.capcourier@gmail.com

Staff Writers Joss Arnott Lena Orlova

art directors Emma Sato Sara Nguyen artdirector.capcourier@gmail.com

Staff Illustrator Valeriya Kim

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Alden Wallace Mackay, Alexis Zygan, Beatriz Mascarenhas de Andrade Costa, Emma Mendez, Jason ArkellBoles, Kira Dinim, Mariah Klein, Tamia Thompson,Valeria Velazquez, Wen Zhai

FEATURED ARTISTS Ana Maria Caicedo, Coralie Mayer, Emma Sato, Emma Sun, Gianmarco Iuele, Haluka Yagi, John Pachkowsky, Joyce Chan, Maria Santana, Mark Zimmer, Sara Nguyen, Valeria Velazquez

CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATORS Amy Asin, Annika McFarlane, April dela Noche Milne, Jo Whimsy, Kaho Furukawa, Karla Monterrosa, Lou Papa, Talia Rouck, Sophie Young, Sara Nguyen

Cover Art Valeriya Kim

opinions.capcourier@gmail.com

COLUMNIST PORTRAITS Emma Sato

VOLUME 53 ISSUE NO.1

NEWS

FEATURES

U-Pass Update

6

Goodwill Hunting

CSU Transit Advocacy

8

Re-Education

CSU TELUS Initative

9

CapU Housing

10

CapU Study Abroad

12

CapU Budget

13

CSU Strategic Plan

14

31 34

OPINIONS Online Learning

39

More Money, Less Problems

40

Breaking the Ice

41

Actions Speak Louder Than

ARTS & CULTURE

Words

42

Aly Laube

18

The Great Fatigue

44

Oracle and Bone

21

Comfort Food

22

Cicely Belle Blain

24

Artist Feature

26

COLUMNS Back Home

49

Coast to Coast

50

Perspectives on the PostWE'RE HIRING AN OPINIONS EDITOR AND A LITERATURE & HUMOUR EDITOR! Send your resume, a brief statement on why you want to work with us, and 3-8 relevant writing samples to capcourier@gmail.com.

INTERESTED IN CONTRIBUTING? Email capcourier@gmail.com INTERESTED IN ILLUSTRATING? Submit your portfolio or samples of work to artdirector.capcourier@gmail.com

Postmodern

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Maple Syrup Art

54

LITERATURE Hands.

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U-Pass Negotiations for Fall Semester Continue Negotiations are underway for the fall in an attempt to take into account the needs of all students BRIDGET STRINGER-HOLDEN Associate News Editor

The circumstances surrounding COVID-19 have created uncertainty about what that means for the U-Pass this fall. April refunds were processed for students who hadn’t used their U-Passes and the program was suspended during the summer. It was set to return in the fall, however, there are students who need the U-Pass to get to school or work, while others are staying home and have no use for it. So far, the $42.50 monthly fee for the U-Pass will be included in part of CapU’s fee collection as it is easier to process refunds than charge students after the fact. “Translink is understanding of the situation that students are in but they are also very aware that there is no consensus from the student population as to what folks want right now. We’ve got plenty of students who want it and plenty who don’t,” said Grace Dupasquier, Vice-President External for the Capilano Students’ Union (CSU).

While some Capilano University (CapU) students will be returning to in-person classes next fall, the majority of classes remain online. Graduate and practicum students have expressed that they need access to an affordable transit pass to get to campus to do their research. The $42.50 3-Zone U-Pass costs $177 when purchased normally, which means that some students will need access to this pass to save money to get to school or work. On the other hand, many students are facing financial hardship and are self-isolating at home, so they don’t want to be paying for a pass they won’t use. “As someone who’s at that negotiating table, I 100 percent see both sides. If I can save somebody money while they’re struggling then I absolutely want to. But at the same time, I have to consider other students who also need to save money and who are paying $177 for a transit pass because they don’t have access to U-Pass,” said Dupasquier.

Dupasquier sits on the U-Pass Advisory Committee, which has representatives from all the Metro Vancouver

post-secondary institutions (and the corresponding student unions) who use the U-Pass. Although an agreement to extend the U-Pass program until April 2025 was reached earlier this year on Jan.1, that had to be re-evaluated in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Modified Agreement was created on May 4 to stop charging students during the summer since transit was free. However, the day that agreement was signed by TransLink also happened to be the day that fares were reinstated.

“We’re hearing a lot of different things from students, which is actually making our negotiations a little more complicated,” said Dupasquier. For the fall, many options are being explored. A potential solution is that certain groups will be able to opt-out, such as exemptions for students who wouldn’t be able to ride transit at all due to health concerns or students who would normally live in the Metro Vancouver area but due to the pandemic have moved home or are studying from outside the Metro Vancouver area.

With a BC state of emergency declared Mar. 18, TransLink temporarily made transit free, implementing rear door boarding to protect drivers. A refund on the April U-Pass was given to students who had not requested the pass or who had requested but not used it. Although TransLink provided CapU with a list of students who were eligible for a refund, universities found the manual process strenuous—double-checking eligibility by cross referencing each student on the list.

“I am very aware that whatever agreement will be reached will not be perfect,” said Dupasquier. “It’s not going to meet everybody’s needs, but our focus more than ever is on helping students who need help the most and we’re doing our best to bring that to the table and to ensure that whatever agreement comes into place is fair and balanced and was reached with student voices in the room actively contributing.”

*UPDATE: On Aug. 24, the CSU confirmed that the U-Pass BC program will resume at CapU for the Fall 2020 semester.

NEWS

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CSU Transit Advocacy Continues Amidst Pandemic Months after TransLink spring service changes, CSU continues to monitor impact on students BRIDGET STRINGER-HOLDEN Associate News Editor

Four months after Translink implemented their spring service changes, the Capilano Students’ Union (CSU)’s prior skepticism appears to have been warranted.

Earlier this spring, TransLink modified their bus service, which resulted in less service to Capilano University (CapU).

The 239 Park Royal/CapilanoU route was replaced by the R2 Marine Drive RapidBus, while the 222 Metrotown Station/ Phibbs Exchange route was added. This addition complements the former 130 Metrotown/CapilanoU and 28 Joyce Station/ CapilanoU routes, now named the 130 Metrotown/Pender/ Kootenay and the 28 Phibbs Exchange/Joyce Station respectively. Passengers wishing to go to CapU must now connect with the 245 Phibbs/Capilano, which shuttles them the rest of the way thanks to the CSU’s advocacy. “We did the math and we realized that with all of these changes made, it would result in roughly a 50 percent decrease in service capacity to Capilano University, and obviously that was unacceptable to us,” said Grace Dupasquier, Vice-President External for the Capilano Students’ Union (CSU).

When the CSU noticed that TransLink would be streamlining three routes into one at Phibbs Exchange, they realized that the proposed changes would not meet the needs of the population it was trying to serve. Students already face large wait times getting to CapU and these new changes are likely to exacerbate the situation. “We were very concerned that they would just make these changes and all of a sudden students would end up stranded and not able to get to Cap at all,” said Dupasquier.

Although the CSU estimated that the changes would allow about 500-770 students to move between Phibbs Exchange and Capilano University during peak hours, COVID-19 has once again reduced service—recently leaving one CapU student

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stuck at Phibbs Exchange waiting over half an hour for the 245. “Once the pandemic situation is over and students start returning to campus in greater numbers, we’re going to be very interested to see how these changes have actually impacted the flow of commuters to and from campus,” said Dupasquier, who assured that the CSU would continue to monitor the situation to see how students are affected.

Prior to Translink’s announcement, the CSU calculated that there was the capacity to move 1155 students per hour during peak hours. The 245 Phibbs/Capilano was scheduled to come in eight-minute intervals during peak hours. This lowered capacity down to approximately 350 riders per hour, or 539 at “crush load” capacity—Translink’s term for overcrowded busses. The CSU brought these numbers to TransLink and they said they’d take it into consideration. “Despite the obvious safety and personal space concerns that term automatically conjures, Translink was apparently still hesitant to mitigate these circumstances by offering increased service to the university until CSU advocates began addressing the issue," said Dupasquier, noting that she felt dismissed after presenting the figures.

“They seemed to feel that the model they had proposed with the original eight-minute gap in peak service hours would be enough to meet the needs of the university,” said Dupasquier.

However, TransLink eventually became more receptive to students’ concerns, reducing the gap to six minutes during peak hours. There are still other worries for the CSU—such as accessibility for the harder-to-reach RapidBus stops—but the CSU’s primary concern at the moment is seeing how students are affected by these changes once the pandemic is over.

CSU partners with Telus Internet For Good Initiative CapU students in signif icant f inancial need eligible for low cost high-speed internet f rom TELUS ALISHA SAMNANI Managing Editor, News Editor LOU PAPA Illustrator

In late April, the Capilano Students’ Union (CSU) partnered with TELUS to provide eligible students with subsidized high-speed internet for only $9.95 per month.

“COVID-19 has really highlighted some financial accessibility needs amongst our students,” said Gurleen Kaur, CSU Vice President of Finance and Services. “With students being part of one of the more affected demographics of the workforce, coupled with an increased need of reliable internet to be able to participate at school, we were able to partner with TELUS to open up this program to our students during this pandemic.”

Since 2016, the Internet for Good program has been available to families receiving the maximum Child Care Benefit from the federal government. TELUS Internet for Good for Students expands the availability of the program, enabling school boards, schools and teachers to reach students in need.

“Some very dedicated faculty members from the Department of Early Childhood Education reached out to CSU executives and staff with the idea of partnering with TELUS to address students' unmet connectivity needs,” said Kaur. “After consulting with those faculty members, and staff from Financial Aid & Awards, we determined that the CSU would be best positioned to roll it out to students to get the program into the hands of students as quickly as possible,” said Kaur, noting that the program would not be possible without certain faculty members going “above and beyond.”

Over the summer, the CSU has received positive feedback from students participating in the program.

“We've been told that this has made a significant impact in not just these students' ability to succeed academically, but to stay connected to friends, family, and support systems during a time of unprecedented social isolation.”

The CSU will be responsible for identifying qualifying students, and will provide those students with a unique TELUS Internet for Good promotion code, which they can use to call TELUS and register for the program.

“We have less than 70 referral keys left to issue at this stage in the program — however, as students access the program and demonstrate that there is an unmet need, we can have discussions with TELUS about expanding access,” said Kaur.

To be eligible, students must be currently enrolled in any credit program at CapU, show proof of registration and demonstrate financial need. “We ask for things like what your income vs. expenses each month look like... if you were referred by financial aid, or if a student wishes, [they can] write us a blurb on why they are applying/ background on their situation if they feel like they want us to consider that as well,” said Kaur.

The application process takes less than 10 minutes, and students will hear back about their eligibility in as little as one day. Selected students will remain on the program for 24 months, but are able to cancel early if needed.

For more information or to apply for the program, visit csu.bc.ca/services/internet.

NEWS

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CapU Residence Will Remain Open for Students Amid COVID-19 Pandemic The shift to online classes has not changed student views on communal living BEATRIZ MASCARENHAS DE ANDRADE COSTA Contributor KAHO FURUKAWA Illustrator

Capilano University’s residence will remain open for the fall 2020 semester, with appropriate measures introduced to ensure that returning students like Kanish Murugan feel safe moving in.

Many students at CapU choose to live in residency due to the proximity to campus and the opportunity to meet people and make friends.

Although many classes will take place online, students seem eager to live in residence.

Murugan, a student in the 3D Animation for Film & Games Diploma program, believes that he will be safer “staying and having all meals at an institution [he] already trusts rather than to be required to go house hunting, to eat out or buy food items in new locations.”

“The [3D Animation] Program Coordinators have decided to send the hardware [we need for assignments] to the students to conduct the classes online,” said Murugan. “Staying in the residence puts me at ease... It makes my life easier and helps me focus more on the program rather than worrying too much about other essential needs.”

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For Murugan, the need for social interaction plays the biggest role when choosing to live in student housing. “[The residence has] allotted single occupancy rooms for every student and made restrictions in the common rooms and dining hall. Therefore, I do not have much concern living among other students this semester,” said Murugan, who believes CapU has come up with an effective contingency plan to face the pandemic. “Again, it all comes down to individuals following safety measures, like cleaning after themselves and wearing masks to avoid spreading the virus.”

Although the demand for student accommodation has decreased due to the pandemic and online classes, the residence remains a viable option for students during these unstable times, allowing them to interact with each other while ensuring strict safety measures.

The CapU Housing department could not be reached for comment.

NEWS

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CapU CANCELS REMAINING 2020 STUDY ABROAD trips The study abroad program has deferred travel until spring 2021 MARIAH KLEIN Contributor

Students accepted into Capilano University (CapU)’s study abroad program for Fall 2020 have delayed their trips until Spring 2021, as CapU waits for Canadian travel restrictions to be lifted. “We’re all waiting for what’s going to happen this fall and winter and if there’s going to be another wave of the pandemic,” said Study Abroad and Partnerships Officer Stasa Andric.

“What I’ve been finding is that despite COVID-19, students are still interested in travelling and going abroad, and so they are still applying for the Spring semester in comparable numbers to last year.” While Andric finds it somewhat surprising that students have remained enrolled in the program, she says refundable deposits mean “there’s very little risk for them applying right now; there’s little commitment until we get later in the year.”

The Study Abroad program is dedicated to ensuring that students have the opportunity to experience a semester abroad, once it is safe to do so. “How [COVID-19] ultimately pans out is beyond anyone’s ability to determine, but we are just monitoring it closely, and when it’s safe we’ll try to set up all our avenues for individuals to continue these experiences,” said CapU Director, International Chris Bottrill.

Cambodia and Vietnam field schools were scheduled right before the first COVID-19 outbreaks this past spring. Although

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students prepared for these field schools in the months leading up to the departure, the trip was ultimately canceled. Instead, CapU launched a virtual field school as a way for students to build relationships with Cambodian and Vietnamese locals—and for the students to help address the issues these communities are facing as a result of COVID-19. “We were trying to find alternatives because we believe in the value of this experience so much,” says Botrrill. “In the end, we decided that the right thing to do for the continuity for the students was to run a virtual field school.”

Even amidst the uncertainty of next year, Andric says the team is ready to hear from anyone interested in the program.

“We want to hear about your goals, why you want to go abroad and work with you to see if [an opportunity] that’s short term or long term is available for you.”

The team is still accepting applications until September 15th, and have information sessions available on their website, capilanou.ca/programs--courses/capu-for-you/ study-abroad/information-sessions/.

CapU's New Budget in Light of COVID-19 University executives estimate operational def icit of $8.3 million BRIDGET STRINGER-HOLDEN Associate News Editor

Although Capilano University (CapU)’s official budget was approved on Jan. 28 by the CapU Board of Governors, much of the budget needed to be re-evaluated in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Originally, we were going to do a revised budget, but based on discussions with the board and the ministry we decided to use [the previously approved budget] as an [outward-facing] forecast, and [continue] use it internally as a budget,” said Tally Bains, Director of Financial Services. Since forecasting estimates the amount of revenue while budgeting accounts for expected revenue, CapU decided that this was the best course of action.

As the Director of Finance, Bains is responsible for developing and monitoring the budget; as well as financial services and activities, such as payroll, accounts payable and student financial accounts. Since post-secondary institutions will be allowed to request to run in a deficit, CapU estimates an operating deficit, CapU estimates an operating deficit of $8.3 million.

The estimated impact on tuition revenues was calculated and compared to the original budget, as well as to the updated numbers from other auxiliary operations such as the childcare centre, parking fees and the bookstore. “We did go through a process where we tried to use estimates on what the impacts would be on enrollment numbers, so we looked at it by faculty and by program area,” said Bains.

Each dean created three scenarios based on historical trends and program specific information. They were called Scenario 1-Optimistic, Scenario 2-Moderate and Scenario 3-Pessimistic. Those were reviewed by CapU’s executive leadership team who decided to add a fourth scenario, referred to as Scenario 4-Pessimistic Plus, which aligned with the budget principle of conservatism. This scenario planned for an additional 8 percent decrease in enrollment in the fall and an additional 7 percent decrease in the spring compared to Scenario 3. This would be an overall decline in revenue of 5 percent for both domestic and international tuition revenue.

“Budgets go off of a number of assumptions and we take into account student enrollment projections for the following year,” said Oscar Blue, former Chair of the CapU Senate Budget Advisory Committee (SBAC). SBAC acts in an advisory capacity and provides initial input on financial results from each quarter that are supplied

by Bains and Jacqui Stewart, former vice-president of Finance and Administration. Now, with COVID-19, “many of the core assumptions used to draft the budget [are] no longer accurate,” explained Blue.

Normally, post-secondary institutions aren't allowed to be in a deficit position. However, since fall enrollment numbers won’t be finalized until Quarter 2 (Q-2), the Ministry of Advanced Education, Skills and Training will be requesting a deficit approval from the Minister of Finance on behalf of post-secondary institutions.

This request will be based on Q-2 forecast submissions due to the unprecedented circumstances surrounding COVID-19.

CapU will create their Q-2 forecast once fall enrollment numbers are finalized, allowing them to more accurately predict their deficit. “We are really in unprecedented times and things are gonna continue to change daily and weekly and so what’s going to happen is there is going to be quarterly forecasting instead,” said Blue. Post-secondary institutions that have accumulated surplus will be allowed to use it to fund their operations and to work with other institutions that need help staying afloat.

“We’re not too sure what’s going to happen until after the fee payment deadline but we are closely monitoring [the situation] and looking to see what we can do to minimize the deficit,” said Bains, citing travel restrictions and online classes as some possible threats to enrollment numbers. “Right now, there might be some cost containment in some areas, but there still will be expenditures in areas where we’re going to be advancing the university’s priorities forward.”

Projects were also reprioritized—such as pushing back administration-related projects in IT Services—in order to prioritize student learning that reflects the new reality.

“We also looked at the areas where we needed to do further investments to support a remote adapted learning education model,” said Bains, adding that she is keeping a close eye on fall enrollment numbers in order to make sure that the university recovers from the pandemic.

Although there is a large focus on reducing expenditures and containing the deficit, CapU is still focused on their Envisioning 2030 strategic plan goals and ensuring that students are supported during the transition toward online learning.

NEWS

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CSU Releases 2020-25 Strategic Plan CSU remains committed to equity, diversity and inclusion over the next f ive years ALISHA SAMNANI Managing Editor, News Editor VALERIYA KIM Illustrator ­14

Recent high-profile incidents of racism and discrimination, along with Black Lives Matter protests across the US and Canada, have placed increased attention on equity, diversity and inclusion work at many post-secondary institutions. The Capilano Students’ Union (CSU) has released their 2020 to 2025 Strategic Plan, a continuation of the fierce student advocacy they’ve become known for.

“This strategic plan is guiding our priorities, but it’s not the only work that we’re going to do over the next 5 years,” explained CSU President Emily Bridge. “We had an awareness of the previous plan, but we really didn’t use it at all or build off of it; we deliberately left it aside and tried to start from scratch with envisioning what our mission was, what we want to achieve and how we’re going to do that.”

The seven page plan was a “year-long collaborative process between stakeholders, the board of directors, and the strategic planning committee,” something Bridge said was important to ensure the CSU’s ability to support all members of the student union.

“We really were careful with the wording that we chose,” said Bridge. “We recognized that often these sorts of documents—strategic plans—can be very colonial and they can be used to reinforce the status quo. We talked a lot about the wording because I really believe that words have power...if we’re going to use [certain] words, we need to understand what they mean and what our commitments are.”

The newly-released strategic plan is built upon five guiding principles: 1. Divesting from colonial power, and championing Indigenization 2. Demonstrating leadership, value, and impact 3. Centering justice, equity, and sustainability 4. Delivering results with excellence 5. Connecting with students to drive our work Championing Indigenization—which is the process of collaborating and consulting Indigenous folx to ensure organizations, spaces, programs, and procedures account for Indigenous values and perspectives—is something Bridge admits the CSU needs to improve upon. “We recognize as an organization that we don’t have a ton of Indigenous staff, we don’t have a ton of Indigenous folx on our board of directors, and so we know we need to do a lot of work there. We’re always looking at how we do things and who’s not here at the table and why. That’s an ongoing process.”

The new plan’s three key pillars are reducing all barriers that limit access to education, letting students

feel empowered to participate and understand the role of the CSU, and facilitating the creation of safe and inclusive student centre spaces and infrastructure.

When asked to elaborate on the first pillar, Bridge recalled that while most of the conversation centered around financial barriers, the team realized that “...the colonial infrastructure of a university and the systems and the procedures and the policies that are in place in universities can be very oppressive to marginalized groups of students of various identities.”

“It’s interesting, we were discussing…[our] antiracism and anti-hate work months ago, back in January.

This year was the first year in a number of years that we held an event and really gave some awareness and programming around black history month—that’s a huge problem,” said Bridge. “It’s fortunate for us that this aligns with what’s happening globally and that we can use the momentum happening in the world to really drive this work home at the university and benefit our students.”

In addition to assuring that students at all four CapU locations feel served and empowered by the work of the CSU, Bridge says that one of the most important objectives is to spread awareness of the CSU’s work to the entire student population.

“A universal struggle for student unions and student associations across Canada is having the student population understand what a student union is. We do a lot for students that I think folx either don't know about or that fades into the background of your university experience,” said Bridge. “You don't think about the fact that you have a health and dental plan provided by the student union, you don’t think about the fact that a lot of the achievements and policies in place to protect students... is from student organizing. It doesn’t really surface in your day to day university experience.”

“I would really love students to read [the plan]. If they have an idea for how they want to see one of these objectives achieved, something that they would like to be a priority that isn’t, I would encourage them to just reach out to us. What does this objective or this priority mean to you, how can this plan support you in your post-secondary experience?”

To provide feedback or suggestions regarding the 2020-25 Strategic Plan, students are encouraged to email CSU President Emily Bridge at president@csu.bc.ca.

NEWS

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sARA sARAnnGGUUYEN YEN

@sarasnnguyen @sarasnnguyen 16

M a r i a Lu i sa Sa n ta n a

@malu.santanax FEATURED ART

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Your Body In a Space Matters­— A Q&A with Aly Laube ANA MARIA CAICEDO Editor-in-Chief

Cushy Entertainment’s co-founder on why supporting local arts and culture matters

Aly Laube is burning out. Light filters through the window of her cozy Gastown studio apartment, highlighting the dark mane of curls that frame her sleepy eyes.

Columbia prohibited until a vaccine is available, Vancouver’s cultural ecosystem— already fragile pre-pandemic—has been all the more gutted.

If you frequent Vancouver’s music scenes, you’ve probably come across Laube at some point. For over two years now, Cushy Entertainment—the production company she founded with her best friend Mati Corimer—has been injecting life into the city’s music scenes by putting on genderdiverse events that feature lineups of local and international artists alike, artists such as Kimmortal, Tonye Aganaba and BbyMutha.

In the weeks before the outbreak, I attended one of Laube’s shows. It was a Latin music showcase at Fortune that featured the Portland-based and cumbia-inspired band Savila and Indigenous-Salvadorian guitar wiz Kin Balam, among other Latin artists. The turnout wasn’t huge, but that didn’t matter.

I brought my roommates—both Latinx women—and we twirled the night away with other Latinx folks. The music was enchanting; the atmosphere fed our energy. As someone who rarely sees my latinidad celebrated in the cultural scenes I frequent, this show was electrifying.

If there’s one thing that COVID-19 has impacted indefinitely about social life, it’s concerts. With large gatherings in British

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Since the outbreak, I’ve been thinking a lot about the significance of Laube’s cultural contributions to this notoriously “no-fun” city. For so many of us who have felt excluded or disconnected from Vancouver’s cultural scenes, Laube’s work at Cushy has invigorated our lives, spirits and relationship to this city.

Back in February, pre-COVID-19, I visited Laube to interview her about Cushy’s nowcancelled Glitterball 2020 music festival.

In-between taking photos, we spoke about Cushy, Laube’s approach to putting on shows, and the importance of feeling represented in your local cultural scenes.

What do you think differentiates Cushy from other production companies?

about being a part of something that can hopefully change the culture in our city.

A lot of things. Definitely a lot of things.

For me, progress is really essential. People feeling like they’re a part of something progressive, like they’re a part of something that’s moving—not something that’s static and unchanging and stuck in the past, which is how I feel about a lot of music events in the city.

First of all, we’re independent. So we don’t have anyone else giving us money, except for grant funders sometimes. We’re independent which means that we run out-of-pocket.

When a show loses money, that’s me losing money and Mati [Corimer] losing money.

When a show gets money, usually we put it into our company bank account so we don’t even see it.

We kind of work for free, which is a big part of what we do—obviously trying to change that one day—but it’s a big part of what we do.

And because we work basically just to do it, we function very differently. Paying the artists before we pay ourselves, that’s something most big companies won’t do for you.

I think the biggest difference is really, really genuinely caring so deeply about the community. You don’t get that with big companies, because companies aren’t people.

What are your objectives when you’re putting on a show?

My priority when I book a show is creating an experience that’s different from everything else that’s being provided in the city. I go very much out of my way to do things that no one else is doing; I go to shows to see explicitly what’s being done so I can figure out what’s not being done and do it.

A lot of the time, that means giving a platform to a certain constituency because I’ve noticed that a certain group is underrepresented or they tend to be far-flung across the city and don’t show up all in the same place very often, and I want to change that.

I want people to feel inspired and not disheartened.

When I was growing up I was feeling very disheartened when I would go to shows—I wouldn’t see anyone who looked like me or talked like me or lived like me on stages. And so, I felt like I was trying so hard to connect to something that just had no relevance to me. And it was disappointing, you know? I wanted more out of my scene.

At the time, I was surrounded by mostly straight white guys who introduced me to the indie scene, and [I] discovered very rapidly that I was the only one who wasn’t feeling like I was being included.

That’s a shitty feeling, and I don’t want people to feel that when they come to our shows, I want people to feel the opposite of that. I hope that when people come, they feel a sense of community and comfort and excitement

Can you tell me a bit about your ethnic background and sexuality?

My dad is Chilean and French, my mom is Lebanese and Polynesian.

My sexuality—I’m pansexual, which means I can be attracted to anyone regardless of sex or gender.

Has being a mixed-race queer woman influenced your approach to producing shows? How so?

I think that I have this privilege of being able to stand in a lot of people’s shoes because of who I am. Being mixed, I understand the privileges of [being] white-passing, and I understand also the disadvantages of racism—‘cause I get both, depending on who is talking to me, and in which context they’re talking to me.

Everyone takes you differently—and the same thing with being pansexual—because I am straight passing and I have that privilege, but I also understand the experience of being in a committed relationship with a woman and I understand how that feels.

Understanding a bunch of different perspectives allows me to be better at what I do. Because I have that fluidity in terms of being able to walk into your shoes or your shoes just enough to kind of understand it gives me an ability, I think, to put on shows that do feel inclusive.

‘Cause a lot of the time, I find, with constituency events where it’s like ‘hey, this is a show for women” people feel intimidated by that because they feel like it’s not for them, they don’t belong there, they’re not wanted there. That’s something I try to steer against, because I understand the importance of getting people in the room who need to see more content like that. And so, I try to bring that with me when I’m doing stuff, being like, okay, like we’re throwing a queer showcase and I’m a queer woman, but also, you don’t have to be gay to be here!

You’ve spoken on your Instagram about having myotonia congenita while acknowledging that you’re highfunctioning.

Yeah, so myotonia congenita is a muscular disease, and it’s genetic— I got it from my ARTS & CULTURE

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YOUR BODY IN A SPACE MATTERS: A Q&A WITH ALY LAUBE

mom. Basically, the signals that my brain sends to my muscles to respond get all loopy and weird.

Usually, it’s that muscles don’t relax once I tense them. Which is why I get migraines all the time, ‘cause my eyes get really tense and the muscles behind my eyes get really tense and then I get crazy headaches. Or I won’t be able to breathe because I won't relax all the way, or I won’t be able to run ‘cause I have like paralyzed thighs.

The worst part of it is that it creates full body fatigue, because you're always working harder than you need to be; your muscles are always working way harder. If I don’t have the time I need to decompress and let my body rest, I get really sick.

Could you speak to living with an invisible disability while being high functioning in terms of how people perceive or understand your state of being?

People don’t believe me when I tell them that I do have a chronic illness, because I do so much. I am very, very high functioning and I work like five jobs and make music and go to school and do all this shit. So when I tell people that I can’t come out tonight because my myotonia’s acting up and I have a migraine or something, there’s always kind of this like, “yeah, okay... you? If you’re that sick then why are you doing so much?”

People treat me like that all the time. And I understand why, because if it were a completely debilitating illness then I wouldn’t be able to leave the house. I wouldn’t be able to do stuff like that, and it’s not. It’s just a constant nuisance that sometimes becomes debilitating if I push myself too far.

It’s provided me with a lot of perspective, I think, because on top of having that I also deal with a lot of anxiety and depression— those are also like invisible things right—so I understand very intimately the experience of having barriers that people can’t see, and that is something that I also try to keep in mind when throwing shows.

How does it affect you playing guitar, like in shows?

Oh my god, it sucks!

That’s why I use a lot of power chords—power chords meaning you keep your hand in one position and then you slide it up and down the neck, so you’re playing different chords, but your hand positioning isn’t changing very much. And why I do that is because physically moving my hand from this to a different shape 20

in a split second—sometimes it just won’t happen.

So I can’t afford to write songs where I’m putting a lot of stress on my hands and then I’m also going from like, you know, heavygripping the neck to doing really agile finger picking. My hands sometimes do that, sometimes don’t. It’s really frustrating, but I’ve kind of adjusted to writing in a way that I know I can play.

Between Cushy, fronting Primp, and being the Editor-in-Chief of The Runner while going to University, you do a lot. What drives you and your work ethic?

What drives me is the desire to change things.

I’m not satisfied with the world that we live in.

I find it unjust and I find it disappointing. And I come from a place of wanting so desperately for it to be better, and needing to feel like I’m doing what I can to help it be better.

It gives me satisfaction and fulfilment to feel like I am helping things be better, helping people be happier and safer and more cherished and appreciated and celebrated, as they should be.

After the Latin showcase you put on, you posted on social media about the importance of community supporting Arts & Culture.

Why is it important for people to show up to shows like the ones you put on?

Like I mentioned before, Cushy’s not a thing that I do for money; it’s something I do because I want to and because I think it should be done.

The artists need you to be there, that is how I see it. These people are important and they have important things to say.

And I am so intentional in my programming, that you know that. When you come to one of our shows, you know that these musicians were thoughtfully selected. They’re not just people I was throwing together on a bill ‘cause they have a lot of friends or followers, I’m doing it because I feel like they deserved to be heard. And as a community member, you need to be there to hear them. Your body in a room matters. You being there and listening to people matters.

I think that people underestimate the power that they have, you know? There’s a lot to be said for a sense of community at a show. And it’s something that we don’t feel very often. A lot of the time if you go to a Vancouver show people are very separate, people are standing very far apart, they’re not talking, no one’s dancing, there’s no connection. You’re just there to see a band and drink a beer, and then

you leave. And that’s not what I want, and I think that we all deserve better than that, and I think that we all want more than that.

But if you want more than that then you gotta go, you know? You gotta stop spending your money at shitty nightclubs and start being intentional with where you direct your time and your energy and your dollars.

Being intentional with the way that you spend your time in the arts community will change this city, one-hundred percent. Because who has money and who has an audience has power.

Do you burn out often?

Burnout happens a lot. It happens in every job that I have, but it happens the most with Cushy, for now. Partially because it is my most socially oriented work; it is the cause that is the dearest to my heart and the most personal.

And so when things don’t go well, or if I’m not seeing the results that I want to be seeing, it feels very personal. It’s difficult for me to take the losses as well as I take the victories, especially because I’m a one-man show, I’m doing everything on my own. So when I put like 50 unpaid hours of labour into something and then I don’t see the returns, it hurts.

And that weighs me down, and it makes me feel isolated—ironically, because I’m trying to create community, and if I feel like that community’s not there, I feel even more isolated.

How do you cope with burnout?

I kind of hermit, I’ll hide away from the world and go home and have a bath, really, really chill, maybe write a little music, just do nothing.

That’s how I set myself right, and that’s how I take the time to process and reconcile.

Like, okay yes the world is garbage and the government is trash and people are being hurt and they shouldn’t be and that’s fucked up and you can only do so much about it. You have to remember that you exist in your own life and in your own body, do what you can and move on.

INSIDE THE STUDIO ­—

A Summer's End: Hong Kong 1986

JOSS ARNOTT Staff Writer

There’s something about a soft summer breeze that has this magical ability to take you back to a place you’ve long since passed by. A memory, a feeling, a moment in time only half-remembered. It’s late nights under a midsummer’s moon, biking down a quiet suburban street or the refreshing feeling of dipping your toes beneath gentle waves. A Summer’s End is very much akin to that soft summer breeze. The story begins with a quiet thought: “When I think of my life, what I have, and what I’ve accomplished, I think I’m quite content with what it is.” But is anyone ever truly content? Or do we all secretly crave something… more?

A Summer’s End is a visual novel— essentially a mix between a novel and a video game—set in mid-1980’s Hong Kong.

Multiple dialogue options exist throughout the game which affect the outcome of the story, leading to one of two endings. As a player, you navigate the story with limited control of where you’re going.

A Summer’s End was the first video game developed by independent Vancouver game studio Oracle and Bone. The studio is made up of two people: Charissa So and Tida Kietsungden. The two wanted to create a story that could represent and support the LGBTQ community while simultaneously celebrating their Hong Kong heritage. The

A sit down with first-time Vancouver game developer Oracle and Bone.

story was written by So, who also created the game’s soundscape. Kietsungden handled art direction, designing everything from the characters to the backgrounds. The duo set out to create A Summer’s End in 2018 and released it in April of this year. The two had previously worked together on smaller projects, but this was their first foray into game development.

"We both had similar interests together,” says So. “We did comics together and we looked at the next step of making games together.” The real difficulty in producing a visual novel is the sheer amount of artwork involved. A Summer’s End boasts over 400 unique art assets, all of which were designed, reiterated and finalized in just two years.

Kietsungden had to abandon her day job and work on the game’s art full-time to keep up. "It just spiralled into something more and more and more," So remarked. What started as a small scale passion project quickly grew into the lovingly made A Summer’s End. The story of A Summer’s End follows the journey of Michelle and Sam, and how their relationship slowly unfolds in the Britishcontrolled Hong Kong. From the neon-lit densely packed streets of the Mong Kok shopping district to the quiet beaches of Sai Kung, Michelle questions her relationship with her city, her mother and herself as her

feelings for Sam slowly evolve. In the words of a mysterious old lady from Mong Kok, “Sometimes the road won’t appear until you take the first step towards it.”

"Our inspiration for this game came through our love of 1980’s to 90’s Hong Kong and Taiwanese media,” said So. “We were inspired by the scenes presented in these films and we wanted to do our own take of it to express the ideas of oppression and freedom of choice.” Although Kietsungden and So pay homage to visual elements from the eighties and nineties, the game doesn’t rely on nostalgia to hook its audience. Instead, the neon-lit cityscapes and calming synth music blend into the background that seamlessly supports the timeless and heartfelt story.

Kietsungden’s visuals are the perfect foil to So’s writing. Because of their chemistry, every part of the game works in tandem to create a visual novel about first love in a time and place where being a member of the LGBTQ community was difficult at best.

I definitely recommend picking up A Summer’s End if you have the time. The game costs $18 on Steam and takes around six hours to play from beginning to end. This well-told story is a genuine love letter to 80’s anime, Hong Kong cinema and contemporary Asian literature.

ARTS & CULTURE

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Q

rAnTInE A u

CuISiNe

What Comfort Food Looks Like in a Pandemic In the time of the bubonic plague, the afflicted ate mint sauce to balance their humours. During the Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918, the cuisine du jour was similar to the food we eat when we’re sick today: meat soups and citrus juice. In our current pandemic, we have to find our own ways of comforting ourselves. In this piece, four contributors define how food can be healing to someone in a turbulent time.

TALIA ROUCK Illustrator

TOMATO EGG SOUP NOODLES WEN ZHAI Contributor

Ever since I started to cook for myself, and I was in need of emotional support, I would always turn to the kind of noodles my mum used to make for me for breakfast when I was in junior middle school.

Depending on the time available, she would boil some fine dried noodles, choosing from several types ranging from the thinnest to the thickest. While the noodles were boiling, she would beat an egg or two and add a bit of salt. After slicing a tomato into pieces resembling lotus petals, she would stir fry them with oil, salt, and other ingredients, and then add some water. When the water started to boil, she calmly spread the egg across the surface in a circle (avoiding the boiling center) and gently stir. As soon as the egg stiffened, the soup was ready. She would then put the noodles in a bowl and pour the tomato and egg soup on top of it. The noodles would get salty and slightly sour from the soup, and the egg jelly was soft and savoury. The cooking and devouring process can be both finished in minutes! It saved me from the panic of running late for school many times and I always remember those rushed mornings fondly.

When I cook for myself sometimes I settle for less complicated soup. But when a kitchen is unavailable, like now, I simply need to bear with instant noodles. They don’t have the same chewy element as the fine dried noodles, but it will do as a substitute. Most importantly, it stands out from dishes offered by the cafeteria, and is the most similar to my all-time comfort food that has sustained me through many trying times.

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MACARONS CL AIRE BRNJAC Arts & Culture Editor

A macaron is a finicky thing. The two delicate outer shells must be airy and light, but slightly chewy at the same time. The inside filling must be flavourful, but not overpowering. The whole confection must exist in harmony, as any off section will take the experience from a heavenly symphony to a lumpy, middle school band.

I’ve made macarons a grand total of two times. The first time, I decided to try a chocolate macaron, which ended up as an unmitigated disaster. The top of the macaron was cracked and ugly, and the filling was awful, gritty chocolate icing. I have never cried while cooking, but I’ve never been closer than watching my macarons grow uglier in the oven. My worst fears were realised when I took a bite of the macaron.

It was like gnawing on a piece of over-sweet, chocolate-y gum. Awful.

I needed a do-over.

I made lemon raspberry macarons the second time. I lovingly simmered my own filling out of jam and lemon juice. I whipped the egg whites to stiff peaks and constantly asked my mom if they looked right. I put a fan on the shells so they would dry out and become shiny. I constantly checked on them in the oven, until they looked just the right amount of puffed. I assembled them late in the night, trying in vain to find two matching shells for each macaron, piping the filling in them meticulously.

They tasted great. They lasted a grand total of two hours before my family devoured them. Victory feels sweeter when you know how far you’ve come. Much to my family’s despair, I refuse to make any more.

I don’t want to ruin my streak.

INDOMIE MIE GORENG KIRA DINIM Contributor

DUBIOUS FOOD JOSS ARNOTT Staff Writer

Four things are getting me through quarantine: a healthy supply of chocolate bars, the two friends I was trapped with, and cooking.

I really love to cook, and I’m surprisingly good at it. There’s something so rewarding about properly following a recipe and ending up with a halfway decent meal. However, in quarantine, something just… snapped. I, along with many others, stopped giving a fuck. I just started winging it when it came to dinner. At first, my creations were tame, slight variations, nothing too harmful. But slowly, like the receding hairline on your uncle, my food became more and more dubious. I’d usually set out to create some sort of curry. The fun thing about curry is you can really do whatever the hell you want to it and still claim it’s curry, especially if you casually offer it up to your unsuspecting roommates for dinner.

Cooking like this really scratches that mad scientist itch. You wield unspeakable power, your stomach’s fate lying in the balance. But even if your food is inedible, you’ll always learn something—even if it’s as simple as never, ever using that much cayenne pepper ever again.

I’m not sure why, but for me, throwing caution to the wind and peanut butter into a pot really does wonders for my psyche.

For those brave enough to try this at home: Dubious Food: Step 1: Place garlic and butter in a pot, cook on medium-high heat until aromatic (approximately one minute.)

Step 2 - 9: ????????????

Step 3: Profit and or Vomit Enjoy!

Chef ’s Note: For added fun don’t try the food until it’s already on your plate! No risk, no fun.

One doesn’t often think of instant noodles as life-changing, but as a broke university student, a package of really, really good instant noodles can be just that.

It was an average day at Superstore when I happened upon them by chance; the red and white package shimmered in the fluorescent lights, calling to me. “Indomie Mi Goreng”, I read. It was the price that got me, more than anything else. $1.98 for a pack of five? A steal.

The first bite was revolutionary. An explosion of spice and sweetness, more potent flavour than anything from a package has a right to contain. It made me want to hop on a plane to Indonesia to taste the authentic fried noodles from a street vendor.

A week later, quarantine began. In amongst the fear and uncertainty, my spicy noodles kept me warm through the long nights. They reminded me that the world was wide and waiting to be explored, full of untouched culinary depths and new spices.

The inevitable day came, however, when the last package was gone.

I rushed to Superstore, braving the waves of panicked shoppers, only to find barren shelves and disappointment.

Thus began the search. Walmart, sold out. Save-On-Foods, sold out. Nearby convenience stores, only Ichiban. Amazon, sold out.

Here, at least, I found others who suffered as I did. Indomie Mi Goreng is apparently something of a phenomenon, and reading the Amazon reviews helped to ease the desperate pain of being separated from my new addiction.

Still, there was no true relief. I began to accept the reality that it would be months before I tasted the heavenly dish again, and times were dark.

Until I peeked into my boyfriend’s pantry, and there they were, as familiar as my own face.The world was suddenly brighter. It felt like a miracle from the noodle gods themselves.

Now, months later, they’re back in stock, and I have three packages of five safely tucked into my pantry.

As a self-professed instant noodle connoisseur, I advise that next time you’re looking for a cheap meal, pass over the Mr. Noodle. Try the Indomie. I beg of you, never buy the last package. I'm afraid of what would happen if I ran out.

ARTS & CULTURE

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Burning Sugar: A Q&A with Cicely Belle Blain A R A R E I N S I G H T I N TO R E VO LU T I O N A RY W R I T I N G EMMA MENDEZ Contributor

“I think I would like people to walk away with a bit of rage,” said author Cicely Belle Blain. I had the opportunity to virtually sit down with Blain to discuss their new poetry book Burning Sugar, as well as their process, emotional journey, and hopes, for this September’s issue of the Courier.

Blain, a Black and mixed queer femme, is a passionate and action-oriented individual striving to create communities in a world based on respect and true liberation. Blain is now carrying their work forward through the poetry of Burning Sugar, dropping September 29th.

At 26, Blain is the CEO of their own social justice-led diversity and inclusion consulting company, founder of the Black Lives Matter Vancouver chapter, columnist for Xtra Magazine, as well as an activist and writer. With the Black Lives Matter movement gaining more momentum following the death of George Floyd at the hands of police, and the increasing rallying cry for radical change, Burning Sugar deals with the legacy of colonialism, how it impacts Black lives and the presence this legacy has in the lives of marginalized peoples.

EM: I want to ask you about your history and relationship with poetry. When did your journey with poetry start? And how? Was there a particular moment when you realized that you had to write Burning Sugar as a poetry book?

CBB:

I used to always love poetry as a kid. I loved rhyming poetry or funny poetry. My grandma’s always been into poetry and would make me read these old-time poetry books. It was always kind of an interest in the back of my mind. I didn’t actually start writing poetry probably until I went to university and tried to do a bit of slam poetry, but realized that was not my jam at all. The performing of poetry is very different from the writing of poetry. So after that, I was like, “maybe this is not for me.” But then I realized I don’t have to perform it, I can write it.

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I just always have a selection of poems developing, it was never really an intentional vision for it. It was just kind of, “I’ll just write some poems, keep them in this book, whatever.” Then I saw that Vivek Shraya was advertising for this kind of contest where they select a Black, Indigenous, or Person of Colour (BIPOC) writer from within Canada, anyone under 30. I was thinking, “okay, I have a bunch of poems sitting around, what if I put them together and made it a book?” I totally thought, “there is no way anybody will be interested in these random ramblings,” and a few months later, I got this call from Vivek. I was thinking, “oh my God, I’m on the phone with my idol, this is ridiculous!”

She was like “Hey, we’d love to publish your book.” I was like “WOOOOOOO!” I don’t know if there was a moment or if there was just something that told you that you had to tackle these very big, broad, and difficult themes with this book?

EM:

What Burning Sugar was two years ago before it began the whole editing process and working with Vivek and with the publishers, was very different from what it is now. There were definitely elements of that, but as soon as I knew it was being published, I did want to tell a specific story and have a specific narrative of these pieces around anti-Blackness, oppression, and systemic racism. That’s what I talk about in my work and that’s what I talk about as an activist, and so I knew that I wanted that to be a thread throughout the book. The way that the book is structured, it’s split up into three sections. The first one is about places I’ve been and poems that I’ve written whilst there. So that’s kind of an easy inspiration, wherever I travel to just be inspired by what’s around me and to write about things in that way. The second chapter is about art. So just visiting galleries and witnessing art and responding to it. That was already a natural process that I had. Then I think with the actual publication, I got to make it more cohesive and bring it all together with this underpinning narrative bringing to CBB:

light the experiences of Black folks and people who are marginalized in different ways, but still through a poetic sort of lens.

Was there a particular section of poems that was harder to write or put together? Was there a section or poem in particular which you’re most proud of, or that had the most impact on you personally?

EM:

CBB: The Child section was the hardest because it’s the

most personal. Up until this point I’ve done a lot of writing, but it’s usually political commentary or book reviews or things that are connected to my identity, but not so personal about who I am. So that part was definitely pretty intense. To write these things and realize that once it’s out there, it’s out there and people are gonna read it. Especially talking about my family struggles or trauma in my family’s past and things like that. I’m pretty out there, and have a presence online and stuff. But I rarely post super personal stuff, so that was the most challenging part; to make this book unique, it had to have my voice and experiences that only I’ve had. My favourite poem is “North Carolina,” as that poem includes the reason behind the name of the book. It talks about visiting a former slave plantation for the first time and feeling the weight of history and trauma in the air, it's sort of the crux of why I wrote the book.

EM: You’re incredibly busy, you're the CEO of your own consulting company and, on top of that, you're an activist, columnist, and so much more. What’s next for you? Are you thinking of writing another book?

I definitely want to write more. I would love the idea of Burning Sugar having a follow-up. Sometimes the inspiration just strikes, and I always have a bunch of poems in my back pocket. What I learned throughout this whole process is sometimes I feel like a lot of writers think a piece of work is not good if it’s not published. But I learned that CBB:

it's okay that I just have a bunch of poems that the world will never see, that’s fine. You curate and pick and choose which ones get published. I’m hoping to be working on some new projects over the fall. I definitely want to write a non-fiction book that has some language around helping people through their process of unlearning anti-Blackness, it’s been my passion for a while. But I’m really excited about the opportunities Burning Sugar has presented and the interest. I’m excited to be doing a bunch of festivals over the next few months. Like there’s one coming up where I’m speaking at the same festival as Roxanne Gay so that’s super exciting. Just to see my name on this list with Vivek Shraya and Roxanne Gay and Elle Jones is like woah! This makes no sense! But I’m excited.

EM: What do you think is the most urgent thing that you

really hope and wish for, as a creative and as an activist, that people walk away with after they’ve read your poems?

CBB: I think I would like people to walk away with a bit of rage. Especially when you read poetry you’re expecting a calming or a whimsical experience. That’s the kind of reputation that poetry has, but actually, it can also be used to incite rage, and anger, and frustration about the world that we live in. Everyone has different learning styles and maybe for folks who are into poetry, this will kind of be an accessible way for them to understand the nuances of the Black experience and how frustrating the world can be sometimes. But still also a sense of hope, I tried to include some hopeful narratives in there as well. I also think because of the cover, it’s kind of friendly and with bright colours; people might pick it up. This could be the first time that they're entering into this world. I hope that it’s a starting point for some, but also wherever folks are at on their journey, I hope they can find something in it that sparks a conversation or a reflection on our world.

*This interview has been edited for brevity

ARTS & CULTURE

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ARTIST FEATURE

N I R H KAT H E T Kathrin Te was in a h fu So she d nk. esigned a funky bag.

JOSS ARNOTT Staff Writer

Quarantine. It’s so dull and so draining. You all know the deal by now: classes moved online, back home with your parents, and that all-encompassing fatigue caused by waking up three minutes before classes start. A class which is, at best, slightly incomprehensible.

So how do you create? How do you make something new when your whole world is spinning out of control? The second-year IDEA School of Design student, Kathrin Teh, accepted the chaos and created new boundaries. Before quarantine, Teh could clearly separate her work from her personal life. But like many other people, the line that kept her life neatly segregated disappeared abruptly during quarantine. For many weeks, Teh struggled, and her work suffered.

She wasn't proud of her designs, and she knew that she needed to make a change. “It was hard to establish when it was time for me to work and when it was time for me to relax,” Teh said.

Her solution was to recreate that separation within her own bedroom. She was finally able to focus by turning her desk into a space exclusively for work, and this let her reclaim her personal time. “I had to accept that this is the way things are going to be now and that there is nothing I can do to change it,” Teh said. “It’s better if I learn to adapt instead of mourning what I’ve lost.”

Once Teh managed to adapt to her new reality, she had to find inspiration. She looked to last summer, when Teh visited Japan. It was the first time she’d been anywhere by herself, and she went for a month. She doesn't speak any Japanese, but that didn’t stop her. “I was really inspired by the graphic design,” said Teh, “a lot of it is really cutesy but also playful and I wanted to emulate that [in my work.]”

For the city-themed shopping bag that she designed for coursework, Teh drew her inspiration from Kyoto. The bag— which recently won an award in Applied Arts Magazine—features a logo designed by Teh alongside images she took in Kyoto of the Fushimi Inari Shrine. “The [orange] colour I chose is really prominent throughout Kyoto,” she explained. “It’s everywhere—it’s on shrines, it’s on lampposts, it’s on street signs—it’s everywhere.”

After Teh broke out of her slump, she was eager to keep designing and has kept creating new things over the summer. Her goal is to design at least one new thing a week.

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ARTIST FEATURE

Teh’s process is to initially sketch out ideas for everything, from new brands of tequila to space agency posters in a drawing pad. After Teh decides on a name for her new design she figures out the brand’s identity, which comprises themes Teh wants to incorporate and embody in the design.

Teh then needs to figure out exactly what she’ll need to incorporate into her design to make them as accurate as possible. Once Teh’s done this, she brings all of her research and sketches together and finalizes her concept digitally with Adobe or other apps. Teh’s large portfolio is a testament to her work ethic, while her simple yet playful designs speak to her travels in Japan as well as her own personal style.“Graphic design is really everywhere, it’s in everything that you see,” Teh mentioned as she recalled one of her first art classes. “It's a very integral part of our society.”

The work that goes into creating even the simplest of designs is something most people rarely take the time to think about,but the ability to create a design that sells requires not just skill, but hard work and diligence.

ARTS & CULTURE

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A n a M a r i a Ca i c e d o

@anamariacaicedo_ 28

Joh n Pach kows ky

@salt.the.earth FEATURED ART

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J oyc e C h a n

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FEATURED ART

Goodwill Hunting Shopping second hand helps fight fast fashion, but with the rise of online resale, does buying vintage really stitch the gap between poverty and sustainability?

JOSS ARNOTT Staff Writer

There’s a certain magic to thrift shopping. I can still remember the first T-shirt I picked out at Value Village as a kid. My Dad let my sister and I each pick out something to buy. My sister bought a bronze grail with a single word written on it: Greg. I found a bright blue shirt, which had the words “just be glad I’m not your kid” written on it in the most horrific red font I have ever seen. Even then, I realized how preciously tacky that T-shirt was, and I loved it.

Thrift shopping has become increasingly popular over the last few years, and because of this, prices soared, meaning good finds are few and far between. The new faces of the resale economy are vintage stores operating on massive websites like Thread Up and even Instagram storefronts. “There have been huge changes in all aspects of the industry,” says Julian Goto, an alumni of Capilano’s business program and a former independent reseller. “When I started thrifting, I might have been the only younger person in the entire Value Village.”

The thrift industry is on track to becoming a 64 billion dollar industry by 2024. “Resale is exploding,” reads a report from Forbes. Of that projected $64 billion, over half is attributed to the emerging resale market. It’s important to realize that resale isn't Thrifting with a capital T. It’s an up-sale; people hunt through thrift stores, search the dump, or buy from other resellers to find the perfect items, then they sell

these pieces at a massive markup in price. “I think the vintage clothing industry will continue to grow and expand,” says Goto. “I think it’s just getting started.”

Thrift shopping wasn’t always about sweet scores or tacky tees—it began with resellers like the Salvation Army and Goodwill at the turn of the twentieth century. While the buying and selling of used goods is an ancient practice, this was something new. Goodwill, and other businesses like it, combined good Christian values, philanthropy, and the American dream to create something reminiscent of the modernday thrift store. They succeeded by copying department store models, branding ‘thrifting’ as an act of charity and offering goods that were both clean and cheap. This slowly removed some of the stigma from resale that had plagued the practice for centuries. These stores were also a pseudo-gateway into American capitalism for the lower class, especially immigrants who couldn’t afford to shop at traditional retail stores.

Throughout the twentieth century, the reselling industry continued to grow and adapt, from flea markets in 1930s New York to the 90s grunge scene in Seattle. In her book From Goodwill to Grunge, Jennifer Le Zotte relates early flea markets to Dadaism: “these anticonsumer, consumer venues were roughly analogous to ‘anti-art’ art

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GOODWILL HUNTING

"It seems that vintage always comes in waves, a sign of rebellion or poverty."

movements of the time such as Dada or surrealism.” Over the course of a century, vintage as a brand identity slowly began to emerge. Yet wherever vintage clothing appears in history, it’s always seen as a sign of individualism and counterculture. “Reacting against perceived democratization of fashion, ‘vintage clothing’ became a sort of brand,” says Le Zotte in her book, “one that distinguished its elite wearer from the presumably conformist middle class.”

It seems that vintage always comes in waves, a sign of rebellion or poverty. “The change over the past decade is crazy when I actually think about it,” says Goto. “When I started, people were still weird about buying a used vintage item. I had to ensure that I washed it and it was sanitary and all that, even pre-COVID.” Even today, when you go thrift shopping you’re looking for the diamond in the rough. The stigma surrounding resale has existed for a long time. Back before businesses like the Salvation Army revolutionized the industry, resale was primarily run by Jewish immigrants. These immigrants sold their wares in pawnshops and from pushcarts. Resale was seen as something shameful thanks to heavy anti-semitism, to the point where a story called “The Blue Silk” was run in a local New York paper. The story involves a young woman buying a blue dress from a Jewish-run pawn shop. The woman is publicly shamed for wearing a used dress, she then contracts smallpox from the dress and promptly dies. Even after thrift shopping was turned into a Christian enterprise, the purchasing of used clothing was still seen as shameful by those of the upper 32

and middle class. Only those who couldn’t afford the latest fashions stooped to shopping at thrift stores. Capitalism allows for no pride in poverty. While the resale industry was modernized in the 1900s, it was still associated with the poor until very recently.

In the last five years or so, thrift shopping has gone about something of a renaissance. History churns on repetition as thrifting is thrust into the mainstream once again. “I don’t go to Value Village much anymore,” says Goto, “but I can guarantee there will be loads of young kids shopping these days. They know what they’re looking for and they know what it sells for.”

It’s hard to go anywhere, online or in real life, without seeing a pair of mom jeans or a ripped jacket from the ’80s. While supporting the resale industry is a good thing, there’s still an ethical dilemma that comes along with thrifting; the impact it has on the people that the stores were actually started for. Prices are rising in thrift stores across the continent; coats that used to go for a few dollars are quickly becoming a lot more expensive. “In the past year alone, there has been a major uptick in new sellers,” said Marria Busch, who runs an online resale business called Rag and Bone Sisters Vintage. “It is always good to have more people saving items, the downside is it makes it hard for the average person to find fun stuff for a great price,” Busch added.

While the rising resale economy is bad for the lower class, it’s good for the environment. The resale industry is, in many ways, the antithesis

GOODWILL HUNTING

"Shopping second hand helps fight fast fashion, but the ones who pay the real price of vintage’s popularity are the people who rely on thrift stores for affordable clothing."

of fast fashion. Fast fashion is a new innovation of the retail industry that places new styles above all else; new clothing designs get created and shipped to stores in as little as five weeks. Brands like H&M, The Gap, Uniqlo, Fashion Nova, Urban Outfitters, Victoria’s Secret and Zara capitalize on trends on the fly. In the last two decades, the fast fashion fad has exploded—clothes made to be worn once and then promptly disposed of, made cheap and sold cheap. The problem is that fast fashion isn’t cheap. Globalization lets fashion labels outsource labour to developing countries for a fraction of the cost. Unsafe working environments and low pay are just a few of the shining pillars that support the industry. You don’t pay the real price for fast fashion, someone else does.

Even if you were to set aside the deplorable ethics of fast fashion’s effect on workplaces, the environmental damage caused by the fashion industry is so massive it’s actually hard to quantifiably grasp. According to a report by the Ellen McArthur Foundation, it's estimated that “a full garbage truck of clothes is burned or sent to a landfill every second.”

Waste isn’t the only environmental problem. Water is a huge issue.

The Global Fashion Agenda and Boston Consulting Group put out a report in 2017 that shows the fashion industry consumed 79 billion cubic meters of water in a single year, “enough to fill nearly 32 million Olympic-sized swimming pools.” The group also estimates that this number will increase by another 50 percent by 2030.

For consumers who aren’t interested in supporting fast fashion, thrifting is a viable solution. Thrift shopping is a great way to support local businesses, shop responsibly, and scratch that capitalist itch without giving into fast fashion. “To me, it’s really a ‘multiple bird, one stone’ industry,” says Goto. “The customer bought a vintage piece from me—this keeps money out of the fast-fashion, sweatshop machine, plus I get to eat—I kept something out of the dump, the customer has a unique item, and ironically this used garment will last longer, as vintage sewing and fabrication methods have eroded over time in the name of profits.”

Discovering that perfect piece among the racks is what’s always made thrift shopping so special. “My favourite part is the hunt of finding great pieces in thrift stores, garage sales and auctions,” said Busch, “then seeing them find new people to love them for another generation.”

Despite charitable beginnings, the art of the resale has morphed into a for-profit behemoth. Rising prices show that vintage has quickly become a commodity, but the century-old stigma surrounding the resale industry isn’t gone –– it’s just become stratified. Upscale vintage stores and online marketplaces have made thrifting more approachable by separating the rich from the poor. Shopping second hand helps fight fast fashion, but the ones who pay the real price of vintage’s popularity are the people who rely on thrift stores for affordable clothing.

In the immortal words of Run-DMC, “It’s tricky.”

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RE-EDUCATION SARAH ROSE Features Editor VALERIYA KIM Staff Illustrator

In the wake of a global crisis, the future of education must exist in a system that teaches us to live with who we are and how to survive in the bodies we have

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We would not be here if Chucxulub hadn’t ripped open a 150-kilometer crater into a Mexican peninsula, or a scintillating swirl of space dust had not been swooned by the gravity of the sun. Human civilization reflects the beating heart of a planet born from catastrophe. Which is to say, all it takes to bring civilization to its knees is an organism about 10,000 times smaller than a grain of salt and a sneeze.

in at least one instance, a violation of the state constitution. Under White Hat in Ohio, each school, including most of the lowestperforming in the state, paid 95 percent or more of the public money used for operation to White Hat. Once a force of nature, all that’s left of the White Hat empire is a single online school.

With the world boarded up and bunkered down in global shutdowns of an COVID-19 not only ravages the body, unprecedented scale, schools and campuses but also pillars of human culture like shutter, bringing the classroom into the home connectivity, learning and community— in newly problematic ways. things that function the way fangs and claws “There’s an opportunity to re-imagine what we do for a pack of wolves. Stripped of our do in education,” explained Laura McConnell survival mechanisms, we’re revealed as the in a soft Scottish lilt. McConnell is a teacher, vulnerable animals we are. Yet, disaster is writer and neurodiversity advocate from always a catalyst for reform. The Black Death Edinburgh who routinely engages with ended European feudalism. Labor shortages the complex interplay between childhood from the loss of half of the European adversity and disability. Now, she worries population hiked wages and crescendoed the chance for real, positive evolution into the Peasants Revolt of 1381. is being overlooked. Between the lack

The first de-facto law of evolution is crisis of comprehensive virtual education, the demands adaptation, even when the form it dangers of returning to a physical classroom takes isn’t immediately evident to survivors. and ongoing ideological debates, McConnell It’s not schools themselves that caused feels that re-imaging education isn’t only hurricane Katrina, and now COVID-19. Yet, necessary—it’s inevitable. “If schools go back Katrina swept away an entire city’s educational to some normalcy, at some point, alternative system and replaced it with arguably the provisions will have to be looked at.” most revolutionary attempt at reform in According to McConnell, the online model in modern American history. The school board the UK and Scotland was largely pushed by fired all 7,500 employees—mostly Black politicians under the premise that teachers and unionized teachers—in a complete must be standing and delivering in front restructure from democratically-controlled of the screen. “Most faculty have had no urban districts to a technocratic system. It’s training in online learning,” said Vancouvera system where privately-owned charter based online education expert Tony Bates in institutions are publicly funded, and charter an interview with CBC’s Spark. Bates is an operators like White Hat Management have author of over a dozen books on technology total authoritarian power over the schools in education, and cautions that the present they run. In other words, they turned schools switch to online classes is charting a course into a free market. for failure. “There’s all kinds of problems for “Education is first, last and always a business. students, such as cognitive overload, giving If it’s run like a business it can be done students too much information too quickly. profitably.”

That’s industrialist-turned- You really have to start redesigning differently, education reformist David Brennan in an and particularly to enable students to be interview from the early noughties. Brennan more active in their learning.” was the founder of White Hat Management, In American online charter schools, on pioneering what he advertised as something average, students lost 72 days of learning in like a ‘creative alternative’ to traditional reading and 180 days in math, during a single public schools. What it ended up being was,

180-day school year. In the three months following school closures in March, school districts across the United States documented tens of thousands of students failing to log in or complete their work—15,000 high school students in Los Angeles, a third of all students in Minneapolis public schools and at least a quarter of the Chicago public school population.

If the current approach to online education is to replicate a classroom environment, the issues aren’t just a product of the online environment, but rather something bidirectional. Beyond crises like Katrina or COVID-19, the traditional educational environment itself is what’s often responsible for destroying the desire to learn.

The primary architecture of the internet as it is today is based on what Harvard Business School Professor Shoshana Zuboff calls “surveillance capitalism,” a method of revenue production and market control based on predicting and modifying human behaviour.

It’s the building blocks of algorithms that inextricably lead to digital redlining, the tech equivalent to societal division formalized in 1934 under the National Housing Act. Digital redlining is already integrated into tech, but is especially prevalent in education technologies, and it’s producing discriminatory results.

Fully online course work contributes to socioeconomic and racial achievement gaps while failing to be more affordable than traditional courses. A broadside review by Sandy Baum and Spiros Protopsaltis, former aide in the Obama Administration’s Education Department, revealed that students in online education (particularly disadvantaged and minority students) underperform, and on average, experience poor outcomes.

“Katrina pulled back the blanket on what education is like for poor kids,” wrote educator-turned-attorney Averil Sanders.

When the levees broke in 2005, so did the reality that trauma is the ongoing storm that keeps kids out of school. And as with Katrina, closures hit poor and minority students the hardest.

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RE-EDUCATION

Something of a veteran in the ongoing fight for cultural change in education, Laura McConnell has a head full of dark spiral curls and plenty of informed ideas about making the classroom a safer place. Alongside teaching, she is a support for learning aid which means she assists those that naturally tend to get displaced: the disabled, the neurodiverse and those recovering from trauma—including herself. “I’m autistic and I have ADHD,” she said, adding that by June, she was experiencing computer burnout. In the rapid shift to online learning, many of her students were struggling in the undertow as well. “Online is not a suitable model,” McConnell said, emphasizing that many of those with disabilities struggle.

“It’s a lonely experience learning from home, you don’t have the motivation,” she explained, adding that “there’s a very big digital poverty issue here.” 58 percent of households with internet access have less than one device per household member according to Statistics Canada. At Capilano University, many students, particularly international students, rely on accessing computers on campus.

While the library has recently opened, only a select number of computers are available for student use in order to adhere to COVID-19 precautions. It’s unclear at the moment how this student population will be able to attend online classes without additional provisions.

McConnell says the switch to online provided a lot of issues for students in alternative settings who were already struggling to access education in a mainstream environment.

“So many disabled people are considering quitting academia due to their lack of supports (yes, even from disability services), lack of

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understanding, and lack of accessibility,” she fell back asleep one morning after checkwrote Twitter user @AspieHuman. They also in. The prosecutor argued, “she clearly doesn’t stressed the necessity of accessibility training want to abide by the rules in the community,” for faculty, staff and students teaching online: while acknowledging the prosecutor had no “I honestly cannot believe that it is not knowledge of her disabilities. In an email, her required. Students are going to lose access teacher explained the teenager was working at to information because teachers [who] don’t a similar pace as most of the other students know screen readers can’t read PDFs.” in class. She left the courtroom in handcuffs.

McConnell corroborates the notion that abled people don’t appreciate how their notion of accessibility strategies don’t often work for disabled people, “I have a deaf girl in my class who lip reads, and wearing a mask is cutting off communication to her.”

Buried beneath the many enduring monuments of traditional education is an assumption that everyone who wants to learn simply can. When a student can’t, it’s conflated as won’t. There’s no further discourse, because apparently, there’s nothing to teach. “Students won’t learn anything until they feel good about learning,” says McConnell. Except the story sold to the silver screen is that learning is some Shakespeare and a book of poetry in the hands of a Robin Williams, or a Mr. Kotter, or some other slightly eccentric but passionate figure to straighten out disengaged students. As if all it takes is a bit of jumping up on a desk and reciting Walt Whitman to buck it to the proverbial Man. The rebellious kids fall in line, roll credits.

It’s an essentialist epistemological nightmare. It’s the Katrina generation, the neurodivergent, disabled and minority youth all churning around in a Judge Dredd style ideological meat grinder: “People go in one end, and meat comes out the other. All we do is turn the handle.”

Every system, both physical and digital, has an architecture regardless of its intentionality.

Recovering education from the depths of the meat grinder means good architects as well as people like McConnell driving us forward into a shared understanding. In the words of architect and educator Peter BlundellJones: “Society has suffered long enough from finished architecture: buildings must be allowed to grow and change.”

Before Katrina, there was the fall of the Church’s vice grip on education during the Old Regime; before that, the French Revolution. After all, architecture, like education, is the manifested visions of the dominant state and private entities in the flesh.

The outcome of fiction like this is a 15-year- Architect and academic Frank Locker once old Black student in Michigan with ADHD asked what comes to mind when looking in a detention center instead of at home after at a long, empty hallway of closed doors a judge ruled that her inability to complete that can only be accessed with permission; school work after the switch to online or a bell acting as the adjudicator of every learning violated probation. Despite pleading chronological movement. “Many of the same her anxiety and overwhelm with the work, people who designed prisons also designed

RE-EDUCATION

schools,” answered Locker. This idea is not far from the lived experience of every new face that’s walked through the front doors of Alternative High School in Calgary, Alberta.

The first thing most people see at Alternative High is their own reflection in the glass cabinet on the wall. Inside that cabinet there’s a few things that haven’t changed: a photo of alumni musician Feist with several students when she visited in 2007. An obituary of one of those students, John-Michael, and a crystalline “Class Act” trophy with a clipping from the same newspaper. The Calgary Herald’s Class Act award is a recognition for a local student of exceptional academic prowess. In 2008, the entire graduating class of Alternative High received the award.

The common thread between each student, according to former principal at the time Rolf Haensel was, “they all arrive completely disengaged from learning.”

Disengaged is a comforting way to describe the jagged chip carved into a lot of these students' shoulders: a defense mechanism acting as a buffer between reality and hope. “In a big high school, they’re lost, they fall through the cracks,” Haensel echoes from the clipping in the cabinet.

School is comparatively irrelevant to those trapped in the infamous cracks with police, administrators, or substances—convenient colloquies for trauma. These are the kids that are lost because they want to know why they’re just another proverbial brick in the wall in a room full of eyes that want the clock to move faster.

Alternative High opened in 1974 as the brainchild of a parents group inspired by the philosophy of A.S Neill’s Summerhill School in the UK. Today, it has close ties to

the Alberta Adolescent Recovery Center, our schools are people,” says educational assisting in integrating youth back into psychologist James McTaggart. For many school after recovery. Alternative is a haven students, attending a democratic meeting for neurodiverse kids, those with mental is the first time they’ve had real, tangible illness and anyone left traumatized by their decision-making power over their own lives. encounters in mainstream settings, which “They have experiences, they have internal are often comorbid. It’s also an endangered lives of emotions, thoughts and plans; and species as one of the only schools in the [trauma-informed practice is] trying to country designed around a democratic respond to those as we see them.” community.

McConnell hasn’t heard of Alternative High There’s never been mainstream interest in before, but the concepts are familiar in democratization as a system because it requires her line of work. As an advocate of trauma renouncing authority, that ugly myopic thing informed practice in schools, McConnell that shrinks the world into a classroom-sized published a chapter in [Adverse Childhood weapon to bludgeon difference out of pupils Experiences] ACEs In The Shadows and has with. It’s the same reason a lot of people fear a forthcoming book on the subject scheduled the concepts that comprise the Alternative for publication in 2021. She pauses for a maxims: no remedials, no locks, no bells. An moment to reflect on a similar school in her evolving pastiche of completing personal native Scotland. “They do all the same things, challenges under mentorship, small class sizes, but they do them in a way that’s accessible, in community events and democratic meetings an environment that’s accessible.” to vote on the needs of the community Whether students step back into the every week. Anyone is free to walk out, classroom or log back in to a virtual one in the but agreeing to take on an apprenticeship fall, educational institutions must answer a means making a commitment to themselves lingering ontological question masquerading and the community—something most in as an existential one: who are we, and how mainstream settings haven’t had the freedom can we learn to live in the bodies we have? to think about before. The responsibility of Like the threat of a looming storm, it’s freedom can be terrifying. dangerous to believe there’s something “Have we asked the kids what they want, what alternative about democracy, individuality their needs are?” McConnell mused. She’s and embracing the diverse needs of students. alluding to a deceptively simple idea, and not The success of Alternative High is that it as radical as a century of bad rhetoric over the shouldn’t be alternative at all—there’s no ‘unruly anarchists’ of Summerhill: schools magic inside an old elementary school need to be designed to fit the needs of students, building where teenagers wander through not the other way around. Transferring the the hall noodling on guitars. What there classroom structure as it is into the virtual is, is an architecture of power: in smallness, space isn’t meeting those needs. autonomy, community and in the shared “The essence of trauma-informed practices notion that they've survived. is realizing that the people that show up in

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H alu ka Yag i

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CRISIS SPAWNS ALTERNATIVES How expanding online study options at CapU can lead to increasing accessibility, affordability and quality of education LENA ORLOVA Staff Writer ANNIKA MCFARLANE Illustrator

Up until March 2020, obtaining a university credential online was only popular with working parents, mid-career achievers and job changers. Not anymore. The present pandemic ushered in a new reality of virtual education for all—and that’s not a bad thing. Expanding online study options can bridge accessibility and affordability gaps. New teaching strategies will innovate virtual pedagogy—which falls in line with Capilano University’s (CapU) mission to provide a quality learning experience.

“1.36 million Canadian students gain improvements in diversity, access, and opportunities through online courses,” reports BCCampus. Students benefit from greater flexibility in scheduling classes when they want to work part-time to offset tuition costs. Those wishing not to relocate save on moving expenses and preserve their peace of mind.

While living on campus is a great way to integrate with the university community, relocation uproots students from their communities. A lot of well-researched studies show that staying close to our social networks maintains our mental health. The 2018–2019 CapU Institutional Accountability Report showed that stress impaired academic performance for three-quarters of surveyed students. While studying from home cannot prevent heightened stress, having family and friends around is a stabilizing factor for psychological welfare.

Online studies have been growing in popularity even before the pandemic. In a Tracking Online and Digital Learning in Canada (TODLC) survey conducted in 2019, one in five Canadian students took or will take an online course for credit.

While not all on-campus universities offer fully online programs, “more than two-thirds of all Canadian public universities and colleges offer online courses for credit.”

Before Fall 2020, the majority of CapU coursework was still offered at its North Vancouver, Sunshine Coast and the newly built Lonsdale Quay locations. If students wanted to take more undergraduate courses online, they had to look at institutions such as Athabasca University and Thompson Rivers University.

What’s stopping us from adopting more virtual education options isn’t unpopularity or infeasibility. Dr. Tony Bates, coresearcher of the TODLC survey wrote that “additional effort

required of faculty was cited as the most significant barrier (85%).” Additionally, “inadequate training and support for faculty in online learning was identified as a key barrier by 73% of respondents.” Yes, the switch requires extra training, but it could lead to innovative ways of presenting curricula such as more digestible, shorter lectures, mixed-media formats and simulations.

“One of the things that online learning has done is driven innovation and exploration into teaching and learning practices,” says Aldo Caputo, an expert on online learning and teaching at University of Waterloo in an interview with MacLean’s.

“There is that reflection on that idea of ‘How do you best teach this material?’”

Nonetheless, not everyone is convinced. Private institutions such as Rutherford University in the U.S. became famous for “diploma mills”—unaccredited credentials for people willing to pay. Understandably, many students and employers are weary of online programs in general. The same isn’t true for Canada, where most students choose to enroll in publicly-funded institutions with greater government oversight.

We are more ready for the new reality than we thought. The majority of courses at CapU already involved some sort of an online component. CapU faculty use a blended format for classroom learning, using both in-class lectures mixed with online assignments and readings through the Learning Management System (LMS). The Department of Behavioural Analysis offers three different streams to qualify students for Assistant Behaviour Analyst certification. The two post-baccalaureate options allow on-campus or online completion of courses.

Granted, flaws exist. Students complain about the lack of interactive learning and dull presentations. However, the faults don’t discount the advantages —if development is given enough investment and time. No institution making the switch to online learning in one semester will get everything right. In the long run, expanding virtual education at CapU would address many accessibility, affordability and flexibility needs faced by prospective students. My hope is that remote learning—and working from home—will continue to be part of our new normal.

OPINIONS

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More Money, Less Problems Universal Basic Income improves mental health, grants access to education and reduces base-line poverty levels ALEXIS ZYGAN Contributor SOPHIE YOUNG Illustrator

COVID-19 has highlighted for many that Canada’s income security isn’t that secure. As the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) ends Sept. 21 and the Canadian Emergency Student Benefit (CESB) was terminated on Aug. 29, debates continue about alternative support systems for individuals facing precarious financial prospects, possible poverty and growing debt.

It’s time that our economists and policy-makers seriously consider long-term solutions that aren’t made up of patch-work emergency benefits, but instead, provide real long-term stability. Universal basic income, although controversial and costly, is a promising method of reducing poverty and positively impacting the financial and mental health of all Canadians.

In a long-forgotten experiment, economists studied the impact of providing every member of a small, rural town of Dauphin, Manitoba with a basic yearly stipend of at least $10,000. While the Conservative government scrapped the study due to its ballooning budget, findings showed a positive reduction in doctor visits, decreased mental and physical ailments and an increased number of high school graduates.

Despite the researched benefits, giving ‘unearned’ money to people is a controversial idea. An Angus Reid survey found that three in five Canadians support universal basic income—and for good reason. Receiving a guaranteed income provides financial stability, allowing people to consider things beyond the housing, food and utilities needed to survive. Having financial stability allows people to plan for the future, invest in themselves and the country as a whole, and access multiple health care services which can be costly and are not covered by the Medical Services Plan.

Some believe that a guaranteed income would deteriorate the will to work, causing employed people to quit their jobs.

They envision marginalized people wasting taxpayer dollars, and people with addictions using government money to support them. However, the thing to keep in mind is that a universal basic income wouldn’t replace a job; it would allow people to look for a well-suited job without worrying about survival. When it’s impossible to sustain a job due to disability, mental illness or addiction, people may resort to staying in single-room-occupancy hotels (SRO). SRO’s on the Downtown Eastside offer barelylivable accommodations, with many rooms plagued by rat and cockroach infestations.

The findings of the short-lived Dauphin study show that providing a guaranteed income improved the mental health of the overall population. The money provides those on the margins of society with the ability to seek long-term, effective aid. People with addictions, disabilities or mental illness have resources to pay for rehabilitation. They re-enter society while having the financial

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means to access social, psychological and professional support— all of which are necessary for long-term health.

Universal basic income is a solution that goes beyond solving monetary instability; it provides relief from things like depression and job dissatisfaction. Instead of picking up another shift to make ends meet, a guaranteed income can give parents the ability to work less and spend more time with their children. It may even allow parents to attend school themselves, starting a positive cycle that impacts their entire family.

Young adults can pursue post-secondary studies without the fear of crippling student loan debt post-graduation. Students could perform better, because they can focus on school without the added stress of taking on side-jobs and gigs. Without the burden of major debt, students invest more time in finding jobs that align with their passions. Likewise, this would give new high school graduates a greater chance of pursuing fulfilling careers, because the financial barriers to education are lessened.

In our current socio-economic climate, people define themselves through their work. I’ve known countless people that introduce themselves by their title and place of employment.

Humanity needs to find an identity outside of their work— providing a guaranteed income is a great starting point. People would no longer have to work for the sole purpose of survival.

They could instead invest their time into creative pursuits, activism, volunteer work and advocacy. Canadians can live in a society where everyone has the opportunity to achieve their full potential. To get there, we need to give those in need a hand up— not a one-time financial hand out.

breaki ng the ice Why racism is not a ‘minority issue’ LENA ORLOVA Staff Writer SARA NGUYEN Illustrator

Diversity is a hot potato, difficult to hold. Canadian culture exhibits a tendency to keep neat appearances agreeable for the majority. We pay lip service to multiculturalism by including Indigenous and Black material in academic curricula. We pledge allegiance to inclusivity even though we don’t practice it. Indigenous and Black professors teach about Indigenous and Black causes while white professors teach everything else. Unless we integrate diversity in the way we do business, decolonization work won’t move forward. The people will change, but the institutions will stay the same.

As Canadians, we don politeness with pride. In the Canada Project survey to mark Canada’s 150 anniversary, 66 percent of Canadians agreed that we are as nice as the world thinks we are. Good manners make people get along because niceness avoids discomfort. However, discomfort is a necessary part of change because it signals new ways of relating.

With 73 countries represented in the student population, a vast number of the students at Capilano University (CapU) come from a non-Caucasian ethnic background. We get along because we accept the multicultural nature of our community. While multiculturalism promotes coexistence, it does not address inequality.

“Multiculturalism fails to acknowledge the fact that this country is not neutral, as it is fundamentally built on white supremacy,” writes Brittany Garuk in Canada’s Hidden Racism. Garuk dedicated her research project at Emily Carr University to raise awareness of systemic racism.

As long as our institutions are built on white supremacy, they will use the tools of supremacy. For example, in a class that considers Indigenous work, the content of discussion often matters more than the process of discussion. Instructors rarely create an atmosphere where students personally and emotionally experience the work with peers. The texts are assigned and individual opinions are graded without respecting Indigenous values of storytelling, sharing and relational learning. Instead, we simply analyze Indigenous work believing we become more aware.

“University administrators say ‘Indigenization’ and what they mean is simply bringing more Indigenous people into the same structures, into the same building without much thought about what universities can learn from Indigenous communities,” says Eve Tuck in an interview with CBC. Tuck is an Associate Professor of Critical Race and

Indigenous Studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies. She proposes that instead of hiring Indigenous people as single members to a white faculty, universities should hire people in group “clusters,” building community and expanding peer support. Further, schools should place successful candidates in positions of hiring in the future. “So that there’s a number of Indigenous colleagues who are hired in one year and that they are involved in hiring a next group of colleagues the following year and then the next ones another,” explains Tuck.

Hiring practices can be used as a vehicle of diversification, and is an area where CapU deserves closer examination.

Hiring disclaimers welcome applicants from all backgrounds but upon observation, the majority of successful candidates are white—or at least, have a light complexion. The university would benefit from disclosing the data on ethnicity of applicants in order to facilitate discussion about the reasons for misrepresentation. Even if the hiring practices are unbiased, it may be that people of colour don’t apply at all. If that’s true, which came first: the chicken, or the egg?

We must speak about how we co-exist as a nation with many races—how we practice diversity in reality and in principle. All generations benefit from dialogue that opens opportunities for examination of our systems. We shouldn’t need to rely on the minority to teach us about ‘minority issues’—these are central issues affecting all of us. We can begin by asking what processes perpetuate colonialism, and how the way in which we conduct ourselves as students, faculty and decision-makers preserves an archaic, white-centric culture.

I think the real barrier to change isn’t our personal discomfort, but the time and financial investments involved in moving to these new ways of doing business. An institution must meet government standards to be accredited, instructors must keep to curriculums, everyone has policies to follow. In the face of resistance to change, we must stand strong in our collective goal. Reform does not take standards away; reform aligns old mandates to match contemporary values.

Change must begin somewhere, in the sphere of our lives, in questions, in dialogues. Conversations will be messy but our efforts will lead to greater growth as a society. Advertising multiculturalism, diversity and good manners isn’t enough.

We must try new things, we must learn other ways of being, with each other and on the world stage.

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Actions Speak Louder Than Words— So Where Are They?

Capilano University leadership owe Black and Indigenous students more than a statement of acknowledgement ANA MARIA CAICEDO Editor-in-Chief JOWAYNE MCFARLANE Illustrator

As the Black Lives Matter movement gained traction after the deaths of George Floyd, Regis Korchinski-Paquet and others, Capilano University (CapU) President Paul Dangerfield released a written statement in June titled: “Times of tumult and tragedy.”

“With deep concern and sadness, Capilano University acknowledges the violence, turmoil and tragedy escalating in the United States,” the statement says. “This is a time of sorrow, frustration and anger for many, especially in Black communities.

It is also an opportunity for deep reflection upon power, privilege, hardship and pervasive inequities in our own society...We strive to be a place where ideas and experiences can be shared safely and where support is available to address even the most painful of social issues. Racism has no place here.”

At its best, the statement reads as a somewhat vacuous declaration of solidarity. At its worst, it frames racialized violence as something exclusive to the United States and non-existent in Canada, and erases by omission the fundamental factor behind this “violence, turmoil and tragedy”: racialized violence (especially by police) against Black and Indigenous people of colour (BIPOC). But aside from the tactless wording, the statement’s biggest shortcoming is that it refuses to deliver any course of action for CapU itself. Statements of ‘solidarity’ do nothing for BIPOC students; real solidarity is rooted in action.

BIPOC students who took summer classes were and are dealing with the trauma, pain, and exhaustion of witnessing and absorbing the constant brutality and violence against BIPOC, made hyper-visible through social media. These students have not been given any concrete support from the University. A few days after Dangerfield’s statement was released, the Capilano Students’ Union (CSU) sent a letter asking faculty to provide academic accommodations to Black students over the summer semesters. Although the few faculty that have responded (at the time of this piece) provided positive feedback, it’s disheartening knowing that not every faculty representative the letter was addressed to responded.

In April, the university responded to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on students by allowing us to substitute any letter grade from the spring 2020 semester with a grade of CR (credit) that does not impact our GPA. Is it so much of a leap to allow this same opportunity to Black and Indigenous students who took summer courses this year?

At the time that Dangerfield’s statement was released, I was taking three summer classes and struggling hard to keep up. I am, however, registered with Accessibility Services because of my Bipolar diagnosis, and was able to get accommodations for my 42

courses with no questions asked. If things like mental illnesses and learning disabilities are valid factors in allowing students academic accommodations, shouldn’t the daily weight of existing in a racialized body be a valid factor too?

In August, I interviewed my close friend and fellow communications student Maria Santana on what it was like for her to navigate online classes this past summer as a Black student.

“I think the reason why it’s been impossible for me to produce things in class right now is because it feels like I’m betraying myself,” she told me. “It feels [like] it’s against me. That’s what school feels like right now, like it’s against you.”

Her words are reflective of the moral struggle other BIPOC students are presumably going through right now. How can you give your money, energy, trust and goodwill to an institution that doesn’t acknowledge your circumstances and humanity? As I’ve mentioned before, Dangerfield’s statement is disheartening not only because it frames racialized violence as something exclusive to the United States, but also because it offers Black and Indigenous students at CapU no concrete support. University of British Columbia (UBC) president Santa Ono’s statement, in comparison, details the steps he will be taking to build a more inclusive campus community, which include meeting with UBC’s Black Caucus and recruiting, retaining, and supporting Black students and staff.

Dangerfield’s statement, to me, is a PR checkmark of performative allyship, reminiscent of companies like L’Oreal that release statements out of obligation in order to avoid backlash, rather than out of genuine reflection, empathy, and effort.

“School is not a learning institution when it comes to unlearning things,” Santana also told me. “You have to include Black writers, you have to include these things in the way that you teach. It’s not a topic.”

The words “it’s not a topic” have echoed in my mind since the moment she spoke them. Black, Indigenous, and other racialized students at CapU need more than statements. They need active and concrete support from university leadership.

This can be done in many ways: allowing academic accommodations for BIPOC students during times of heightened stress from witnessing racialized violence, meeting with the Students of Colour Liaison Feven Kidane to discuss the best ways to support racialized students, hiring Black and Indigenous professors, ensuring that course content doesn’t mention racialization as an afterthought, but rather centers the perspectives of racialized students—the list goes on.

There are so many opportunities for change, but a statement without action won’t get us anywhere.

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THE GREAT FATIGUE Superf icial movie remakes lose value while competing with digital platforms WEN ZHAI Contributor AMY ASIN Illustrator

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If you plan to binge-watch movies once the pandemic is over, I have a horror story for you: an estimated 121 remakes are currently under production in Hollywood. The movie industry as a whole has faced increased competition from streaming services, such as Netflix, who disrupted the industry by being more responsive to the audience. Remakes are just one of many desperate attempts to revitalize cinema’s decreasing market share and maintain its diminishing glory. These days, originality is more and more rare on the big screen.

The success of a movie paves the way for its remakes, including sequels, prequels and spin-offs. With so many remakes bombarding the market, it’s time for the movie industry to see through the delusion of this gilded prosperity.

Movie makers do try to add some fresh elements. Political correctness inspires Hollywood to exploit old successes with a new politically appealing crew of minority actors.

The Chinese-themed movie Mulan is currently the biggest

anticipated Hollywood movie in the Chinese community.

It's rare and exciting to see a Chinese leading role with a mostly Asian cast. In the past, many movies claimed to include Chinese actors, only to give them one or two insignificant roles. The Asian American community feels celebrated because of this representation.

Yet, this live-action remake of the 1998 Disney animated film is an action drama that reinforces the stereotype of the magical and powerful Chinese Kungfu master. Asians are no longer played by Caucasians in ‘yellowface’ – a practice of casting white actors to play Asian roles with makeup and accents. This ‘new’ stereotype is a step up from Coolie, restaurant owner, waiter and servant. After watching such films, the best impression foreigners get is that all Chinese people are good at Kung Fu. The audience remains ignorant about the everyday life, hopes and struggles of their Chinese counterparts.

In 2020, Disney announced an African American singer as

the leading role for the remake of The Little Mermaid. While they embrace diversity, The Little Mermaid is a fairy tale about a European princess, from the original Hans Andersen story. Although the cast may be diverse, the story isn’t.

Even if producers hire minority actors, movies still don’t explore issues most relevant to ethnic communities. What’s more important is what story is being told, and whether the story enhances understanding or reinforces stereotypes.

Representation is not about appearances; representation is about stories.

As the beacon of the movie industry, Hollywood should be confident in exploring new genres in order to challenge stereotypes, to encourage new thoughts instead of appealing to what already exists. Digital competitors have boosted the small screen. The advancement of technology makes going to a theatre a special ceremonial occasion, rather than the norm. It’s time that Hollywood looks more to other art forms for inspiration, rather than past movies.

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Emma s u n

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E m m a Sato

@emmasato FEATURED ART

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C o r a l i e M ay e r

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Back Home: Reasons for Returning VALERIA VEL AZQUEZ Columnist

When I first came to Vancouver I thought, “This is it. This is the place I want to live in for the rest of my life.” But if there’s something I’ve been reassured of time and time again, especially during this pandemic: things don’t always happen the way we plan them to. Two and a half years later, I’m unsure if I will settle here.

Before coming to Vancouver, I felt like something was missing in my life. I needed more freedom, opportunities, and safety.

After months of trying to convince my parents to let me study abroad, they finally agreed.

At the end of 2017, I applied for admission to the Communication Studies Diploma at Capilano University, and in January 2018 I began my journey.

In the beginning, I loved everything about this city. I could see the seasons change (something that doesn’t happen in Mexico, where the temperature stays pretty much the same year-round). I adored the Capilano University campus in the middle of the woods, and I admired the politeness of the Canadian people. But as time passed, I realized that such a thing as a “perfect place” doesn’t exist, at least not forever.

I eventually began to see the flaws. The emblematic Canadian “sorry” is more of a habit than an actual apology. The months of clouds and rain seem endless and make the city appear lifeless. The coldness of Vancouverites and almost non-existent sense of community made me feel, more often than not, lonely.

Not to say that Vancouver isn’t beautiful— it is. There are so many things I love about it: the accessibility of public transit, the mountain scenery that can be appreciated from almost anywhere in the city, and the safety I feel in comparison to my hometown.

But the good things about it are not enough to convince me to create a life here.

Nevertheless, I still thought of Vancouver as my back-up city, and of Canada as a place I could keep coming back to for at least three more years after I graduated. After all, I had already spent two and a half years creating a life for myself here. I planned on travelling to Mexico after graduating and only coming back here when I needed to make some money to continue exploring Latin America.

I thought I could leave and come back whenever I wanted to, and that I would do so until I decided what I wanted to do with my life.

Turns out that as an immigrant, things aren’t as easy. Instead of getting my postgraduate work permit for three years as I expected, I got it for only a year and a half. The safety net I thought I’d have was gone, and the three years I thought I could spend figuring my life out were shortened to a year and a half.

My plan of travelling to Mexico after graduation was still underway. Although I had purchased my flight tickets before my plans of staying for three years came crashing down, I still questioned whether or not I should go home for a few months. I had friends and family members tell me that I should just stay and take advantage of as much time in Vancouver as possible. They’d say afterwards that I could maybe apply for residency, go through the immigration process—then I’d be able to come and go how I pleased.

There is this perception that because Canada is a “first-world” country and Mexico is not, it’s better if I make a life here in Vancouver. The overall safety, better economy and quality of life in general makes them think that if I don’t try my best to stay here for good, I’d be making a mistake. I was even starting to believe this myself, but deep down I know that staying here for the long haul isn’t what I want.

I am not willing to spend another year or longer without being able to go home, without walking through the streets I grew up in, without eating my grandma’s delicious food, or catching up with my lifelong friends.

For some time now, this urge in me to connect to my roots, my country and my ancestors has been growing. My heart has been talking and it’s guiding me towards the things that will make me truly happy. And I know for a fact that what will make me happy now is not to stay here. What will make me happy is to go, travel, learn, eat, see, smell, feel, experience all of the things about Mexico I’ve missed while being here, things that I overlooked when I was living there.

There’s a popular saying that goes: “There is no worse blind man than the one who doesn’t want to see.” And I was definitely the worst type of blind when I was back home.

There were things about the world around me and about myself that I was ignoring. It took me years and a distance of over 4000 km to start noticing these patterns, traumas, injustices—but also the beauty ingrained in my own country.

Now it’s time for me to go back and not see these things from afar, but actually experience them. I want to fight against the injustices of an extremely misogynist and patriarchal system. I want to demand and provide an example for equity and justice. I want to heal my own personal relationships with my family.

Going back to Mexico will help me authentically connect with my country, and only then will I be able to connect to myself.

And I’ve realized that no matter where I go, if I truly connect to myself, I will always be home—because “home” won’t be in the place I go to, home will already be within me.

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Coast to Coast: Prejudice in the Flatlands ALDEN WALL ACE MACK AY Columnist K ARL A MONTERROSA Illustrator

Like probably a lot of other people my age, I was looking for something to believe in.

I think this is very common for people in their late teens—the desire for security and stability along the long road that awaits them. Some call it a pre-life crisis. I’d become obsessed with the idea of Truth, and I desperately searched for it in work, religion and relationships. But in the end I always felt empty and alone. I was going to university then and I had little time for soul searching. I felt trapped and I longed for adventure.

So I cooked up a scheme: a coast-to-coast Canadian road trip, alone, with no destination or stops in mind. Eat when I’m hungry, sleep when I’m tired, and camp only at free backcountry sites. If Truth was going to find me, I figured, then it would be on this trip.

And I was ready, come what may.

Well, I spent the first few weeks cruising around the foothills of interior BC, camping in green valleys, bathing in glacial flow and sharing sites with strangers. I’d been around these parts—Osoyoos, Castlegaar, Nelson, Cranbrook—when I was a snotnose— Osoyoos, Castlegaar, Nelson, Cranbrook— and of course it was different now that I was older and alone, but I still didn’t feel like I’d left home until I crossed the border into Alberta.

I slept a night in the parking lot of a Home Hardware in Canmore and in the frosty morning I watched rabbits hopping over railroad tracks. I saw a bald face of The Rockies dyed pink with dawn. As I drove on and passed more towns, the land around me eventually flattened and turned yellow.

All along the shoulder of the highway I saw billboards informing me of the sin of abortion and my ultimate fiery resting place. But the skies were enormous and gorgeous, and men and women alike wore shitkickers and ten-gallon hats. I felt like my adventure had begun.

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One ridiculously hot day in Calgary, I was cooking with a portable BBQ on the hood of my vehicle in the parking lot of a McDonald’s, when a stranger came by and asked what I was cooking.

“Breakfast.”

“A little late for breakfast, ain’t it?”

“Maybe.”

He was middle-aged, and wide around the middle. I don’t think he’d fallen on any good times lately. Part of his beard was yellow. After he saw my licence plate he asked where I’d come from. I gave him the Sparknotes remix.

We chatted for a bit, and I wasn’t bothered.

Then he said, “You strike me as a fairly level-headed individual.”

“If you say so.”

“Are you a Christian?”

“No.” He nodded. “But I can tell you’re searching.

Don’t worry, you’ll find Him eventually.”

“I’ve done some searching,” I said, “but I’m not a Christian.”

“Well. You’re still young. I didn’t find Jesus myself until just recently. About five years ago...” And he proceeded to relate to me the story of his second birth. He said that he’d been an alcoholic, but now he only drank sometimes. “Jesus said you can drink a little, you know. Like how you can just get a buzz.

Long as you don’t get drunk, eh?”

Time passed. I ate and listened to this stranger rambling on about our Lord and Saviour. I told him that I’d already read the Bible, but I didn’t find my Truth in there. I said, “How could I submit myself to something I don’t totally agree with? The scripture teaches to accept the Word literally, and there’s much in that book I can’t look past.”

“Maybe one day you’ll see the truth in it.”

“Are you telling me you agree with every word that was written in the bible?”

“Yes sir.”

“Sodom and Gomorrah?”

The man nodded gravely. “God has punished us all today with the AIDS pandemic for the sins of the gays.”

I blinked, then said, “That’s a pretty assignorant thing to say.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” he continued, “I love the gays. I have gay friends. That’s why I want to help them.”

There was nothing I knew to say. His beliefs were rock solid, and not limited to homophobia. He spoke on how women ought to act when it comes to making the life of a man easier, “Get you a good woman who’ll keep you in shape,” and he said some pretty terrible things about people of color, telling me that since I was trying to live frugally I could take a bath down at the water park “like the Indians do”. He probably thought we were buddy-buddy because we were both white guys, but to me he was a miserable and hopeless manchild soon to die alone.

Like I said, I was younger at the time and I didn’t yet know of the harm of silence. Such was my logic: this person’s problems are not my responsibility. If I was a wiser and more patient man then I might’ve stuck around and tried to educate him, but all I did was pack up my BBQ and leave. And I regret this.

“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said that.

It’s hard to believe that people like this actually exist if you’ve never seen them in person before. On the news they seem like they belong to another planet. How can somebody take stock in such hatred, in such a poor investment? How can they go their whole life without questioning the way things are in the world? The worst part is not just that people like this exist, but that they likely make up the majority. I don’t think that this man represents his religion or the city he was born in. I think that what he toils with is much deeper—a horrible belief system that stalks him like a shadow.

One’s beliefs run deep and it can be hard to question them sometimes, but when one avoids doing any self-examination whatsoever they run the risk of retreating into a sunken place of lonesome and hateful ignorance.

I think meeting that stranger in Calgary helped me realize this and inspired me to continue on my search, wherever it should lead me.

One thing was for certain: I definitely wasn’t home anymore.

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Perspectives on the PostPostmodern: Memes as Political Art TAMIA THOMPSON Columnist

Despite being the most digestible way to consume information at the moment, memes take up a lot of space in our minds and daily interactions in 2020. Sometimes they just seem to exist in a humorous vacuum, but they are quite possibly the central force in post-postmodern art circulating political ideologies.

Collectively, all of the people using social media globally (including yourself) at any minute are contributing to the transference of over 41 million messages. Think about how many times you’ve seen a meme remade to change the message being given, like the “Change My Mind” meme that was originally a photo of a right-wing conservative podcaster. Now, think about how many TikTok videos you’ve seen where catchy music plays as a stranger tells you about political affairs? It can get confusing when we try to make sense of our screen time, but memes are impactful in how we have come to mock or react to ourselves and the powers that be. Diving into how we can expand our knowledge with memes, or the reiterated and relatable ideas we share with each other, can be a powerful catalyst for learning more about the world around us.

Digital culture and online communities have been churning out political art for the past decade. The expansion of online interfaces, from computers to phones, have enabled better content creation. I always have a difficult time trying to grapple with the fact that through all that we choose to virtually send and share, we leave little imprints everywhere we scroll when we remix and remake existing words and images to suit ourselves. In the creation and reiteration of memes, we often forget how their contexts can be morphed away from our intentions.

When people around the web talk about instances of digital blackface or the idea that there’s a broad and nonsensical appropriation of language happening with African American Vernacular English, for example, we see red flags thrown to investigate our

behaviour in consuming all of the remixed content that we do. It’s beginning to ring truer every day that people don’t really think outside of themselves and their screens when they log on. The cloud, the void, or whatever you call what we often think to be a collective imaginary space holding our data ultimately acts as a vast echo chamber for our good, bad, and ugly thoughts.

The range that we’ve seen in political memes has brought on the notion that there are issues that are not meant to be made into jokes or memes at all. We’ve seen COVID-19, Indigenous land rights protests, and the Black Lives Matter protests all this past year.

We are being consistently reintroduced to the idea that the oppression people face, the destruction of communities, and the coalition found in hardship are not meant to be trivialized for virality. So where do we draw the line between memes and political art in a helpful sense?

In order to employ respect in the dispersal of information that we push out and take in daily, it’s important to know where our intentions lie as well as where our impacts land. And in order to do that, we all need to take a look at our own relationships with the series of life-changing protests, demonstrations, and calls for effective human rights implementations that have transpired this past year and throughout history.

Reflecting on the trivialization of Breonna Taylor’s murder, the greater response has been to denounce the disrespectful memes that commodify her name and death in halfhearted calls for justice. From BreonnaCon to the liberal notions of reform that have been watering down calls for police and prison abolition, it is unfortunate to say that virtue signals and effective activism are getting mixed up. As we reckon with injustice after injustice, we must recognize that there is no time or place to seek personal gain from the hardships endured by the marginalized.

Seeking justice does not equate to seeking virality.

Contrasting much of the concrete work we acknowledge to be historic acts of protest such as sit-ins and rallies, is a unique moment for the Internet in the present. You don’t need to look far into your phone to see that people across the world are creating their own easily-consumable, pastel infographics for the purpose of dispersing information and encouraging political engagement. From accessible reading lists to bail fund websites, there’s been a drastic shift in the way social media users make and interact with political content. This is especially visible in the conversations we’re having right now about land rights, voting, race, citizenship, and tragedy. Giving empathy to our neighbours and the activists doing groundwork begins with listening before we output and regurgitate anything at all. Political progression through art and media begins with holding space for those experiencing the issues we’re fighting against and centering their needs.

In Canada, politics and policy have both inspired and been causation for the amplification of memes as a form of art. The Anthropocene, for Canada in particular, is something we can’t reflect on without understanding what exactly it is: our current era and the consequences we’re now seeing of the human impression on Earth. The images, words, and videos we see now are increasingly reflective of that, whether they be a humorous meme pointing nihilistically at the end of the world or an Instagram post with 10 slides addressing this nation’s participation in the devastating effects of climate change. Hell, Canadians have been creating tons of memes for years that boost our opinions about climate justice while demonstrating just how divided our political landscape really is.

Now, we must continue to call into question our own sense of belonging here through the content we create for ourselves as Canadians.

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Maple Syrup Art: Please Don’t Leave —Love, Vancouver’s Art Community JASON ARKELL-BOLES Columnist

If you participate in the Vancouver art scene, you’ve probably heard somebody mention that they’re “moving to Montreal.”

Hey, even I’m guilty of saying it. Just a few months ago, my roommate and I, both filmmakers, decided that after we get our degrees, we’d want to move to cold, Canadian Paris. It’s hard to deny that moving to Montreal from Vancouver is an intriguing plan for anyone interested in the arts. Cheap rent, a huge creative community, plenty of jobs for young people, tons of art galleries make it a perfect city for up and coming creatives.

Not long after we made this brash decision, we decided that leaving our friends and the film industry in Vancouver may not be the best plan for us. But this got me thinking: Vancouver is a huge city, with tons of art schools, creatives, and alternative neighborhoods—all the tools a city needs to become a creative hub. So why then does our art community feel so dull in comparison to that of French Canada?

With myself and many of my close friends wanting to make a name for ourselves in the art world, I decided to figure out why Vancouver lacks the same artistic environment as other art hubs. What good art is coming out of Vancouver? Where are the scenes? Who’s making waves? What will future art historians write about the city as we live in it today?

Many would say Vancouver is an “artsy” city; that’s why I moved here from Kelowna to pursue film and photography. Anyone can walk down Commercial Drive or Main Street, see the murals and alternative folk, and sense that something creative is going on. In the past, Vancouver produced some great artists, huge names like photographers Fred Herzog and Jeff Wall, architect Arthur Erickson, and multimedia artist Bill Reid. Even Grimes grew up here, well, before she moved to Montreal. But despite Vancouver’s artistic history, which checks all the same boxes as Montreal’s, finding contemporary art and the innovators of modern Vancouver remains a

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difficult task. Where are these artists hiding, and which scenes are making the most noise?

As far as noise is concerned, the easiest scene to get into here and the first I found my way into was the music scene. Through venues such as the Avant-Garden and Red Gate, anyone can get a quick glimpse into the local musicians trying to make a name for themselves.

These shows are a great way to meet a bunch of local art types. The Red Gate Art Society, in addition to being a music venue, occasionally hosts art shows—giving a platform for artists to show their work publicly. While these spaces provide great exposure for Vancouver artists, they are few in number, and constantly under threat of gentrification and spiking rent prices.

Outside of the music scene, finding contemporary visual art in Vancouver can be a challenge. My attempts to find local art lead me to events like the Vancouver Art Book Fair at Emily Carr, VanCaf for local comic artists, and CanZine for art zines and books. Although these events are great for discovering new artists, they only occur annually and are always packed, making artist-to-artist mingling a challenge.

When it comes to finding artists in the area, Instagram (for better or worse) is the most popular way to find other creatives. Whether they be talented painters and illustrators such as my local favorite Julia Majer (@julimajer), or Instagram rogues such as colorful fashion photographer Conor Cunningham (@mescondi) and vintage-inspired highfashion stylist/designer Carmyn Slater (@uglybeige), there’s certainly no lack of artists creating work in the city. With a huge number of artists working independently online, Vancouver still seems to lack any sort of organized artistic community.

When thinking of creating communities in the art world, I envision the golden age of New York art in the sixties and seventies. The New York scene gained its infamy through

the organized spaces the arts community could call home. Andy Warhol’s The Factory, for example, was a hip hangout spot for local artists and Warhol’s most admired friends and creatives (also a bunch of speed users, but it was the sixties so who could blame them). At The Factory, you had the chance to mingle with all the names in the New York art community, year-round.

At the moment, Vancouver lacks collaboration in the physical sense. Mending this could involve more local galleries showing Vancouver-made artwork, or more cinema’s showing Canadian short films.

Constant art shows and events are what the city needs to take off artistically, not just annual events, which don’t create a lasting platform. Montreal figured out how to make these spaces happen, so why can’t we?

Like most problems in Vancouver, the root cause is, of course, rent. Let’s not forget that not so long ago, the 333, one of Vancouver’s cornerstone music venues located in the trashiest garage in town, sold for 2.5 million dollars to a condominium developer.

Regardless, I’m still optimistic that all of us poor, café-loving, tree-hugging Vancouver creatives can push forward by connecting with new artists in the community and showing each other kindness.

Through Instagram, Vancouver artists know of each other, but they don’t necessarily know each other. In a city as expensive as Vancouver, artists need to reach out to each other virtually, setting up collaborations, organizing events, or just meeting up for coffee to learn more about each other's art.

Vancouver’s creatives deserve a strong and supportive community to work in, as well as recognition on an international level. This sounds like a daunting task, but we can make this happen. All we have to do is reach out to each other and say hello. Who knows, if we all start getting to know each other better, maybe we won’t have to move across the country to be heard.

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Hands.

ALDEN WALLACE MACKAY Columnist APRIL DELA NOCHE MILNE Illustrator

You always loved to fidget with your hands grinding a thumb into your palm turning one over for inspection searching amongst the newfound lines as if they were a road map leading you to a home you haven’t yet found. Hmm. Perhaps love isn’t the right word to use.

You’re not looking for a presence but instead taking note of the absences, and you take no comfort in what was but is no more— the silver lining of grief— choosing instead to dwell on what never was in the first place.

The hands are not a bad place to start when in search of one’s mortality but if I may make a suggestion: You might have better luck searching instead on the inside of your eye lids.

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LITERATURE

Virgo Aug. 24 - Sept. 23

Libra Sept. 24 - Oct. 23

scorpio Oct. 24 - Nov. 22

Sagittarius Nov. 23 - Dec. 21

Capricorn Dec. 22 - Jan. 20

Aquarius Jan. 21 - Feb. 19

Pisces Feb. 20 - Mar. 20

Aries Mar. 21 - Apr. 20

Taurus Apr. 21 - May 21

Gemini May 21 - Jun. 21

Cancer Jun. 22 -Jul. 23

leo Jul. 24 - Aug 23

Get your panties out of a knot for like 3 seconds minimum this month. Your challenge is to simply vibe. My advice is to listen to some Bossa Nova and watch crime documentaries online.

New beginnings are what you thrive on and this month will be good for that, Scorpio. Do something new without doing something evil.

And lighten up before your frown lines set in before you’re 25, xoxo.

Unclench your fists and go to the park. You’re a workaholic in denial and you can take this little talking-to as your very own episode of A&E’s hit reality TV show Intervention. Not to get all morbid or dark or whatever, but please just stop leaving the party at 9.

Open your mind more and connect deeper with your spirituality. Maybe try to contact your ancestors? Vibe with them. Give them a fist bump. Give your inner child a fist bump and then get yourself some ice cream.

Get your head into gear! Not to be all like, “Tauruses are slow,” but Tauruses are slow…

Enough thinking, more action! Pretend your brain has zero wrinkles and auto-pilot through everything that you’re dreading. Buy a novelty item just for show and tell.

Get ready for your feelings to be running in high gear. I’m talking about some old Roadrunner cartoon-esque drama. Look out for falling anvils and tunnels painted onto rocks. And remember, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, there’s still a chance that it could be a dog.

No vibing for you, Li-bro. Rise and shine or rise and grind, whatever your pretty little heart desires. The point is to wane away from chilling too hard then not being able to get back up again. I’m not saying you’re lazy, but…

Life is your oyster, baby! Now is your time to do more and see more and feel more, but don’t forget to look before you leap. Go crazy off of a blue Gatorade, but safely and while following COVID-19 restrictions. Dig out your wedgie in public, but with gloves on. Catch my drift?

Keep at it when it comes to breaking habits and routines. The universe is working with you and you’re doing a good job! But for the love of everything that is holy, please stop picking your nose, you absolute weirdo.

Okay, you need to release some tension and let things be. You’re embarking on a journey toward more independence and everyone is proud of you. But are you proud of you? ...It’s okay, cry it out. You’re a big baby and everyone knows it.

Don’t over-promise or under-promise this month. Deliver, deliver, deliver! Then sit back and watch the fruits of your labour grow. Be true and be you. Err...both of you? Maybe you’ll actually get things done.

Be conscious, Leo. Listen to Erykah Badu and Andre 3000. Your head is so damn big, bro.

HOROSCOPES

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@CAPILANOCOURIER

capi lan o cou ri er VOLUME 53, ISSUE NO.1