The McGill Tribune Vol. 20 Issue 26

Summer reading list

27

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Issue 26

Nico Oved

Unhappy with ongoing campus rennovations, Koko decided to escape from the Redpath Museum and was hired on as a bartender for the new Gert’s opening April 12th

A team for all ages

Chapters stays James Grohsgal____________________

Chapters Bookstores will con­ tinue to operate the McGill Bookstore, according to M orty Yalovsky, the University Vice Principal Adm inistration and Finance.

"We think that the best option for us right now is to continue on with Chapters," said Yalovsky late Monday night. "We had a choice to make —either we could find a new operating partner or we could have continued on with Chapters, or possibly return management to ourselves."

Yalovsky, who will present his

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findings to the McGill Senate on Thursday, said that Chapters' recent takeover by Trilogy Inc. will improve service to the McGill com­ munity. Citing past problems with book distribution that left many students w ithout required texts, Yalovsky said he was assured by the bookstore chain that this will not happen again.

"Trilogy is com m itted to improving the supplier relation­ ship, particularly involving pay­ ment terms and product returns," said Yalovsky. "We were caught in a bind the first time because of Please see M CG ILL, page 5

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Neil Schnurbach

Once upon a time, there were 15 men who played together as one. Among these men were two sages, Ira Turetsky and Sam Wimisner who coached the games.

There were two giants Kit Kennard and John Naponick who stood at 6 T 0 ” tall. There were future pro­ fessors (Phil Ross and Chad Gaffield), future lawyers (Turetsky and Brian Riordan) and future doctors (Naponick, Cliff Bochner and Frank Schell). But overall, these 15 men just loved the game of basketball.

B e a P a rt o f S h a tn e r H is to r y ! J o in th e P a rty !

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dents, and football where the first college football game was played.

Basketball would definitely be another liability for the McGill athletics program.

But lo and behold, alumni kicked in money for the football and hockey programs. Basketball on the other hand was another story.

T he year is 1970.

It is September and McGill University has announced that it will make major cuts in many non-academic areas. As Pat Hickey, then o f the Montreal Star reported: “Museums were closed, student services cur­ tailed and the entire athletic budg­ et wiped out.” These budgetary constraints would kick in at the beginning of the 1971-72 school year.

W ith no budget for athletics, McGill would not be able to com­ pete in sports like hockey, whose rules were compiled by McGill stu­

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“I can probably tell you stories about everyone of the players... on the floor, and off the floor...,” said the team’s starting point guard Joe Prah from his Lennoxville, Quebec Please see B A S K E T B A L L , page 3 4

Lots of prizes to be won!

Including 20 VIP tickets to the grand opening of the new downstairs bar!

Win a piece of the old Gert's!

Neons, laminates and much, much more.

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2 News

The McGill Tribune, Tuesday, 3 April 2001

Panel decries Iraqi sanctions

R E M IN D E R To all Clubs and Interest Groups:

.B e a p a r t o f f i d a y .

David Schanzle SSSSfg :

Old M cGill 2001 w ill publish your clubs activities and events. ÆÊëMÊk

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dub to submit what interesting event and accomplishment was achieved during 2000-2001. Please include photographs if available.

Submit all information to Old McGill 2001 by no later than May 1, 2001.

Drop-off your envelopes at the front desk of the SSM U William & Mary Brown Building 3600 McTavish, Room 1207.

For more info: Contact Paul Slachta at 398-6806.

T h e re is NO ch arg e for publishing your event

S tu d e n t Loan?

Enter the Sony 2001 Canadian Business Plan Competition and you could win

$ 10 ,0 0 0 u s .

T h e co m p etitio n is open to u n d erg rad u ate and g rad u ate stu d en ts at C an ad ian U niversities.

C o m p lete d etails are availab le at http://canada.550dm v.com S u b m issio n s are being accep ted until M ay 2 5 ,2 0 0 1 .

Canadians protested the war, while so many have not protested the sanctions?” This question was posed by a member of the audience at the Quebec Network to End Sanctions against Iraq conference panel discussion, and it aptly described the tone of the proceed­ ings that were held over the week­ end at the University of Montreal.

Since the end of the much publicized “Desert Storm” military operations against Iraq in 1991, the United Nations have heavily sanctioned Iraq, lim iting the importation of medical supplies, weaponry, purification equipment and other essential goods.

According to the QNESI, United States and Canadian supported sanctions have caused the deaths of over half a million children under the age of five, and have lead to widespread impoverishment of the Iraqi people, weakening their abili­ ty to resist Sadam Hussein’s regime.

Suzanne Loiselle, a member of the observer mission to Iraq organ­ ized by the Voices of Conscience in 2000 spoke about her personal experiences during the panel dis­ cussion.

“W hen I talk o f the sanctions, 1 will talk about them emotional­ ly,” she said. “After having seen the consequences of the sanctions 10 years after the Iraq w ar... The sanctions are amplifying the prob­ lem.”

The inform ation booklet states that the sanctions have caused the Iraqi dinar to fall in value from three dollars to a twen­ tieth o f a cent, and that this has effectively stopped the importation of water purification equipment vital to a water starved area. The devaluation has also limited the ability o f the population to import food. In the eyes of the QNESI this is a violation o f the Geneva Convention that states that it is forbidden to starve civilians as a means o f waging war.

A great deal of the panel dis­ cussion, and o f the conference itself, was put together with the goal of getting the Canadian gov­ ernment to oppose sanctions.

Canada has backed the United States in support of the U N sanc­ tions since their im position in 1990. Director o f the AQOCI, Francine Nemeh spoke about the responsibility of Canadians to pres­ sure the government.

“We have to convince the members of all the Unions, all the members of all the Federations...

We have to get to all the Churches... This won’t work unless we can convince the government,” she said.

A major part of the conference was devoted to the cause of making the Canadian government repre­ sent the views of its citizens regard­ ing the sanctions.

“As President of the Security Council, Canada had a great opportunity to do something, but insisted on more studies and intel­ ligence...” she said. “There is never consultation with the populace, there is no consultation with the non-governmental organizations...

I personally never gave my yes to the sanctions and the bombings.”

According to Stuart E. Eizenstat, in a U.S. State D epartm ent report released in 1998, “sanctions are most effective when they have broad multilateral support and participation.

M ultilateral sanctions maximize the international pressure on the offending state.”

Another audience member during the panel discussion posed a question that showed the other side of the issue.

“I don’t like the sanctions, but I am a realist... Don’t the people have part of the responsibility in the Iraqi conflict? D idn’t they march into Kuwait with guns?”

At the end o f the long and involved question period, the panel urged those members who believe in their cause to convince other people of it, and thus spread aware­ ness. One questioner said near the end, “You cannot be for the sanc­ tions, you can only be against the sanctions. There is no reason for it to be happening. I want all people to oppose the sanctions.”

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o r r e c t io n

Two nam es w ere printed incorrectly in last w eek’s article “What w as Lacking in the last S S M U election?”

The nam es should have been Brian Lack and Marvin Liebman.

The Tribune a p p r e c ia t io n a w a r d fo r b e st p r o d u c tio n m a n a g er o f th e year g o es t o ...... E r ic O e s t T h e c o m p e titio n w as t i g h t , b u t S e n o r O e s t su r e p u lle d th r o u g h .

BANG!

The McGill Tribune, Tuesday, 3 April 2001

Sem ester in Review

Election fever

Contrat de perfomance

Have it the corporate way or no way

Controversy abounded on campus with the news o f two McGill professors, Dr. Margret Somerville and Dr. Katherine Young testifying against same sex marriage in a high-profile case.

Sommerville’s and: Young’s actions prompted outcries from campus groups; most notably in the form of a petition disseminated en masse by e-mail.

Bookstores

Academic amnesty

The endless line for course packs and commemorative spoons took a new twist with Trilogy Inc.’s proposed takeover of Chapters, the manager of the McGill Bookstore.

Early January saw the beginning of a process of changing Bookstore administration which still remains incomplete.

The debate over academic amnesty for those wishing to defer exams to protest the FTAA in Quebec City first reared its head jin late January. The FTAA-Alert coali­ tion and other supporters of the cause began their battle with

F e b ru a ry

SnoAP Lower field was bustling with moonshine and debauchery as SnoAP took root once again. While class turnout may not have been stellar, sloth and inebriation soared to new heights.

a r c h

Same sex marriages

J a n u a r y

While most of us were suffer­ ing egg-nog overdoses, McGill administration was busy at work over December signing the Contrat de Perfomance, an agreement with the Quebec Government. The stip­ ulations of the deal includes $50 million in increased funding for McGill.

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administration.

Bribe-taking bouncers

Keep an eye on the ceiling

SSM U /PG SS negotiations Negotiations between the Students’ Society of McGill University and the Post Graduate Students’ Society resulted in major changes to the agreement between the two bodies. PGSS moved from paying a charge o f $ 65 000 yearly to $ 16 000, dealing a severe blow to available funding for clubs and services.

Allegations of bribe taking by bouncers at the Four Floors party raised questions over the profes­ sionalism of the student security force hired by the SSMU. A lack of formal training for some members of the security force may have been operative in the problem.

Student politics at McGill experienced its own March Madness with debates threading the line between comedy and monkeybusiness, and the disqualification of a candidate due to by-law viola­ tions.

Make room for same sex marriages

The prospect of new cold beverage exclusivity' deals with Coca-Cola were once again in the works in the board rooms of administration and the SSMU. A more watered down version of the original deal was tabled for consideration, free of the stipulation of a campus wide agree­ ment.

The falling sky Building maintenance at McGill proved Chicken Little right, as a ceiling tile fell in Arts West 130, hitting a student. Although nobody was harmed, this, coupled with a blackout affecting most of the west side of the campus later that week left many incensed.

Library Improvement Fund The despondent gloom of poor lighting and veneer o f filth of McGill libraries: found salvation by way one million dollars provided by of Library Improvement Fund Committee. The committee, creat­ ed by a referendum two years ago, provided a fund that came half from students and half from alumni.

Academic amnesty rejected In a 32-31 vote the proposal for academic amnesty was rejected by the Senate. Those wishing to take the trek to Quebec City were forced to work schedules around exams.

Monkey business at the elections

CBA returns Some things never quite die.

y' The guy on the left is always drunk

Campus Life Fund S

The possibility of yet another fee j raise was announced late January with the arrival of the Campus Life Fund. The proposed fee was $ 3.90

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Housing Problems Dealing an even further blow to incoming students seeking to avoid year long outdoor camp-outs, McGill eliminated the guarantee of housing for first year students.

Further exacerbating the endless search for housing, the Quebec Rental Board increased the amount landlords can charge their tenants for gas and oil heated apartments.

r e c ip ie n t s o f t h e S c a r le t K e y A w a r d fo r t h e 2 0 0 0 - 2 0 0 1 a c a d e m ic y ear: Provigo - new, fancy, twice the price

lina Zachariades

Provigo In a time of fee raises and housing shortages, like a phoenix from the ashes, Provigo reopened, once again guaranteeing the much needed fix for KD-j unkies.

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Residence - where you don’t live

4 News

The McGill Tribune, Tuesday, 3 April 2001

Quebec budget provides expected boost to education money for the post-secondary edu­ cation sector.

The government basically kept its promises it made at the Quebec Youth Summit in February 2000, with the second installment of the billion dollars over three years. It also followed up on electoral prom­ ises to maintain Quebec’s tuition freeze for Quebec students and to increase the am ount available for student aid.

T he Quebec Federation of University Students has been dog­ ging Premier Bernard Landry to maintain his government’s com­ m itm ent to promises made at the Summit, ever since he announced in January that the province’s finances might not permit him to keep them.

“We are satisfied to see that the government did not renege on its commitments, especially in the case o f reinvestment, o f the absorp­ tion o f the costs of the system and on financial aid measures for stu­ dents,” said QFUS President Christian Robitaille, who noted that the sector still lacks about $900 million in funding in order to reach the level it was at five years ago.

Jonathan Colford

Finding enough money to sat­ isfy everybody is a tough job for anyone adm inistering a limited supply of resources.

Nevertheless, Quebec Finance Minister Pauline Marois delivered a balanced budget that left most pressure groups pretty happy last week.

The various education lobby groups seemed content that this sector received a $528-m illion funding boost plus a $200 million share o f a billion-dollar reserve fund the Quebec government established to cover information technology and building improve­ ments.

The tax-cutters got $3.5 bil­ lion (back) while the health care sector received $2 billion, includ­ ing a $1,3 billion increase to their operating budget. Marois even managed to pay down $500 mil­ lion of Quebec’s $82 billion in accumulated debt.

Education The provincial budget con­ tains few surprises and little new

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Financial aid gap widening in the U.S. (U-WIRE) BOSTON — The rising cost of college tuition coupled with a lack of need-based financial assis­ tance throughout the United States is a threat to low-income students preparing for college, a congression­ al committee found recendy.

The Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance report­ ed an increasing gap in college admissions between high-income and low-income students.

According to the “Access Denied” report, student loans and grants are falling short for low-income stu­ dents because the current aid system has shifted its focus to merit-based awards and middle class students in recent years.

“This gap is certainly hurting college participation rates in low-income students that are academically pre­ pared to enter college,” said Charles Terrell, associate dean of student affairs at Boston University and vice chair of the Committee. “There is an average of $3,800 (USD) of unmet need for low-income stu­ dents at four-year institutions.”

Terrell is one of 11 members of the Committee, which assists Congress by advising it on college aid issues.

According to Terrell, federal Pell Grants have not kept pace with ris­ ing costs and cover only 39 percent of tuition costs.

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“We are calling attention to the problem so that institutions will come together and focus on putting need first,” Terrell said.

The number of college-bound stu­ dents is expected to increase by 1.6 million nationally over the next fif­ teen years. Many of these students will be low-income students requir­ ing financial aid in order to attend college, the report said.

— with files from Katrina Shank, The Daily Free Press (Boston U.) PGSS dropping out of CSF?

The Post-Graduate Students’ Society of McGill University will be voting on a motion to place the Canadian Federation of Students on proba­ tionary status at its next council meeting on April 4. Among the PGSS’ concerns are an alleged lack of accountability on the part of the CFS National office, and a belief that the CFS is not representing the best interests of the Society; existing issues of political and sexual harass­ ment at CFS National; a failure on part of the CFS National to com­ municate effectively with all mem­ bers; and antagonism on part of the CFS National towards the organiza­ tion’s Quebec component. The details of the decision at the April 4 meeting will be published in the Tribune’s online version when they are available to the public.

P r o je c t

Would like to thank all those who Volunteered their time and energy, Who donated supplies and lend their support, Who helped create and helped inspire Who participated and Attended The 3rd and Extremely Su ccessfu l In t e r n a t io n a l

The lion’s share o f the $728 million increase will not do much that’s new. $350 million is going towards salary indexation, while $200 million will be sitting in the reserve fund. Even salary indexa­ tion is not new: it was part of the package that the government promised delegates at the Summit.

The government will increase financial aid to students by $38 million; it will allow part-time stu­ dents to have access to financial aid, as well as exempt scholarships from taxation.

Until now, students had to pay tax on the portion of their scholar­ ships exceeding $3,000.

Also, 26,000 more students will earn a $154 tax credit on the Quebec Sales Tax. Marois trum peted Quebec’s second-place rank among Organization for Economic CoOperation and Development coun­ tries in terms of the “percentage of national wealth spent on educa­ tion.”

“More has to be done for our young people to enable them to realize their full potential, which is our most important asset for the future,” she said in the budget speech.

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Frosh Le a d e rs Needed: Come be a part of the 2001

SSMU Frosh Program •September 1-3, 2001 •

1241 McGill College

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V I J W J De Maisonneuve Store 925 Boul. De Maisonneuve O. (514) 288-0679 Bring this coupon with your shipment to either store.

Cash, Credit Card, Cheque, Debit Card only. I coupon per purchase.

Coupon has no cash value. Expiry date June 30, 2001. See details in the store.

To become a leader, pick up your application at the SSMU Front Desk 3600 McTavish, suite 1200, and return it there

by Wednesday, April 11.

Questions?

Email Mark Chodos at ce@ssmu.mcgill.ca

Is * Mark Chodos SSMU VP Communication and Events 514-3 98-6 79 9

M cG ill keeps Chapters

Stories BSN accuses SSMU of being insensitive

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Project Interaction

In mid-November SSMU Council decided not to ratiiÿ the Black Students’ Networks new con­ stitution. The BSN questioned SSMU’s sensitiv­ ity towards the decisions of minority groups on campus. SSMU denied the allegations, arguing that they chose not approve the document due to procedural reasons.

Student groups passed a petition around campus in January protesting the coopertation of two McGill profes­ sors, Dr. Margaret Sommerville and Dr. Katherine Young, with the goverenment in it case against two men seeking to be recognized under law as a married couple. The Professors were serving as expert witnesses for the government.

Environmental policy protests No accomodation for FTAA protestors JÊ

In a 32-31 vote, Senate voted against granting students permission to defer final exams to attend protests against the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City between April 19-22.

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Groups around campus, spearheaded by QPIRG McGill, protested against the University’s lack of an effective environmental policy. Efforts to pressure McGill into adopting a new policy occured throughout the year.

Chapters' difficulties with suppli­ ers, and it reflected negatively on our bookstore."

Alan Charade, the Director of Ancillary Services, said in February that if McGill were to continue its agreement with Chapters, the bookstore chain would have to respond to McGill's complaints about Chapters' service. Yalovsky said that Chapters and Trilogy have promised to do better in the future.

"They gave us their word, and it was in writing as well..." said Yalovsky. "We've received a detailed restructuring plan to modify their operations. We expect to get a serv­ ice at the level that has been prom­ ised, and the issue of delays as a result of insufficient quantities of new and used textbooks are all going to vanish.

"Particularly with the USbased university presses, several companies put us on credit hold because of the difficulties with the main Chapters. That was the diffi­ culty that happened in January. We cleared that up, and it took some time... This w on't happen in the

future.”

Wojtek Baraniak, President of the Students' Society of McGill University, hopes that Chapters will live up to their promises.

"Obviously, as students, we have to be assured that our required texts are available at the beginning of each semester," said Baraniak.

"Unfortunately from the very beginning students were used as pawn in a larger game between Chapters and the distributors. We still run the risk of the problems of a larger corporation affecting us.

W ritten commitments don't amount to much."

Although Yalovsky cited the change in ownership of Chapters as one o f the main reasons why McGill chose to stay with them, he is unsure what long-term effects the Trilogy takeover will have on the operation of the bookstore.

"That we d o n 't know yet.

Remember that this is a manage­ ment agreement that we do have.

McGill's bookstore will be man­ aged by Chapters, or possibly a spinoff, I'm not sure."

Contrat de Performance In late December McGill signed the performance contract with the governent.

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ASSOCIATE DEAN OF STUDENTS Chowdhury disqualified from elections Union votes for strike

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O n March 2 Chief Returning Officer Brian Lack ousted Arif Chowdhury from the contest for SSMU president for by-law violations. SSMU’s Judicial Board upheld the decision on March 5.

In a September 23 meeting members of the Service Employees’ Union voted overwhemingly in favour of a campus-wide strike. Areas of the Union’s complaints against the University included job security, policy on sick days, and retroactive raises. In December a court ruled in the Union’s favour, forcing the University to pay workers retroactive raises.

Ryan Sengara

A committee to advise the Principal on the selection of an A ssociate Dean of Students at McGill University has been convened. The position is a half-time academ ic appointment with duties to begin June 1st, 2001, or as soon as possible there­ after before August 15, 2001. The initial appoint­ ment will be for up to five years to coincide with the term of office of the in-coming Dean, and may be renewed.

On-Campus Stabbing On September 8 a McGill student was stabbed on campus at the same time as the Four Floor Party taking place in the Shatner building. The incident occured outside the MacDonald build­ ing. The perpetrator was never found.

SSMU wins court case over Daily 0 ÊÊ

■ SPHR and Hillel oppose conflict in Middle East

6

Throughout the year the Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights group and Hillel protested against violence in the Middle East towards Jews and Palestinians. Demonstrations took place around the downtown campus.

On October 4 a court ruled in SSMU’s favor over a lease dispute with the McGill Daily, settling an issue that began two months earlier when SSMU deemed it necessary to lock the paper out of its offices.

Applicants or nominees must be full-time members of McGill University’s academ ic staff. The Advisory Committee would be pleased to hear in confidence from members of faculty who are themselves inter­ ested in the position or who wish to nominate others.

The committee will appreciate receiving a cover letter addressing interest in, and qualifications for, the position, a curriculum vitae and the names and coordinates of three referees (actually letters of reference are equally welcome).

The deadline for receipt of nominations or applica­ tions and supporting documents is Tuesday, April 24th, 2001. Please direct all correspondence to: Professor Bruce Shore Dean-Designate of Students c/o Ms. Cathie Sheeran William and Mary Brown Student Services Building 3600 McTavish, Suite 4100 Montreal, Q C H3A1Y1 Enquiries preceding a possible application may be directed to Bruce Shore at bruce.m.shore@mcqill.ca

Demonstrations over Middle East conflicts

6 News

The McGill Tribune, Tuesday, 3 April 2001

If the SSMU w as in Gotham...

The difficulty of preserving the Justice League w ithin the security of the w a lls of righteousness has been operose and m om entous. Through the year, the News Team ; Bat-girl, Batm an and Robin have fought tirelessly to shepherd the innocent through the Byzantine world of Student Politics. Here is the grand finale.

— Mike, Nema and Shehryar

Clara Peron — VP University Affairs Accomplishments: Gave UA position more promi­ nence in University Internship task force: -Internships coordinator will be working at Career And Placement Service next aca­ demic year with the role of finding internships for stu­ dents and compiling databas­ es Course Evaluations: continued project from previous years, finalizing proposal on having accessible results, improved questions dealing for example with teacher/student ratios, hopefully ratified either in last Senate meeting of the current academic year, or first Senate

meeting of next academic year Library Improvement Fund: raised $1 million through the McGill Students Fund and Alumni contributions. Fund going where students want it to.

Creation of Student Equity Commissioner position Encouraging turnout at new 'Voicing Our Vision' forum; incorporated student feed­ back in paper entitled "A Student Vision for McGill", which has been passed around campus to faculty associations, student groups and general student body Worked towards alleviating problem of oversized class­

rooms through motion to include suitable exam envi­ ronment rule

Setbacks:

Did not work closely enough with francophone com m is­ sioner to establish links between French speaking community at McGill

Position of Student Equity Commissioner not yet clearly defined; appointed commis­ sioner, Amarkai Laryea's resig­ nation midway through the second semester interrupted process of defining position; policy on discrimination and harassment tabled because it was unclear Four senator resignations through the course of the year interrupted processes in Senate; impacted cohesion of Senate

Wojtek Baraniak — President Accomplishments: Daycare project, set to open September 2001 Renovations to Shatner building Helped various faculty associ­ ations and student with prob­ lems, e.g. granted loan to Science Undergraduate Society, provided prayer space to Muslim students' association Initiated successful campaign to raise student fees by $3.90; creation Campus Life Fund to provide financial support to athletics teams and other stu­ dent activities Worked with Greening McGill to implement only compre­ hensive recycling program at McGill in the Shatner building: providing green boxes, buying larger recycling bins Tackled new issues that SSMU

traditionally has not tackled, e.g. supporting FTAA-Alert Coalition's request to University for academic accommodation during final exams for students wishing to attend protests in Quebec City from April 19-22.

Lobbied Administration with Post Graduate Students' Society to fund services such as Office for Students with Disabilities from its base budget instead of through the Student Services Fee Initiated proposal to imple­ ment reform to SSMU struc­ ture towards a federation sys­ tem, where SSMU is popularly viewed as comprising repre­ sentatives from faculty associ­ ations as well as executives, rather than just the executives Won court case against the Daily Publications Society

Setbacks: Court battle with the Daily: financial loss and negative effect on the image of the Society Lack of new agreement with PGSS: financial setback lead­ ing to increase in student fee Losing control of cafeterias to University Unfinished projects including fundraising for renovations (including creation of a Council meeting room on sec­ ond floor of Shatner); propos­ al for Council reform towards federation system; establish­ ing firm position with University of SSMU to enter into cold beverage agree­ ments on campus Lack of more externally orient­ ed activities such as press

releases to community and being more vocal in criticizing the Quebec government Did not take time to promote McGill Students' Fund to stu­ dent body

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The McGill "Tribune, Tuesday, 3 April 2001

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News 7

Chris Gratto — VP Clubs and Services G o als:

Important thing is resources for clubs and services next year. Lot of little things I wished I had done better, I had focused on those, I

would have missed the big things.

A cco m p lish m en ts:

Ground work for many things that will be completed the

next year if we have the funding. Many of the things are things I'm going to pass on to Martin.

Making sure that through the fee increase, there would be more money for clubs and

services next year. This money is going directly back to students and certainly adds value to the McGill com­ munity.

Mark Chodos — VP Communications and Events "I think I've done mostly everything I set out to accom­ plish. I wanted to bring back four-floors- done. I wanted to bring back Snow-AP- done. I wanted to communicate bet­ ter with students about things that were going on with SSMU- and I think that was done through mass emails...people were pretty happy with them, I think, and they got the word about events out there."

Also our Quebec City trip was very successful... it even sparked a position, that will hopefully be filled for next year... for SSMU trips coordi­ nator" Later about Snow AP "It was

truly one of my most gratifying events and no other school in North America, that I know of, has anything like it."

this year...the Daily case, CBA stuff kept coming up again, and with the elections, we had to deal with the J-board case."

D isapp o in tm en ts

Snow-AP did really well, and I was very happy with it except financially. That's my biggest disappointment., we were about $11,000 over, which w as very discouraging.

Everything went really well, it was just so expensive.

"We also had plans to go out into the community, and we did that once or twice at the beginning of the year, but it never really worked out."

"We've had lots of road blocks

"Also I found that the Admin was not cooperative on many issues. I thought things would be less bureaucratic than they were, but it was very hard to work with members of the administration, and surprising to learn that they don't have much money."

"I also found that there too much politics in [SSMU] office itself.

It very hard sometimes to laborate on issues."

was the was col­

"Open meetings were also a bit of a disappointment.

Students wanted them, but nobody every showed up. We tried during the day, we tried at night, we even tried in Gert's.J don't know what the answer is here.

"I'm disappointed with the security at parties as well.

We're either hearing com­ plaints about them or that they're taking bribes" "I'm also disappointed that G eifs didn't do as well as it has in the past. That's really more of Kevin's territory, but I feel I could have done more to make it more successful."

Jeremy Farrell — VP Community and Government G o als:

A cco m p lish m en ts:

Stronger representation for students.

Stronger representation for students through tangible lob­ bying initiatives.

I raised pertinent points at

every CASA meeting or made sure they were raised.

Everytime there's been a gov­ ernment initiative on educa­ tion, we addressed it.

Tenants rights clinic.

Safety day.

Community initiative through Volunteer Day.

Gerts is opening April 12.

Every lease and contract has been re-negotiated.

"I'd say I'm coming pretty close to leaving the society on a clean page."

Kevin McPhee — Operations G o als:

A cco m p lish m en ts:

Clean up the mess that had been started by previous exeutives.

Cafeterias are open.

The second part of the rennovations; 1st floor and base­ ment are almost done.

the 3rd part of rennovations; more club offices, more fire escapes to increase building capacity, and more bathrooms in the basement.

The daycare letter of intent is

W e are w orking on funding for

signed.

All images on this spread are the property of DC Comics

8 Op/Ed

The McGill Tribune, Tuesday, 3 April 2001

EDITORIAL

Letters Give Free Trade a Chance

Taking the process seriously isn’t only the role of CR0

The constant bellyaching on behind the whole operation? Once Last week I wrote in to point both sides of the fence is really upon a time the CRO just ran the out the inconsistant [sic] reporting becoming too much. Students’ | damn election and that was that. on “Azmi Bishara”. I mentioned Society o f McGill University digni­ Now they challenge the constitu­ that your writer, aside from being taries claim that the recent elections tion and kick candidates out of misinformed, reffered [sic] to Mr John Salloum_________________________________________________________________ should have been held with more races and ride high on the hog for Bishara’s [sic] as Rishara. You class, especially during what some j the months in which their names Aplolgized [sic] for the mistake but W hatever happened to the notion of university campuses being the have labeled “tasteless” debates. The appear in the papers. Both sides — made it look as if I was wrong too! definitive place for the exchange of ideas and the construction of argu­ CRO and his crew have rallied what’s done is done. A new crop of Now you said his name is Bshara. ments? Indeed, academia is supposed to be the ultim ate place for free­ against such charges, countering individuals are in their high chairs For the last time do your research!!! dom of expression and a place to debate issues. It is hence troubling that that all is well and maybe SSMU and they will dutifully perform the Look him up on the internet. Every both this and other student newspapers across N orth America have stiffs should develop a sense of same tasks of their predecessors. single article refers to him as Azmi been criticized for running controversial advertisements over this past humour. Well kaibash to all of you. Please can we get back to writing Bishara. academic year.

To SSMU — when candidates have half-wit articles on the McGill Getting it wrong once is bad.

The Tribune was criticized earlier this year for printing a small been asked during debates to sing a Ghetto and Redmen Football?

Getting it wrong a second time and advertisement paid for by a group advocating a pro-life stance on abor- J song that best personifies them­ trying to cover up the error by tion rights. It should be noted that we have also run pro-choice ads in j selves (‘97,’98,’99) and when can­ making me look stupid (simply Richard Retyi the past. T he paper was also criticized in late November, at the height didates concoct cheesy campaign because I dared to point out your Former SSM U Candidate and Red of the Middle East crisis, for printing a back page advertisement from posters (Chodos, Baraniak, Ki, ad mistake) is shamefull [sic]. I expect Herring Editor Hillel, the Montreal Jewish Students’ Union. The advertisement con­ infinitum) how are we to take the J an apology in next weeks [sic] demned the Solidarity for Palestinian H um an Rights, a McGill campus process seriously. Candidates, real paper. group, and demanded that certain actions be taken. and Red Herring, have done much O ther student newspapers across the United States were criticized worse in the past and escaped M ark Eltis just last month when they ran an advertisement entitled “Ten Reasons unscathed. And to the CRO — Why Reparations for Blacks is a Bad Idea for Blacks —and Racist, Too.” why is it that CROs o f late feel it is | Ed note: We apologize fo r our The ad was placed by David H orow itz, a conservative columnist and please see MORE LETTER S, their duty to attack SSMU and try spelling. page 10 editor-in-chief ofFrontpageM agazine.com . In the ad, Horow itz argues to be the anti-establishment force the controversial stance that paying reparations to African-Americans as compensation for enslavement in the Southern U.S. is just another attem pt to victimize them. O f the 48 school papers the ad was subm it­ ted to, only 14 ran the ad. T he editorial boards of the other 34 papers made a decision to reject it.

T he Brown University D aily Herald, which ran H orow itz’s ad, had The McGill Tribune is seeking colum nist applications for the 2001 - 2002 year 4000 papers stolen from the racks and presumably destroyed. Protestors marched to the Duke University Chronicle’s offices where they dem and­ ed the paper apologize for printing the ad and donate the profits to charity. Angry students at the University of Wisconsin at Madison demanded the Badger Herald editor-in-chieFs resignation. She refused.

Columnists run bi-weekly for a total of 13 weeks over the academic year.

The fact that so many student papers chose to censor the ad, and that those that did run it were condemned for doing so, raises concerns Applications should be addressed to the Editor-in-Chief, and submitted by 4:30pm on for the future of freedom of expression in academia. Controversial mes­ Friday, April 6, 2001 to the Tribune’s office. sages have a right to be heard — even those where a majority of the pop­ ulation does not agree. W hen a paper prints an ad, it does not necessar­ Please submit a cover letter explaining the theme/topic of your column, a little bit about ily constitute an endorsement of the message, but it does support our yourself and other reading material you enjoy. Please attach three (3) possible column collective right to freedom of expression. Just as there are people who samples to your application. The Tribune wants to see that as a potential columnist, you support pro-choice abortion stances, there are also people on our cam- [ have a good writing style and that you have enough ideas to last you 13 weeks. pus who support a pro-life stance. Both have a place in student newspa­ pers.

In the context of higher education campuses, where the free flow of Submit applications to our new office: Shatner University Centre, 3480 McTavish, main floor ideas is central to the purpose of our institution, the editorial boards of From the main entrance, stay left of the staircase, walk to the big advertisement on the wall, turn campus papers should not be rejecting advertisements on the grounds right, we're the first door on your left. that the ad challenges political correctness.

Unless an ad is sexist, racist, libellous or homophobic in nature, stu­ dent newspapers should not refuse to publish an ad. University is, after all, about ideas —even the ones we don’t agree with. All of our ideas, subject to the reasonable constraints of the law, have a right to be heard.

Don't shoot the messenger

C

o l u m n is t

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p p l ic a t io n s

THE McGILL TRIBUNE

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http://tribune.mcgill.ca THE M c G IL L T R IB U N E Ed it o r -In - C hief

John Salloum A ssistan t Editor - in - C hiff

Stephanie Levitz

News Editor Shehryar Fazli

Science Editor Michael Ayles

Production Manager Eric Oest

Assistant News Editors Mike Bargav Nema Etheridge

Sports Editor Jeremy Kuzmarov

Advertising and Marketing Manager Paul Slachta

A ssistant Ed ito r - in - C hief

Rhea Wong C a m p u s Editor

Jonathan Colford

is an editorially autonomous newspaper published by the Students' Society of McGill University

Features Editors Shirlee Engel Ian Speigel Entertainment Editors Grace Carter Marie-Hélène Savard

Assistant Sports Editors James Empringham Neil Schnurbach Photo Editors Patrick Eok Nico Oved

Ad Typesetters Siu Min Jim Chris Essert

On-line Editors Andre Nance Mildred Wong Staff: David Balzer, R icky C. Gordon. Judith Drory, Jam es Grohsgal, Jeff Hall-Martin, Raquel Kirsch, Peter Koven, Alexandre Leigh, David Ma, Leah K. Nchama, Joseph Quesne), Andrew Raven, Gaia Remerowski. Omar Sachedina. David Schanzle, Shan Soe-Lin, M elanie Tomsons, Angela Wilson, Leora W ise. Dan Zacks.

We accept submissions in two categories: ’Letters to the Editor’ and ’Stop the Press.1Letters more than 200 words or submissions for Stop the Press more than 500 words may not be printed. The Tribune will make all reasonable efforts to prim Letters to the Editor provided that space is available, however, we reserve the right to edit them for length. The Tribune will print one 'Stop the Press' submission each week on a first-come, first-served basis. If additional space is available, we may print more. Submissions must include author's name, signature, identification (e.g.

U2 Biology, SSMU Presidenl) and telephone number and be submitled on disk in Macintosh or IBM word processor format, by e-mail or through our website.

Submissions judged by the Editor-in-Chief to be libellous, sexist, racist, homopho­ bic, or solely promotional in nature, will not be published.

Columns appearing under 'Editorial' heading are decided upon by the editorial board and written by a member of the editorial board. All other opinions are strict­ ly those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The M c G ill Tribune, its editors or its staff. Opinions expressed do not necessarily represent those of the Students' Society or of McGill University. Please recycle this newspaper.

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The McGill Tribune, Tuesday, 3 April 2001

Op/Ed 9

Would you like some matzah with your easter egg?

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' ere comes Passover!

Like a train straight . from Jerusalem, it’s the festival of Matzah, designed to bring nothing but un-breadly goodness into your world for eight days (or until you stop for McDonalds on the way home from the first seder). And, Passover kicks ass. (I have a tattoo that says that somewhere on me.)

First, every year you get to read the funky, funky Passover story. At one point, Moses “takes his rod,” and “performs the signs”. I’m not sure how you “perform a sign,” but if it involves Moses’ rod, it can’t be too shabby. (I am not making this up...look it up). Then, Moses “frees the Israelites from the house of bondage.” This always makes me crack up. I remember the first time I laughed at the seder, and I was afraid every­ one would be mad; Instead my dad laughed too, as if to say, “today you are a man.” My mom hit me.

Then, at one point in the seder, you open the door to let an “invisible prophet” drink a glass of wine. It’s actually just drunk­ en Uncle Dave, but he was kinda prophetic when he once told me that “chicks dig avia­ tor sunglasses”. Thanks, Dave. He was years ahead of that trend. But, why not like the idea of an invisible guy who goes from house to house drinking? The Easter bunny leaves eggs; the prophet stops by for a beer.

Speaking of alcohol, at the seder, you HAVE to drink four glasses of wine. You have to, or

you get re-circumcised. At least that’s the rule in our house, (incidentally, I have no brothers— anymore.)

Also at Passover comes the four ques­ tions, normally recited by the youngest, although at my house, pretty much everyone does this, making it the 24 questions. I’ve got one question: why do people who can’t sing think they can? O h right— four glasses of wine.

Passover is also about the Afikomen.

T hat’s the piece of the Matzah that is hidden at the beginning, to be found by the children at the end of the evening in exchange for cash. By that point in the evening, the com­ petition is totally cutthroat: last year, my younger sister took a cheese-grater to my cousin’s head to claim the $2.00 reward. She still carries a lock of hair around with her as a souvenir of her triumph.

Seriously though, as this is the last col­ umn, and I will be graduating, I’m going to end completely off topic— thank you to everyone for the past four years. I will miss this place lots, and am thankful to all the people who have been a part of this wonder­ fully insane experience. Good luck to every­ one in the future, especially me.

Goldblatt

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creme eggs.

Would you rather eat dry, tasteless crackers for eight days or gooey, chocolatey, marshmallowy, deliciously, sticky treats until your eyes roll back?

“Onward Christian soooldiers...And God said to Noah there’s gonna be a floodfloody” — ok enough of the shameless Simpsons’ filler, but it’s all in the spirit of the season. W hat more could you want: plenty o’ chocolate and redemp­ tion from your sins —Easter’s where it’s at!!!

Ahhh Easter, when it comes to Christian significance, this is the mother load. The lengthy holidays at Christmas may have fooled you into believing that the J-man’s birthday is more important. However, it was his selfless (and ever so convenient) demise that gives Christianity its chutzpah! (and not to mention a little free-ride-to-heaven). In case you haven’t caught the (sac)religious undertones to this column — note to reader: pay attention to the brackets!

All blasphemy aside (did I just say that?), who wouldn’t want to take part in a religious event whereby y all get the green light to salvation, because the big cheese sacrificed his only son?

Now that was so altruistic, I’m almost certain that Mr. God is a Mrs. (O f course that’s if the big cheese really i exists. But that’s besides the point.)

Easter is a season of win-win para­ doxes. First go stuff your face with chocolates, then drop in on the Sunday morning service to be remind­ ed of the J-man’s sacrifice for your butts, then go hunt for some more chocolates, with which you can stuff your face. There’s no need for fasting —sure if you want, Ye O f Good Friday or even for every Friday in Lent —but it ain’t a travesty if you indulge in some food.. .and of course chocolate. That’s the beauty of the season and the sig­ nificance as well. You get to indulge, while your religion does the work for you and in the end, you still win how sweet is that? Alright, before I find myself the target o f Billy Graham’s personal Crusade, I’d better call it quits. (Hey, did you know that you can’t voluntarily be excommuni­ cated from the church.. .damn.)

And on parting note.. .I’d just like to say these four years have been real swell. I’m really gonna miss the snow in April, splashing in the Milton pond, and having a hell of a time trying to find a diet pepsi on campus (and they say there’s no coke deal). Thus I bid farewell to my loyal reader, thanks

Hyphens and history T h e O u th o u s e

of

C o m m e n ts

David M arshall he term ‘Québécois’ just asks for criticism. O n the one hand, it is used to denote a Quebec francophone, usually of French-Canadian back­ ground, otherwise known in French as a pure laine. O n the other hand, the term Québécois is logically used as a title for anyone residing in the province of Quebec, whether anglophone, allophone, or o f the former denom ination.

However, the two cannot theoreti­ cally co-exist seeing as they are essentially paradoxical. In other words, the one excludes the other.

Over the years French Canadians have undergone a great deal of name changes. The first to arrive in the 17th century, for instance, simply called themselves the French. But as more and more settlers made Canada their home, the French saw an increasing need to distinguish themselves from their fellow francophones living across the Atlantic. Hence, the term habitant assumed the impor­

T

tant task of distinction, suggesting that the French of Canada had finally been christened. However, the habitants eventually saw the need to create a new name and thus entitled themselves Canadien, a surname that continues to adorn the jerseys of M ontreal’s reputed hockey team.

O f course, another N H L fran­ chise makes use of a name denoting French Canadians as well, the Vancouver Canucks to be precise.

And although the word Canuck now denotes a Canadian of any lin­ guistic background, it was once particularly geared towards Canada’s numerous francophone communities. From the looks of things, its usage was short-lived.

As English Canadians slowly adopted the term Canadien — which they eventually changed to Canadian — francophones saw the need to once again alter their title.

The noun français was thus com­ bined with the long-established Canadien, resulting in Canadienfrançais. By the 1970s, however, the use of the term Québécois was on the rise amongst French Canadians and has now surpressed the title Canadien-français almost entirely. In fact, its widespread usage within the younger genera­ tions suggests the total disappear­

ance of Canadien-français.

Interestingly, the emergence and now preponderance o f the term Québécois poses a number of problems with the term Québécois vis-à-vis Canada and her French minorities, as well as for Quebec and her linguistic minorities.

Essentially, these problems are at the root of the aforementioned par­ adox, i.e. the dialectic convergence o f Québécois’ two meanings.

W ith regards to the province o f Quebec, one must acknowledge the exclusionary nature o f the term’s double usage. First of all, the term logically denotes any resident o f the province of Quebec, for example, an Italo-canadian living as a resident in St. Léonard. In other words, the noun Québécois is a technical term referring to the status o f a person’s residency. The paradox ensues from the fact that francophone Quebeckers refer to themselves and their history as Québécois; thus Québécois entails at a time an exclusive nationality or, at the very least, an exclusive ethnicity. From this perspective, the term Québécois therefore excludes any non-francophone quebecker as a result of its ethnic connotations.

In addition, the term Québécois excludes nonQuebec French Canadians. W ith

the exception of Acadians and the Métis, a vast majority of Canada’s French Canadians essentially share the same colonial history. Indeed, most Franco-Ontarians are descen­ dants of 19th century francophone Quebeckers. But by associating their history specifically to the province of Quebec — by virtue of the term Québécois — French Canadians living in Quebec have alienated their francophone cousins. Indeed, as a word denot­ ing ethnicity, the term Québécois excludes those French Canadians living beyond the borders of Quebec from the former peuple Canadien-français. b y ‘t h e re a l J im For francopho­ ne communities out­ side of Quebec, the exclusion has been particularly harmful.

The solidarity that once transcended Quebec’s borders has completely withered away, leaving west­ ern and O ntarian francophones to fend for themselves.

Therefore, it is no longer just a ques­ tion o f tangible effect, induced by the lack of funding

and the absence of official bilin­ gualism in many provinces. It is also a question o f intagibles, in which psychological exclusion is brought about by mutually exclu­ sive categories defined by a power­ ful francophone majority in Quebec. So powerful, in fact, that it categorically excludes many of its own inhabitants.

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The McGill Tribune, Tuesday, 3 April 2001

. .. .

Opinion

Editorial

More letters...

Just shut up

Walking into G ert’s on Monday first made me roll my eyes in disgust, then it made me angry.

Hoping to find a “quiet” place to read my paper, I was bombarded with Israeli flags, balloons and music... It was Israeli Solidarity Day, or Israeli Pride Day. As a Jewish person and someone who stands behind Israel, even I was dis­ heartened by this explicit show of contempt. Over the past few weeks I have had to listen to how antizionism is not anti-semitism and death to Israel from the Palestinian side. The Jewish side has tried to seem less confrontational. While not explicitly criticizing Palestinians, we hold solidarity and pride days... well come on guys, even I can see through the facade. I call on the SSMU to prevent events like this from going on during reg­ ular school hours. Whether it be Palestinians showing overtly racist videos or Jews dem onstrating Jewish pride and moral “suprema­ cy”. It insults me, it probably insults the majority o f Palestinians and Jews and it serves no purpose but to further divide the two sides and heighten the already extreme level of tension on campus. For all those people who do not even live in Israel or the Palestinian territories, and that means all o f you, just shut up already because you have no idea what your talking about.

Greg Aronson U3 Political Science There’s something about housing

I read with interest your recent op-ed piece about how the Régie du Logement should get wise to the fact that real estate is a business and not a charity. The author argued that students would not be facing the housing crisis in the ghetto were it not for this archaic system that profoundly misunderstands what residential leasing is really all about.

I can’t help but wonder if the author could possibly have painted a less realistic picture of what rental law is all about, especially given the fact that the Tribune is geared toward student readers.

Every day that I am at work I see student clients who are facing huge and illegal rent hikes, who have had their leases torn up and

thrown in their faces and who have , women are not able to have inter­ lived with roaches, leaks and no course normally during their peri­ heating in January. Most of these ods? students discover that somewhere deep in the rulebooks of the Régie Hana Askren du Logement is a provision that will U1 Italian Studies get them their apartment back at a Confoudning cafeteria condtions decent rent, in good conditions and without fear of being harassed by their landlords.

I am currently a first year edu­ I wish that more people would cation student. I have several classes realize what a basic human right it in the Arts building. is to have decent housing. Yet many I am completely appalled with of us treat it as if it is a privilege to the unsanitary conditions with the be reserved for the few who can Veggierama cafeteria in the Arts afford it, while the rest should be building. I’ve witnessed on several content to live in slums. The Régie occasions the women who work du Logement, while it is not per­ there: fect, acts as a shield against this kind of mentality. And as for those • prepare food without wearing who view real estate as an invest­ gloves, after having touched ment rather than a social service, I money; say by all means, they are welcome • proceed to eat lasagna or to invest in commercial buildings. muffins while preparing a tray M im i Gross Associate Director M cG ill Legal Information Clinic Lacking a solution

I do not know what is worse, Shehryar Fazli replacing CRO Brian Lack’s name with Brain Lack and DRO Marvin Liebman with Michael, or Arts Rep Danielle Lanteigne not realizing that there is an existing SSMU clique. All Lanteigne has to look at is last year’s team campaigning by Wojtek Baraniak, Jeremy Farrell and Chris Gratto. Further to the point, Baraniak has coddled Farrell since he became a representative in the Arts Faculty and is now convenient­ ly replacing him as SSMU President. SSMU cronyism is noth­ ing new at McGill and vilifying Brian Lack for saying it will not change the problem at all.

Michael Hazan U3 Arts Keep makin’ love

Being a user of “The Keeper,” I was glad to see your article about it (“Keeping Your Options Open”) in the March 27 issue. However, I was surprised at the statement regarding the product, Instead, which, as Ms. Wong writes, is “worn near the cervix like a diaphragm and allows women to engage in intercourse during their periods.” How many uninformed people still think that

Secondly, I cannot believe that a prestigious school like McGill cannot hire qualified workers to respond to me in my own language (English).

Hopefully you will seek to improve these conditions for all stu­ dents o f McGill.

Michelle Ross U0 Education Old-fashioned rent control

“Rent control” is not the root cause of the housing shortage in downtown Montreal. Landlords and owners know that unregulated market would drive rents up and then down again in a boom and bust cycle. W hat they want is a financial benefit that is permanent, in the form o f a discount and sub­ sidy provided by the government.

Landlords and builders are waiting for a simultaneous increase in rents and decrease in taxes before they build new rental housing.

“Old fashioned market compe­ tition” won’t result in cheap apart­ ments for all. Unless governments come in with huge subsidies, rental housing will never be as profitable as suburban cul-de-sac monster homes, factory-to-loft conversions, and so forth. The Ontario govern­ ment removed rent controls for new tenants in 1997, and in the city of Ottawa today there are precisely zero new rental complexes being built, with the exception of two new residence towers at Carleton and Ottawa U.

A

t h a n k

The only way that new rental housing will be built is if builders are obligated to do so. Just as devel­ opers of large-scale suburban subdi­ visions are required to set aside areas for open green space, so should they be required to build, or contribute to a fund that will create, affordable rental housing in areas in which it is needed. Housing is a human rights issue, and providers o f housing must be responsive to that.

Steven Meece Hull, Quebec

Check out the Tribune online for back issues from this year.

tribune, mcgill.ca

Stop the Press Free trade — where it’s at!

The hottest source of political debate these days seems to be glob­ alization. In April, leaders from every country in the Western Hemisphere (save for Cuba) will descend upon Quebec City to sign the milestone Free Trade Agreement o f the Americas. The city will be teeming with mobs of students protesting this important economic advancement. Several universities have even granted exam deferments for students who want to go to Quebec City during the final examination period. At McGill, the prevailing attitude amongst the students is that free trade is evil. All year long, student activists have been passing around anti-free trade propaganda at cam­ pus events. It is my understanding that this trend is indicative of the opinions o f university students across North America. Opposition to economic liberalization is the current cause célèbre, successfully galvanizing the extreme left. It seems that everywhere I turn, there is subversive Marxist litter plastered on a street lamp or mailbox. I’ve had enough. I feel the need to set the record straight regarding free trade, and freedom in general.

Anyone who has taken an introductory-level economics course knows that individuals sell their labour for an agreed-upon wage in the factor market. Wage rates are set by many variables, such as the scarcity of labour and the skill level of workers. This conflu­ ence of factors leads to higher wages in the industrialized countries and lower wages in developing coun­ tries. W hen multinational corpora­ tions open up factories in a foreign country, nobody is being forced to work there, it is simply another

option for people who cannot find work or are dissatisfied with their current jobs. Anybody who is against free trade is against individ­ uals having more choices. I fail to see how this helps anybody.

A major part of the ideology of the anti-free trade rabble-rousers is that patents should not be upheld internationally. They claim that large pharmaceutical firms put profits before lives by selling drugs to third-world countries at prices they cannot afford to pay. While it is true that the primary goal o f a corporation is to earn a profit, it is the prospect of that profit that motivates firms to develop drugs in the first place. Pfizer would not be investing US$5 billion this year in research and development if they didn’t expect to make that money back. Large pharmaceutical firms are our only hope for curing dis­ eases, and disrespecting their patents will not make them more willing to innovate. T he profit motive is a necessary evil in the drug industry; if not, government would have cured more diseases by now.

Free trade cannot be stopped.

Freedom, whether social or eco­ nomic, is too powerful a force to be stopped by a few thousand pro­ authoritarian demonstrators. This is a matter in which the leftist aca­ demic establishment reveals its hypocrisy; that civil liberty is essen­ tial while economic liberty is wrong. Government interference, whether it is in the form of restric­ tions on free speech or free trade, compromises the rights of individu­ als.

Lawrence W. Cinamon U0 Management

y o u B e yo n d a n d b e h in d the e d ito ria l b o a rd a n d s ta ff o f

The M c G ill Tribune a re tw o fa n a ta s ic in d iv id u a ls , w ith o u t w h o m this p u b lic a tio n w o u ld n o t exist.

To Paul S la c h ta a n d C h a d R on a ld s, the Tribune e xte n d s o u r h e a rtfe lt g ra titu d e fo r y o u r w o rk , p a tie n c e , s u p p o rt — a n d som etim es, b a k e d g o o d s .

E n jo y y o u r sum m er a n d w e 'll see y o u in fa ll.

The McGill Tribune, Tuesday, 3 April 2001

Opinion Stop the Presses

Information and democracy

Insider clique ridiculous

The sorry state of student democracy at McGill is one for which many ought to be held responsible. It’s a complicated mat­ ter of apathy, irrelevance and incompetence, and I don’t know what we can really do about those things. It’s a problem of atmos­ phere, and thus difficult to resolve decisively. But it’s also a problem of misinformation, and it’s here, in the pages of student newspapers, where we are able to take concrete meas­ ures to solve such problems.

That’s why I’m so disappointed in the editorial board o f the Tribune. W hen they print such des­ perately biased, poorly written and ill-quoted articles as last week’s “W hat was Lacking in the last SSMU election?,” ignoring their lack of significant or serious cover­ age of the election itself, they become part of the problem. In the mentioned article Shehyrar [sic] Fazli inarticulately paraphrases most of the people he appears to have interviewed, cryptically accus­ ing Lack as being insensitive to the

I find it ridiculous that the Students’ Society o f McGill University insider clique has come out against Brian Lack of Elections McGill. Having been a candidate in the last election and having wit­ nessed the countless array of ways in which the elections at McGill favour the inside few, it is beyond belief that they would now go after the system.

The fact that they now wish to have censorship is not one that is hard to comprehend, as the Red Herring Liberation Front’s mockery was directed mainly against the insider clique and the horrid system that perpetuates McGill’s “chaotic” student government. However, the Red Herring candidates were total­ ly legitimate candidates. They com­ pleted their nom ination forms, campaigned feverishly and attended all the debates. How can you legiti­ mately justify censoring them? I am a Quebec sovereigntist, many of the insiders find this idea absurd, and because of that I had just as much chance of getting elected as any of the Herring candidates, should the censorship extend to my statements too? Should we begin to censor all candidates the insiders find absurd, should we simply silence anyone who opposes them?

I find it extremely hard to believe that of all the candidates, VP-elect Danielle Lanteigne would dare attack the CRO for unprofes­ sional behaviour. It was her cam­ paign team that he went out of his

way to accommodate when they committed unprofessional acts dur­ ing the campaign, including losing their certified election stickers.

Perhaps as Mark Chodos states, “...they should look in the mirror, because they have made mistakes too.” I distinctly remember them seeming to enjoy the Red Herring’s “mockery” quite well.

Also, perhaps when an Arts Undergraduate Society VP external decides to call the Red Herring offensive, they should first take a look at the offensive advertising their own Society produces to pro­ mote their Arts Tavern, as I find those publicities, calling me ugly and telling me to get drunk to hide it, much more offensive.

There actually was one cen­ sored debate during the last elec­ tion, the FYCC debate. I turned down the offer to debate at this venue after seeing how they silenced totally legitimate candi­ dates, which was the true mockery of the election.

I salute the Red Herring candi­ dates, for reminding us all how much there is a need for serious change in the way in which elec­ tions are operated at McGill. Many of the inside clique found them absurd and tasteless, but they demonstrated courage to put them­ selves on the line for the advance­ ment of democracy at McGill.

Aaron deMaisonneuve-Raml Former SSM U Candidate

Dismay at Tribune’s coverage

Loath as I am to write this let­ ter, as I’m sure everyone is sick to death of hearing about me, I must protest your biased and unprofes­ sional coverage of the election saga on two counts: Firstly, I am dismayed (although not unsurprised) that people are now blaming CRO Brian Lack for upholding basic democratic principles.

The RHIRP/LF candidates were entided to participate in the debate on equal terms with all other candi­ dates. To censor candidates is a vio­ lation of the right to free expres­ sion, and plainly undemocratic. I wouldn’t have stood for such an abridgement of my rights, and I thank Elections McGill for doing the right thing.

Secondly, I am again dismayed at the lack o f professional standards at the Tribune, particularly those of Stephanie Levitz and Shehyrar [sic[ Fazli.

Twice, these two made refer­ ences to a cardboard idol used as a prop during the debate without any attempt to fully relate what hap­ pened. I object to the insinuation that I or the RHIRP/LF are guilty o f sexual harassment. This innuen­ do becomes easy to support if you take parts of an artifact (like Box)

out of context.

If you want to cover the story of Box, make sure your readership gets all the facts. Briefly to those readers who weren’t at the debates: some Red Flerring staffers made an idol out of cardboard boxes with a joke about the indiscriminate nature of human sacrifice in primi­ tive cultures on its side. Its name is Box; it is currently living in my girl­ friend’s apartment. I brought it onstage as a good luck charm dur­ ing a terribly boring stretch of the debate.

M ost damaging to _the Tribune’s professional reputation was the fact that I was not once asked to com m ent about Box, either by Levitz (somewhat under­ standable, since she was writing what turned out to be a rather uninformed editorial) or by Fazli (unpardonable, since he was writ­ ing a news story). I have pointed this out in the past (see Letters, 10/11/00).

Anyone reading McGill’s harrassment policy (http://ww2.mcgill.ca/Secretariat/S tudents/chapter4.html) can see that I did not sexually harass anyone. I did not at any time engage in any discriminatory actions against any Please see F R IV O L O U S , page 12

plights of “slutty virgins” and not­ ing, unclearly, the AUS president­ elect’s concern that the Red Herring “did not consider human dignity.”

I don’t find the Red Herring’s approach to the last election any more constructive than anyone else.

I think if we really want to quarrel with the current state of affairs, put­ ting out intelligent and articulate candidates who rail against the sta­ tus quo is a better strategy. O f the box and its offensiveness, I agree that there are issues of poor taste, and that there is a legitimate con­ troversy over its use.

But I am not of the opinion, as many student politicians seem to be, that the Red Herring ought to have been censored in terms of bass guitars and general levity. I hold to this for the same reasons I am dis­ appointed in the Tribune. It’s just that I believe that more information is more helpful to democracy, even when it’s silly. W hen information is presented, we are able to refute it where necessary. W hen it is sup­ pressed, we don’t have that conver­

Op/Ed 11

Editorial

sational privilege.

I didn’t see one candidate at that debate take it upon themselves to say publicly that they found the Red Herring’s approach a denigra­ tion of democracy. That would have been a helpful course of action because it would have opened the debate to this issue, since it seems, in retrospect, to be important.

It’s only through actually speaking out about things we find unacceptable that we will ever solve this problem. It won’t come through the empowering of an indi­ vidual to edit out the ‘irrelevant’ material. It’s all relevant, because we’re all students. I applaud Mr. Baraniak and everybody else who has written in these pages about something they’ve found improper.

Then, when I think they’re wrong as in this instance, I can argue with them.

Michelle Dean Arts Senator-elect, 2001-2002

T h a n k yo u’ to our co ntrib uto rs!

The M cGill Tribune would like to sincerely thank all our contributors for their hard work over these 26 issues. We could not have produced the paper without your skills, talent and enthusiasm. We hope that you continue to stay involved with us whether you're writing, shooting photos, updating the website or laying out the paper. We love hav­ ing you around... in fact- let's face it-we're nothing without you. We can't live without you. Don't leave us... Thank you everybody! — Tbe Tribune Editorial Board 2000-2001 Wissam Al-Monthiry, Ariana Andrei, Jackie Aquines, Julian Awwad, David Balzar, David Barclay, Ben Benchitrit, Masha Bogushezsky, Jane Bolton, KC Bolton, Karen Born, Jonathan Bracewell, Declan Brady, Ben Brisebois, Marni Brot, Adam Brown, Erin Butler, Rebecca Catching, Adam Chasen, Gen Chiu, Steven Chu, Andrea eleven, Michael Colwell, Paul Conner, Paul Cornett, Sarah Cornett, Hannah Covert, Bori Csillag, Anna Cvitkovic, Jeff Derman, Emmanuel Dingmans, Andrew Dobrowolskyi, Rebecca Doiron, Kiki Dranias, Judith Drory, Zubin Driver, Nadine Ellman, Daniel Ehrenfeld, Vince Escanlar, Chris Essert, Sarah Ettedgui, Eugene Filipovitch, Chris Flavelle, Laura Fox, Matt Frassica, Carolyn Freeman, Steph Gabor, Jenny George, Malcolm Gliderdale, Pawan Girglani, Ed Glucksman, Jordan Goldblatt, Dave Gooblar, Ricky C. Gordon, Julanar Green, Sara Gregory, James Grohsgal, Mimi Gross, Autumn Haag, Drew Halfnight, Nick Hall, Jeff Hall-Martin, Asch Harwood, Nicole Helsberg, Christina Heyding, Reed Hilton, Ben Hunt, Aaron Izenberg, Gabby Jakubovits, Natasha Jategaonkar, Ehren Jessop, Siu-Min Jim, Carly Johnson, Sarah Johnson, Rob Katz, Adam Kaufman, Karen Kelly, Mark Kerr, Ayla Khosroshahi, Nina Kim, Raquel Kirsch, Peter Koven, Stephanie Kwoo, Christian Lander, Vanessa Lang, Amy Langstaff, Alison Lawler-Dean, Andre Legaspi, Alexandre Leigh, Max Lewkowski, Zoë Logan, Jennifer Lorentz, José Lourenço, The Minh Luong, David Ma, C. Michael Macaraeg, Ben Madgett, Nina Mahmood, Dean Malka, Tony Marchetta, David Marsh, Jean Mathews, Anna Mattiuzzo, Jeremy McCann, Katie McLaughlin, Linda-Marie Michaud, X.M. Milton, Tony Muir, Siddhartha Mukherjee, Leah K. Nchama, Danielle Nguyen, Dorotha Norwodworski, Michelle O'Brodovitch, Christine Pritchard, Joseph Quesnel, Andrew Raven, Surabhi Rawal, Gaia Remerowski, Duncan Reid, Justin Renard, William Renner, Amira Richler, Jenna Rinas, Pablo Rodriguez, Omar Sachedina, Ben Sasson, John Sciascia, David Schanzle, David Schipper, Mimi Seear, Meghana Shaw, Sandon Shogilev, Aliza Shupac, Jamie Simons, Ryan Singara, Peter Sitati, SophiaKate Smith, Shan Soe-Lin, Anna Soloman, Karen Steward, Crofton Steers, Suchot Sunday, Gordon Sutherland, Dione Thomas, Melanie Tomsons, Jennifer Trawinsky, Phil Trippenbach, Heather Van Doren, Roberta Yeo, Cheryl Vu, Andrea Wallington, Dale Watson, Jeff Watson, Isabelle West, Angela Wilson, Leora Wise, Crystal Wreden, Sarah Wright, Nina Zachariades, Dan Zacks. Elizabeth Zalman, Cheryl Zu.

T h e M c G I L L T R IB U N E is pleased to announce the 2001-2002 editorial board E ditor - in - C hief Rhea Wong

Campus Editor Omar Sachedina

A ssistant E ditor - in - C hief M ike Bargav

News Editor James Grohsgal

A ssistant Editor - in- C hief Nema Etheridge

Assistant News Editors Carly Johnson John Sciascia Features Editors Raquel Kirsch Justin Renard

Entertainment Editors Peter Koven Dan Zacks Science Editor Jean Mathews Sports Editor James Empringham Photo Editors Patrick Fok Jenny George Production Manager Ian Speigel

Applications will be accepted starting in September for additional positions such as: Online Editors, Sports Editors and Layout Editors.

12 Op/Ed

The McGill Tribune, Tuesday, 3 April 2001

Frivolous allegations continued from page 11

person on the basis of sex.

It’s shameful that some of ‘the Students’ Society o f McGill University clique’ have decided not only to appro­ priate politically-correct outrage to tar­ nish my name, but to commit an obvi­ ous abuse of the sexual harassment pol­ icy. Mr. Lack rightly characterizes this action as “vengeful” and “politically motivated” — let’s not forget that this sort o f frivolous allegation is only going to hurt the credibility of future sexual harassment claims on campus, and give ammunition to future attempts to dis­ credit truthful claims.

Furthermore, I think people can plainly see the allegation that we had somehow eschewed the consideration

of human dignity in our campaign is utterly ridiculous. Also, characterizing the actions of the “SSMU clique” is hardly an attack on the Society itself.

The recent statements favouring censorship, in my eyes, only make the SSMU clique members interviewed look asinine (although I must mention that most of the people involved in SSMU are blameless in this matter).

To tell the truth, I’m really quite tired o f criticizing SSMU — but when personal attacks are instigated against me, I feel I have no recourse.

D. J. Waletzky U2 Political Science Editor-in-C hief o f the Red Herring

Women’s week in the rag

Where to begin emending the erroneous portraits of feminist musicol­ ogy and my own research in “Here She Comes” (Tribune, March 20).

That feminist musicological asser­ tions of music’s historical engendering have been “unconvincing” and thus have not gained “widespread accept­ ance:” The discipline is now well estab­ lished at: UCLA, Berkeley, Stanford, U o f Virginia, Princeton, Stoneybrook, and Smith to name a few.

Contra Jurgensen, any standard theory textbook shows that gender has “played a formal role in music theory and terminology: “ed., ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ themes/cadences; the gen­ dered binarisms of major/minor keys’ gendered polarities in Schoendberg’s Harmonielehre.

The reactionary tenor of the article is insidiously couched in the rhetoric of value-free, scholarly objectivity— an old-school, metaphysics of both music and human subjectivity presupposed throughout: music is described as hav­ ing “primal being.” Regarded as “a state o f m ind” rather than an “object” (pace Descartes and Kant); music has “power in itself,” the latter’s meaning a “very personal thing.”

The “personal is social, human subjectivity socially constructed.

Music’s “private” value and meaning is always mediated through the myriad normalizing conventions of one’s socicultural context. Music’s “power” is not preconceptual. Elusively diffused across networks of social and political control, power runs through the whole social body (Foucault), a forcefield from which music’s own pluriform “bodies” are exempt.

“M usic shouldn’t have gender attached to it”: it is precisely this protest which fuels musicology’s project.

Philosophers, theologians, music theo­ rists and composers have “personally” experienced music as a gendered, en­ gendering (potentially emasculating) discourse.

5) Jurgensen caricatures feminist musicology as unsuccessful,” and “un­ academic”, lacking both “rigor” (Pvirility), and “detailed analysis,” presumable

•••Ellipsis*** L ots o f le t te r s ... r e d u c e d sp a c e ...

In this startlingly, dare we say frighteningly, original game, your task is to make as many words as possible using any combination of the nine letters arrayed to my immediate right. You can use letters once only per word.

Proper nouns, slang terms, and contractions, of course, are welcomed with opened arms.

This week, I randomly typed nine letters. If you don’t like this game, too bad. I can’t think of a better one, and quite frankly, I think it’s pretty darn fun.

I

g

r

i e m

n

p

b y G o o b la r a product of dilettantisn and/or quack­ ery. It just “stirs things up” (note the dismissive, reactionary metaphor) by “balancing [gender] stereotypes.”

Musics gendered history was first documented (very successfully I night add) w ithin academic forum s. Clearly, Jurgensen hasn’t read Susan McClary’s “detailed analyses” o f works by Monteverdi, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Tchaikowsky, Bizet, and Schoenberg. Nor are feminist musicol­ ogists “juxtaposfing] the female view to balance stereotypes”; they question the latter’s existence tout court — denouncing their socio-political conse­ quences.

Re: the grotesque portrait of “Epstein’s” work. A theological project (nowhere m entioned), I discussed music as a metaphorical Woman. In no way did I advocate an essentialistic ontology o f music as a “ fem inine Being, ” having its own “gender and sexuality. ” Painting “Epstein” as some “valiant” Lone Rangertte, “hav[ing] yet to convince academia,” parks the cart squarely before my seasoned steed. I drew upon the literature of feminist musicology to inform my theology of music.

The cognitively dissonant photo of Kenny G, captioned with “the G stands for girl,” trivializes (may even represent a homophobic slur), even as it simulta­ neously underlines, the vital project of exposing the gender politics endemic to any discussion of music’s “meaning.”

How telling that the last “authorigraduate, who embraces the Trib’s gross­ ly disfigured Music-as-Woman with a grin and quip: “Yeah sure, that’s why I like it” (emphasis mine).

Could McGillian tributes to International Women’s Week be other­ wise??

Dr. H eidi Epstein, Faculty Lecturer Religious Studies, with invaluable inspiration from Dr. Tamara Levitz, associate professor o f Musicology

h t t p :/ / t r ib u n e .m c g ill.c a

Goodbye.

Across 1. American Survivor network 4. What you said 9. Partner of turvy 14. Argument 15. Dress up 16. Mad as hell 17. Chicken____ King 18. Club or Theatre 19. Actor Cheech 20. Too many words 22. Dealing with jails 23. Ready for battle 24. Cleaned your throat 26. Reggae legend Lounge 27. Buscemi movie 30. Not many produced, abbv.

31. Bee house 33. Bryan Adams and Mel C.; Elton John and Kiki Dee 35. His aim is true 38. Sigourney Weaver flick 39. Morals 40. Big appendage 4L Sluggish 42. A tuber 46. Getting away 49. Resist the rules 50. Prayer endings 51. Off the beaten path 54. A spirited mount (dictionary defini­ tion!)

55. A dime a dozen 56. Doctor's grp.

57. Metro stop:____ -Bourassa 58. It's open 25 hours a day 59. Medium usually, abbv.

60. Fashion company 1 2 Lauder 61. Full of rocks 14 62. One half of Outkast

H

17 Down 1. Necktie 2. Ravel piece 3. Probably present at 31 Across 4. What Gooblar's mom calls him 5. Notion 6. Salad utensil, singular 7. Unquestioned 8. Calvin Klein fragrance 9. Old-____ 10. Often followed by "utan" 11. Following the same path 12. Small dagger 13. Currency 21. "O h____ !"

22. Common French

.

20

word 24. Old Faithful, e.g.

25. Dentist's initials 2 7 . __ the season 28. The business of NASCAR 29. Wear away 32. Secret code 33. The first U.S. state, abbv.

34. Area of Northern Ireland 35. Rises up 36. Connector 37. Partner of tit 38. Brew 4L Connections?

43. A ll____ 44. One who reams, of course 45. Natural death cause 47. Tractor producer John 48. Underground music 49. Pass it along 51. Flavor booster 52. Preposition 53. Almost-swear 54. Pronoun 55. Public transport Last W eek’s P u zzle S o lv ed

10

11

r i. r 30

26

135 36 38

40 46

54 57

60

13

■25

23

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12

34

Tuesday, April 3 2 0 0 1

All along the FTAA w atchtower The clash between free trade and free speech Raquel Kirsch

O n the steps of the Arts build­ ing, students are enjoying a snack and a smoke in the warm midday sun. While they ponder yesterdays lectures and plans for the weekend, a group o f people bearing clip­ boards and leaflets ask anybody if they need a ride to Quebec City this April. As student volunteers with the group FTAA-Alert, they are sell­ ing seats on a bus that will take will­ ing protesters to the provincial cap­ ital to protest the Summit o f the Americas, April 20-22.

Alexa, a U3 political science and history student, is one of the volunteers who firmly believes in the publics right to protest.

“W hy should we be kept out of [the Summit]? The people running the Summit are afraid o f people showing up. They’re afraid to show people that it’s a big deal,” she says.

“If you go to the [Summit’s] web­ site, they tell you everything that they’re doing is fine, but it’s all bull­ shit.”

The Summit of the Americas will be a gathering of 34 heads of state who will continue negotiations over the free trade area o f the Americas (FTAA), a territory that would allow the liberalization of the trade of goods and services. This

zone would include all the democ­ racies of the Western Hemisphere — essentially every country except for Cuba. Based mainly on the cur­ rent North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the FTAA’s goal is to significantly ease the flow of goods between participant nations by erasing trade border transactions.

the protection of inefficient indus­ tries.

“If you’re allowing foreign firms to come in with a comparative advantage in one area, you should concentrate on producing some­ thing that can be made efficiently,” says Minns. “W ith trade, you gain

Possible drawbacks of trade liberalization There is mounting fear by globalization watchdogs, like Global Exchange and Public Citizen, that the FTAA would bring economic and environ­ mental misery to the countries’ populations. Saying that the only beneficiaries are rich and wealthy corporations, they con­ tend that the FTAA will damp­ en sustainable and equitable growth.

The fact that some industries will suffer due to free trade is unam­ biguous. By opening up room for competition, organizations that are not efficient will soon discover that their processes might not be on par with those of other firms, and may be forced to shut down.

According to economics pro­ fessor Chris Minns, more closed economies often lend themselves to

in some areas and lose in some areas, but [historically] gains have outweighed the losses. But if you’re in the group that’s going to lose, you’re not going to be happy.”

Hostile takeover

sue a government for missed profit opportunity if a ban is put on their product. This sort of corporate war­ rant may create an undue stress on governments to yield to the pressure of the business community. Non­ governmental representation on the Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC), the main discus­ sion body for the FTAA, is few and far between. A request by such groups to be allowed into the bar­ gaining process was denied.

Instead, a civil society that has no negotiating power was set up to represent societal concerns to the TNC. Mirynne O ’Connor, a U1 political science stu­ dent, does not want to see Canada’s protective polices compromised by com­ merce.

“I think that the government should have more of a priority to protect its citizens than to protect corporations,” she says. “I think that in a free trade agreement, [Canada] would lose its socialist val­ ues, and that’s the thing that makes us unique in North America.”

A major concern of free trade activists is that the charter gives too much power to corporations. Under NAFTA, firms have the power to

Taking it to the streets People will pour into Quebec

City in a few weeks’ time to show their opposition to free trade and globalization. Canadian officials have been trying to make it as diffi­ cult as possible for people to get in and out of the region. However, some people have to deal with an extra bureaucracy on their way to protests in Quebec City. Even for students who have no problem

44 If you to the [Summit’s] website, they tell you every­ thing th at they’re doing is fine, but it’s all bullshit.

— Mi rynne O ’C onner

55 physically getting to and from the Summit, getting out of writing final exams was the bigger problem.

At most universities, deferring exams for a medical reason is hard enough, let alone to attend a demonstration. But if you want to protest and you go to Concordia, your cause has just been helped along. The university’s senate has recently voted to let students who Please see S H O W D O W N , page 20

Canadian MPs guzzle along bipartisan lines If grabbing a beer can improve Canadian politics, why isn't it happening more?

James Empringham

“A buncha used-car salesmen,” the waitress m utters under her breath. “They’re in here at two m in­ utes after five, drinking their guts out, used-car salesmen I tell you.”

As the friendly staff at D ’arcy Macgee’s can attest, Canadian members o f parliament enjoy a frothy brew as much as you and I. The popular Ottaw a Irish pub, located adjacent to the Parliament Buildings on Sparks Street, just happens to be one of the many bars and restaurants in the nation’s capi­ tol where they’re likely to do just that.

While the chapter on the role of bar hopping in the political process is conspicuously absent from most (okay maybe all) text­ books, that doesn’t mean that socializing isn’t political. To an MP,

knowing where to be and who to be there with is critical.

“You have to be able to mix and mingle and motivate to be a good politician,” explains fiftyfour-year-old Canadian Alliance MP John Williams. “Politics is not a business, and heaven forbid if we ever got into a formal business-like mindset. Politics is a lot about coali­ tions.”

So where exactly might these “coalitions” meet? Where does your MP unwind? The trends among restaurants and bars change as fre­ quently in Ottawa as they do in Montreal. D ’arcy Macgee’s is cur­ rently very popular, and is a likely place to run into Industry Minister Brian Tobin. Since taking up his post in Ottawa, Tobin has reserved Macgee’s basement for a party on more than one occasion perhaps in an attempt to recreate some East

Coast revelry in o f Bytown.

The Empire Grill, located in Ottawa’s trendy Byward Market area is another likely haunt for politicians. “You’ll walk in and immediately see people at the bar having m artinis,” explains University o f Ottawa Professor of Communications Gilles Lavasseur.

“Keep walking, they’re just having drinks. It’s in the back room where the real power players are located.”

Lavasseur, who describes him­ self as active in political circles, says that most restaurants in Ottawa are bipartisan, but notes that there are exceptions.

“Mama Theresa’s Italian restau­ rant is known for being a big Liberal hangout. But then again with so many members, most places in Ottawa have become Liberal hangouts,” he says.

Alliance MP Jason Kenney has

his own take on the role of parti­ sanship in MP social relations.

a W hile politicians and schol­ ars alike acknowledge th at social interaction is benefi­ cial to the political process, its occurrence is decreasing.

55 “There are two kinds of MPs in Ottawa,” he points out. “Those MPs who are willing to allow per­ sonal relationships to transcend partisan lines, and those whose par­ tisan affiliation precludes personal relationships — in other words

jerks.”

While politicians and scholars alike acknowledge that social inter­ action is beneficial to the political process, its occurrence is decreasing.

University o f Ottawa Political Science Professor Francois-Pierre Gingras concurs.

“Since the 1960s, members work harder, they spend more time on committees, and have less time to spend with their families,” he says.

An increase in MP schmoozing?

The numbers support Gingras’ claim. In his book Mr. Smith goes to O ttawa, David C. Docherty, a political science professor at Wilfred Laurier University, esti­ mates that in 1993, MPs spent an average of 9.2 per cent of their day Please see B O O Z IN G page 20

14 Features

The McGill Tribune, Tuesday, 3 April 2001

Talking religion and politics w ith Preston M an n in g Sara Cornett

Religion in the political forum, and the division of Church and State is as relevant today as it ever was — the leader of the Canadian Reform Conservative Alliance Party, Stockwell Day, is a funda­ mentalist Christian and a lay pastor.

Preston M anning, ordained Christian M inister and former leader of the defunct Canadian Reform party (progenitor to the Alliance) was a guest speaker at a recent Canadian Church History class at McGill, and in a question and answer session with the class, expounded upon his views o f reli­ gion in politics: Elizabeth: O ur professor mentioned your interest in conflict resolution and I was wondering if your politi­ cal and religious beliefs ever infringed one upon the other.

M anning. I wouldn’t say infringed.

My conception o f the Gospel is that the biggest single them e is Reconciliation, and that the whole Gospel is about conflict resolution on the big scale, particularly the reconciliation of people to God. Therefore, I think as a Christian, if you really understand that process of reconciliation, you ought to be able to practice some of the princi­

ples in lower level conflict resolu­ tion. O f course, in contemporary politics, you could also argue that is about all there is. A politician tries to reconcile con­ flicting interests in order to achieve certain objectives. I was in management consulta­ tion before I got into politics. I once tried to develop a system model of reconciliation using the Christian model, where you have a mediator that incor­ porates and communi­ cates with both sides, and where he sacrifices his own interests in order to achieve reconciliation.

Brian: W ith respect to your recon­ ciliation analysis, what should humanity’s relationship be to the earth? How might it relate to biotechnology, genome projects or foot and mouth disease?

M anning. That’s a huge question.

W hen I think of Reconciliation, I also think of reconciliation of man to the physical environment. I believe the C hristian scriptures teach stewardship role in relation­ ship to the environment — of pro­ tecting it, not exploiting it. I don’t

think a lot o f Christians have car­ ried out [this mandate] to anywhere

ours, because many of you kind of got these [economics and environ­ ment] integrated in your own minds, that they are not in two separate worlds but all together, which I think is a starting point.

Brian: Do you think it really is a humanly achievable goal? Can people pull themselves up by their bootstraps?

near the extent that we should. I’ve never been satisfied with the envi­ ronmental positions of any of the federal political parties in Canada, including our own.

In my generation o f politi­ cians, and business decision-mak­ ers, the economy and the environ­ ment got separated early on in our conceptual framework. We’ve kind o f tried to put them together, but it’s not been well done and I think there’s a whole lot o f work that needs to be done to develop more realistic and effective environmental policies and a more integrated process. I think maybe your genera­ tion will have more success than

M anning. I think if people think they’re going to perfect the human race through genetic engineering then that is mis­ guided. I think that the perfec­ tion o f man is achieved through spiritual change within, not through the m anipulation o f genes. Now having said that, I’m not denying that there’s an enor­ mous potential in that science in dealing with disease and cures.

That’s why we have to talk about a framework for the support and reg­ ulation o f these technologies. It’s not a matter of saying “no, no, no,” and just putting on the brakes.

I think man’s basic problem is spiritual and is rooted in alienation from God, alienation from each other and alienation from the envi­ ronment, which was your starting point. I don’t think that can be fixed by genetic manipulation. Also when you talk to many of the geneticists and ethicists - and you have some of the best in North America right in this city - they tell the laymen to be very cautious about their expectations about what you can do through genetic engi­ neering. It’s like the Tower of Babel, we think we can build it up to heav­ en but communications may get fouled up.

Rosalie-. W ho has the ethical power and authority to make decisions, because you might have some peo­ ple who believe in God and some who don’t?

M anning. I think you should create standing so that everybody should feel free in a political discussion, for example to articulate their most deeply held values, whether those are religious and God-centered or whether they are something else. I like using the referendum to sort out some of these moral, ethical issues like euthanasia, abortion, whatever... That’s the best way that I’ve been able to figure out how to reconcile both having deeply held values and the right to express them and to bring them to bear on pub­ lic policy and the protection of the majority, so that the value-driven minority won’t impose or ram their views down the throat of the major­ ity. It’s using the rules of democracy to mediate between the minorities and the majorities.

Professor. [Just] as when you began the Reform Party, giving the power back to the people, there seems to

be a coincidence o f empowerment, politically and theologically, here.

Do you see a parallel between empowering the laity and their sense of alienation from the theo­ logical elite and biblical establish­ ment o f scholars?

M anning. I think that theological position says that every person you look at, that that person is infinite­ ly valuable and any system that den­ igrates them, and says they aren’t, is not fitting in with God’s model of things. Now democratic theory says somewhat the same thing: that every citizen is worth something and that their voice ought to be lis­ tened to and they ought to be given the chance to effect the big deci­ sions that affect them.

I tell public audiences, ‘Beware of elite who don’t trust you. If they don’t trust you, why should you trust them?’ There are men in par­ liament who will go out and give these great speeches about how they appreciate your vote, but when they’re talking among themselves, they say, ‘the public is absolutely stupid. They cannot be trusted with their own constitution let alone with something as complex as some o f this legislation.’

I don’t have a lot o f respect for political people that play the demo­ cratic game and in their private councils think that there’s no point to appealing to [people’s] intelli­ gence. People can understand. I’m not deifying the ordinary man — sure there are lots o f misunder­ standings, but I think we sell the ordinary people short. And it’s our obligation, from the democratic, political side to endeavor to inform the discretion of ordinary people, and it does fit in with the theologi­ cal view of the infinite value o f the individual. So that’s my rant on democracy.

Participants in the discussion: Elizabeth Anderson, Rosalie Langevin, Brian Neilson, and Professor Norman Cornett

A

N o te F ro m

Y ou r

F e a t u r e s E d it o r s

We would like to thank all of the dedicated contributors to our section over this past year, including writers, photographers and cartoonists. We would also like to especially thank all of you who wrote for our Digital Culture section.

Congratulations to Raquel and Justin, Features Editors 2001-2001.

The McGill Tribune, Tuesday, 3 April 2001

Features 15

Working abroad If y o u 'v e e v e r w a n t e d to tra v e l, h o w a b o u t g e t t in g p a id to d o it?

Joseph Quesnel____________________

As the year draws to a close, students are once again thinking of what to do in the four-month inter­ lude between semesters. And inevitably, as bank accounts are now drained, a great many will turn to a job of some sort to make a few bucks for next year.

While most students will find employment through government grants or work at camps, parents’ offices or other close-by jobs, many will opt for more interesting and exotic opportunities a little further from home — maybe even a hemi­ sphere away.

Louis Beauregard is a Concordia student who became hooked on a program offered through Voyages Campus-Travel Cuts at McGill called SWAP (Student Work Abroad Program).

He has since travelled to twenty-one countries in the past 6 years, amounting to over 40 000 km.

“SWAP is basically an adven­ ture,” says Beauregard enthusiasti­ cally. SWAP offers students the opportunity to work abroad, earn­ ing enough money to cover living expenses. After deciding where you’d like to work and live, SWAP arranges all the legal paperwork with the government of the host country. Upon arrival in your coun­ try, you attend an orientation ses­ sion on how to survive in your new home.

W hile SWAP provides the opportunities and job connections for students, it is really about stu­

plethora of opportunity for those seeking work abroad to make a dif­ ference for a specific cause or even to pursue possible career interests. A quick visit to McGill’s Career and Placement Centre (CAPS) reveals many choices for the would-be international activist.

Janice Tester is a career advisor at CAPS who recommends that stu­ dents research individual programs.

Organizations like the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) offer opportunities in developing countries, particularly those with political science or inter­ national development backgrounds.

Interested students should also con­ sult the Canadian Handbook on Work and Study Abroad at CAPS, she mentions. The book provides over 900 pages of information on international private sector compa­ nies, NGOs, and foreign contact information. However, there is no substitute for making good foreign contacts at home, Tester maintains.

“It’s important to make previ­ ous contacts before travelling. You should network by talking to lots and lots o f people. Contacts can offer international networks,” she says.

In particular, students can make contacts with groups at McGill that have an international focus. For example, for someone interested in travelling to the Middle East, consulting some of the Exploring your options abroad Arabic student groups can provide necessary information and contacts Besides working leisurely in on work opportunities in these exotic countries, there is also a countries.

dents using their own resourceful­ ness to land a job, sometimes more than one. Beauregard recommends that because the program focuses on independence, students should do some homework before they leave.

“Since they’re not going to be babysat, they should research their country. They should pack lightly and get a calling card,” he mentions, adding that because students will be travelling in foreign locales, they should expect to experience some culture shock. Beauregard laughing­ ly suggests getting a phrase book in the language of their country.

Beauregard says he was impressed with SWAP when he learned about it as a first year polit­ ical science student. He says he was questioning what he was doing at school.

“I couldn’t find a meaning in my degree,” Beauregard recalls. “A degree is not like it was fifteen years ago. O ur job[s] will not reflect our degree. But if you combine a degree with how things really work, which is what you do with SWAP, you’ll learn that education is well beyond the classroom.”

However, students should not expect to get rich from their experi­ ence, but rather expect to cover their living expenses and travelling.

“Don’t expect to pay off your tuition or your debt of $16,000,” Beauregard warns.

Another opportunity lies with the increasing demand in foreign countries, especially in Asia, for English language instruction. Korea and Japan offer opportunities for graduates of many different aca­ demic backgrounds, not just English.

Tester also mentions various consulates and embassies as good sources of information on seeking employment abroad.

Get paid to sail away O f course, there are also prospects for those who want to see the world in different ways.

Although it is rumoured to be quite difficult to land a job aboard a cruise ship, many students at McGill have been employed in var­ ious capacities at sea — from musi­ cians to camp counsellors.

Nicky Maurer is a U1 manage­ ment student who spent last sum­ mer on a cruise trip sailing around the Caribbean for three and a half months. How did she land such a job?

“I had a friend who worked on a ship and she gave me the number of the person to call,” Maurer says.

She worked aboard the M/S Imagination, a Carnival Cruise Lines ship, as a youth staff who ran programs for the kids onboard. The itinerary included the Cayman Islands, Jamaica, Key West, and two points in Mexico. She describes her job as “the babysitter for the ship,” and reveals that there are some stresses. Working with many chil­

dren for long hours a day was tax­ ing, even while sailing the Caribbean Sea. Many companies abroad have a long application process. To become employed with Carnival, Maurer had to undergo a physical examina­ tion that included a chest X-ray, blood test and a vaccination against certain diseases common abroad, like Hepatitis A. She also had to pay for her plane ticket to get to Miami where the ship ports every five days.

But, she says, the diversity of people she met was well worth it.

“The most rewarding thing was meeting a very international group of people. Pretty much every one you meet is from a different coun­ try,” Maurer says, mentioning that such a job is also valuable experi­ ence for those interested in the trav­ el industry.

Working abroad is a great way to travel, meet new people, make some money and not have to come back in debt. Maurer, who has also worked in California as a counsel­ lor, says she’s not ready to quit her travel hobby in the summer, even if it means not earning as much as she would at home. This summer she intends to travel on a different cruise ship. The reason?

“I’d love to see Europe, and now that I have some experience under my belt, I feel that I’m ready to take on the seas in another hemi­ sphere.”

The new mad cow in town end up with decreased meat and more for the sake of the farmers easily from animal to animal. It milk yields which cause serious eco­ who want to avoid infection of their | survives for hours in the air, in livestock at all costs. If someone food, or hidden in hair, clothes etc. nomic damage to their farms.

This recent hoof and mouth does consume any meat or meat ! All of this makes it especially hard epidemic was first detected on product infected with the hoof and to control.

The outbreak has indeed had February 21st in Britain. Since that m outh virus, there is generally no j far reaching effects. Farmers all time, more than 200,000 animals health risk. There is, however, a magine it: you’ve just come over North America who normally back from your European holi­ family and is passed on by inhala­ have been slaughtered. This is the human version of the disease called I thrive on the tourism industry from foot and m outh that can infect day. As you step off the plane at tion and ingestion. Early on in the first hoof and mouth outbreak for [ Europe have started cancelling anyyoung children.

This human form Dorval, you’re forced to walk across infection, the virus can be excreted Europe since 1967. It’s believed I one they’ve booked — they’re not of the disease is caused by an alto­ a carpet covered in disinfectant. in the saliva, the milk, the urine, food from hotel and restaurant | taking any chances that a European gether different virus and is not Dogs sniff you up and down to and the feces. In humans, a very garbage that was fed to pigs on a visitor may bring the disease to nearly as severe as the virus that make sure you haven’t smuggled in slight infection may occur, but farm near Newcastle is to blame for j their farms.

And if you’re thinking plagues livestock. The human virus any illegal meat. That’s all it takes — mostly there are no symptoms. The the current outbreak. of going on any trips to Europe in Now that the disease has can cause blisters in the child’s a little on your shoe, an infected worst that can happen is that I the near future, you may want to sausage, and before you can even humans pass the virus on to other spread out of Britain, Canada has mouth and on the feet but the think twice. Right now it’s only imposed a ban on any meat or live­ worst cases go away within a week. say ‘hoof and mouth disease’, it can animals. walking on disinfectant carpets and Unfortunately there is no cure be in Montreal.

In livestock, it’s a whole other stock products coming from being sniffed by dogs when you As the name implies, hoof and story. Pus-filled blisters and open Europe as o f February 27th. for hoof and mouth. The best come back, but with the way things m outh disease can plague animals sores form on the animals’ mouths Categories of products covered by farmers can do is prevent the disease are going, you may not be allowed with cloven (or split) hooves. and around their hooves. The ani­ the ban include raw-milk cheeses before it starts. This means vacci­ to come back at all. nating their animals and keeping Among this group are cattle, sheep mals drool uncontrollably, can’t like Camembert and Brie, live ani­ them out of contact with infected and pigs. The disease is most com- I walk, lose weight and in the case of mals, freshly slaughtered pork, and monly found in livestock from Asia, | females, their milk yield decreases animal embryos and semen (which ones. But the vaccines are expen­ Africa and South America. An out- j and they may miscarry. Though the are coveted items farmers use to sive and aren’t always reliable, so this is not always a feasible solution. break can lead to the destruction of older ones don’t die, in young ani­ breed superior livestock).

Again, since there is no real Plus it doesn’t help that the virus is millions o f livestock. Barns are mals the disease can be fatal. The burned down and the entire farm biggest threat is to the farmers who threat to humans, these bans are highly contagious and can be spread must be decontaminated and disin­ fected. The last big hoof and mouth epidemic occurred in Taiwan, in 1997 when 3.6 million pigs were slaughtered.

The disease is caused by a ball-

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The McGill Tribune, Tuesday, 3 April 2001

Features 17

Roommates beware Reading the fine print on your lease is definitely worth your time r

7

B e n e a t h

the Robe

M im i G r o s s uch has been made lately of the skyrocketing rents and apartment shortages in the McGill Ghetto and some sur­ rounding neighborhoods. A lot of would-be tenants — especially stu­ dents — are taking desperate meas­ ures to ensure that they will have a place to live that they can afford.

Some of these measures have even included bribing superintendents or current residents for favour in the selection process or getting friends to sign over leases so that they automatically assume the rights of those previous tenants. But more than ever, it seems like people are turning to that longtime staple of lower-cost living — the room­ mate.

Roommates can bring joy, companionship and shared living expenses into your life. They can

M

also bring headaches, nightmares and bad debts. Fortunately, the law foresees many of these issues and tries to set out rules that outline the rights and responsibilities of living together and provides ways to clear up problems if they should occur.

And we all know that they do.

Consider the case o f Tim and Gaston, two McGill students who shared a platonic friendship and an apartment off Milton. Both their names were on the lease as co-ten­ ants, but they worked out the details of their living arrangements informally. Each of them paid half the rent and half of the utilities and cable bills. They each had their own phone lines, so those costs were not shared.

Their problems began when Gaston’s girlfriend, Mary-Jane, sud­ denly moved out of her parents’ house and wanted to crash with them for awhile. Awhile became a few weeks, and her continued pres­ ence became really annoying to Tim, who felt that he was being crowded out of his own apartment.

A few days before the next month’s rent was due, Tim insisted that the

rent now be split three ways, with Mary-Jane paying one third of all the living expenses. Gaston and his lady friend balked at this demand, which seemed unreasonable since she was hoping to find her own place soon. Plus, they argued quite correctly that as Mary-Jane’s name was not on the lease, she actually had no obligations to the landlord at all.

The couple went out to get a pizza, and by the time they got back Tim had moved out.

O n the first of the month, Gaston paid half the rent, as he always did, and assumed that the landlord would have to find Tim to get the other half. However, the landlord pointed out that there was a stipulation in the lease to the effect that the tenants’ obligation to pay the rent was such that either cotenant could be obliged to pay the full amount of the rent. Gaston had not read the fine print and thought that this was outrageous, given his deal with Tim that each would only pay half.

Unfortunately, the landlord was right on that point. If a lease

with more than one tenant listed is silent on how the rent is split up, then the default situation is that each tenant is only liable for an equal portion of the rent.

Alternatively, you can specify how much money you want each tenant to pay (this is common when bedrooms are not of comparable size or if a bedroom has an attached private bathroom). But if it is spec­ ified in the lease, the landlord can choose to sue either tenant for the full amount due, and then the onus is on that tenant to personally try to recover the rest of the money from the other tenants. Also, note that this latter situation always applies if the co-tenants are married.

Co-tenants also share all of the other obligations of a lease, such as requirements not to disturb other tenants and to leave the apartment at the end of the lease in the state it was in when the lease began. But when it comes to things like increases in rent, for example, the landlord will usually have to deal with the co-tenants separately. If the landlord wants to increase the rent he will have to send timely

notices to both co-tenants. They then respond separately, and their answers do not have to correspond to each other.

That is what happened in this case. Gaston and Tim had already received their renewal and rent increase notices from their landlord, so Gaston replied that he would stay another year while Tim replied that he would leave at the end of the lease. Also, Tim agreed to sublet his share of the apartment to MaryJane, which was his right as a cotenant, after he submitted her as a candidate for the landlord’s approval.

Ironically, the story actually ended on a good note. Tim and Gaston are still friends, Gaston and Mary-Jane are going to get married, and in a miraculous turn of events, Tim found another apartment close by.

The M cG ill Legal Information Clinic can be reached at 398-6792, or you can stop by their offices in the Shatner building. Note that the Clinic will be closed fo r exams as o f A pril 6, 2001.

Setting the record straight on Aboriginal history — V -*v

N otes from Oz

P h ilip T r ip p e n b a c h We shall not ceasefrom seeking, A nd the end o f all our travels Shall be to come to where we started A nd know the place fo r the first time.

- T. S. Eliot “Pugnacious” springs to mind when describing Tony Birch, not only in character, but also in demeanour. He was a boxer in his youth, he told us, and by his face he seems ready to fight at the drop of a glove. He has a broad forehead and a thick neck, a compact jaw, slight­ ly flattened nose, ruddy complex­ ion. His hair is sand-coloured and wiry, bunched together in a rebel­ lious ponytail that bows somehow to his shoulders. He has prominent lips and his eyes burn blue with — concern, I think. Dressing in loose shirts and dark pants, he gives the overall effect of a corsair chasing the Spanish Armada.

He is a history professor at the University of Melbourne.

In Montreal, the winter term is wrapping up. Here classes are in full swing, but we are only a third into the semester. Due to the peculiari­ ties of the Australian system I am enrolled in only three courses,

which still constitutes a full course load. Part of me feels like I’m miss­ ing something, like I’m not doing enough. Sitting in Tony Birch’s Aboriginal histories class is a good way to wake up.

Birch started off the course by taking us on a whirlwind tour of open discrimination, murder, mas­ sacres, and old-fashioned genocide, plain and simple; all in the state of Victoria, Australia. The auditorium, filled with a mix of local and foreign students, sat stone quiet. After the gale-force winds of this first lecture had abated, Kirk, sitting next to me with eyes frozen wide in astonish­ ment, echoed my sentiments exact­ ly: “Whoa. That was intense.”

It turns out, as is often the case, that I was completely and abjectly mistaken about Aborigines. I’ve been interested for a long time, fas­ cinated by a culture that has remained continuous for over 40,000 years. I was intrigued by the early Aborigines’ mode of life. I thought of them as a harmonious culture, living in partnership with the land; an idyllic civilization whose language had no words for ‘yesterday’ or ‘tomorrow’. Until I came here, having read the odd snippet in National Geographic and seen both Crocodile Dundee movies was pretty much the extent of my expertise.

Picking up a South Western Koori phrasebook in a bookstore quickly informed me that Australia’s

changing their very system of embarrassed, that she simply didn’t beliefs. In effect, it legitimises j know. W hen she came home to European occupation of the land by | M elbourne, she decided to set marginalizing Aboriginal claims to things right.

I am in exactly the same situa­ that land. Now, if the Aboriginals j always believed that they did own | tion. I don’t know my own country the land outright, who spread the well enough. While I was travelling, there’d be somebody in every hostel story that they didn’t?

O f course, the whole “living in who had been to Canada, or want­ harmony with the land, not owning ed to go, and they’d tell me or ask it” story is one that we’re all familiar me about things I’d never even with, from our brief encounters heard of. That’s the great thing with Native American lore. Chief about going away: only when you Seattle’s famous speech, now being are removed from what surrounds I’v b e e n in t e r e s t e d fo r a sold by the dozens at every semes­ you every day can you approach it ter’s poster sale, is a perfect example. with understanding. lo n g t im e , fa s c in a t e d b y Looks like I’ve got a bit of work But is this also a construction? to do when I get back.

Most often, foreigners know a c u ltu r e t h a t h a s more about a country than those r e m a in e d c o n t in u o u s who live there. A girl in my confer­ | Footnote: ence group for the Aboriginal ! 1 Ngamajet is Koori for ‘white person. Th e word fo r o v e r 4 0 , 0 0 0 y ea rs.

History class was at McGill last works in a really neat way because “Ngama” is the semester on exchange. She said that sunset, referring to the sunburnt-red colour o f the while she was there, people kept setders’ skins. land. We live on it, but we’re just asking her about the Aboriginals in passing through.” As Tony Birch Australia, and how their situation Philip Trippenbach is a Tribune cor­ respondent stationed Down Under was keen to point out, the people must be so similar to First Nations who lived here before the Ngamajet1 peoples here. She would answer,

indigenous inhabitants could, indeed, tell yesterday from today from tomorrow.

As for the land-relations thing, there’s more at work there than meets the eye. Paul Hogan in Crocodile Dundee (that most author­ itative source on Australian issues) summarized what I thought the Aboriginal relationship to the land was: “They don’t believe in owning

44

11

came had a sophisticated system of land ownership relations. N ot only did they own this land outright, they had elaborate protocols for seeking and giving permission to others who wanted to pass through.

The Crocodile Dundee view is both popular and very poetic, but it has a sinister side. If it is true, it means that Aboriginals cannot claim ownership of the land stolen from them by whites w ithout

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Features 19

Nina Zacfiariades ML

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20 Features

The McGill Tribune, Tuesday, 3 April 2001

My Internet is broken Ian Speigel

Way back when, in the year 2000, when the birds were chirping their September song and the school year was a nebulous swirl of potential, D igital Culture pro­ claimed itself the right medicine for all your Internet knowledge ills. O f course, at the time, the tech stocks were still booming, ‘dot-com’ was business-speak for ‘get-rich’, and the Internet was devouring the use­ less fat off of bricks’n’mortar com­ panies and corporations.

“Onward digital soldier!” we cried, self-righteously proclaiming that you either get digital or go bust. And so, to the best of our abil­ ities, we presented and reported on material that examined this emerg­ ing digital culture. The World Wide Web, gamers, file sharing, dot-com millionaires, wicked geek trends all this and more was yours every week. We wrote it, and you read it.

It was a match made in heaven.

So now, we’ve reached the ulti­ mate instalment of D igital Culture for the 2000-2001 Tribune season, and we must reassess. Are we still relevant? Has the plummet of tech stocks, the imminent crash of 80 percent of dot-coms and a looming global recession reduced reporting about digital culture a mere tedi­ um? We think not.

In fact, if we were to describe the past three years of Internet development as ‘crazy’, then D igital Culture feels quite confident in pro­ claiming that the next three years will be ‘crazy, crazy’. T hat’s twice as crazy.

If you thought it was difficult to keep up with all things Internet now, it’s only going to get worse.

Whereas there is little doubt that we have passed through our newly wed romance with the Internet, we

are only just beginning that hectic period of a marriage, when people proliferate, lose their hair, gain weight and start scheduling regular visits to the proctologist.

many islands of incredible ideas.

Now that the free-for all is gone, perhaps the fertile ground for innovation has gone with it. Will the Internet simply become another medium for big business and popu­ lar culture to monopolize? The best and the brightest will never be truly snuffed out, but perhaps we will all

important changes in the configura­ tion of the net that are imminent.

If you have a connection to the Internet, you enjoy access to most sites just as any other surfer does (assuming you’re not trying to Changing content access pay sites). The only differ­ ence in your access will be its speed, We’ve already seen a massive and that is dependent on what type cull of the infinite fauna that of connection you sprouted as the web grew. have (56.6, DSL, Nowadays, you need more cable etc). Unlike a than a domain name and a telephone call, on loft in SoHo to start a dot­ the Internet the dis­ com. This has ruled out 80 tance of the website per cent of would-be entre­ whether it’s host­ You have reached the very last page of the Internet. preneurs, and is forcing some ed in N orth o f the remaining 20 per cent America or to consolidate.

Australia - is irrele­ W e hope you have enjoyed yo u r browsing.

How does this affect vant. you? Well, when all of these This particular entrepreneurial sites were Now turn off your com puter and go outside and play. paradigm is a sweet getting bundles o f money deal. So sweet, in from investors, they were fact, that the able to provide free services.

Internet has become For example, Urban Cool overloaded. www.1112.net/lastpage.html decided that they would take Specifically, every 23 million dollars and use it to dis­ lose the benefit of having a rainbow computer on the Internet is given tribute free public Internet access of selection. You never know where an IP (Internet Protocol) address. kiosks in areas predominantly pop­ you can find inspiration. And what The current design of the Internet ulated by ethnic minorities. As luck about amateur artists, musicians allows for approximately 4 billion would have it, 23 million doesn’t and actors? They reaped incredible addresses. These have already been get you as far as it used to, especial­ rewards from having a mass audi­ used up. Thus, a newer set of ly when it’s squandered, so now ence and a readily accessible forum expanded protocol is needed, and Urban Cool is defunct. fojr their work. Now, however, available. Unfortunately, a rough As with any destructive pan­ smaller independent video and patchwork system of connecting demic, there is always some good audio streaming sites are being several machines through a single that comes of it. There would be no swallowed up - some by Hollywood address has already been instituted, www.fuckedcompany.com, if there and others by record labels. The and the newer protocol has yet to wasn’t such an abundance of fucked future isn’t grey, but it’s definitely gain widespread acceptance. For the companies. But, in general, the loosing shades of colour.

Internet to remain functional, it hour is one of consolidation, not must. expansion. The overall shape and Structural redesign The second problem with the trends of websites on the Internet current design of the Internet has have certainly not vulcanized. Aside from the content of the web, occurred with the inception of Before just about anyone could get the framework of the Internet is broadband, video streaming and the necessary funds together and also unstable. Though the meta­ other transfer protocols like get a site up on the net, surfers morphosis may not be as widely Napster. The fact that there are encountered a sea of redundant and publicized as the thousands of com­ many different speeds at which you pointless sites, though there were panies that went belly up. There are can connect to the web makes it

A tte n tio n :

S h o w d o w n in Q u e b e c City continued from page 13

an RCM P-induced shortage of lodging and transportation. They will face the largest police deploy­ ment in Canadian history. Summit organizers want to ensure that things do not get out of hand, as they have in the past. After the fierce protests in Seattle in November 1999, their concern over rallying may be the violence rather than political legitimacy. If protest­ ers are serious, tight security should not be a deterrent.

However, some feel voicing their opinion with violence may not be the best answer to a frustrating problem.

“Violence makes your cause look extremist - it makes you look infantile,” says U 1 pre-med student Gerald Pfeffer. “If people really have issues with free trade, they would be better served by making their own anti-free trade conference.”

As the Summit unfolds, the world will be anxiously watching every move — both by the protest­ ers and heads of state. W hat hap­ pens at this meeting will have a huge impact on the future of trade, international relations, and certain­ ly free speech.

44 Has the plum m et of tech stocks, the im m inent crash of 80 per cent of dot-coms and a looming global reces­ sion reduced reporting about digital culture to a mere tedium?

55 of the highway are fast - some are slow. W hen you click on your mouse to go to a site, your data packets have the option o f taking whatever route is available.

Hitherto, Internet service providers have agreed that it is in everyone’s best interest to have all lanes avail­ able to everyone. However, compa­ nies owning broadband connec­ tions, and say, a video streaming site, m ight not want to give their fast lane to another company with a competing video site.

So now there’s a problem, how do you administer the lanes? This becomes a giant headache, which will probably be solved in one of two ways. Either the entire network gets upgraded, or users strike vari­ ous contracts for use with various providers. It seems all too possible, that a method of payment be insti­ tuted, perhaps a pay-per-click.

At this point, the only certain­ ty is that the future is uncertain. No doubt though, that change is in the air, and being informed is better than not. Read D igital Culture in Fall 2001.

Boozing and Schmoozing continued from page 13

want to attend an FTAA-related activity write their exams at a later date.

“Concordia’s mission is to cul­ tivate critical citizenship,” says Concordia student union researcher David Bernans. “The senate made a decision that [finals], as a barrier to a watershed political event, are detrimental to the academic integri­ ty of the University.”

For security reasons, demon­ strators will have to brave a four square-km security fence around the Summit site, which officials began constructing this week, and

possible for companies to provide faster connection at a price, and have people pay for it. Some areas

socially interacting with other MPs, whereas in 1997 that number had dropped to 5.6 per cent. The intro­ duction o f the Reform and Bloc Québécois parties in the early nineties is most cited reason for this decline. Having less time and over­ all media intensification were also frequently mentioned as reasons for the lower figures in recent years.

Hill Times staff reporter Bill Curry refers to what he calls the “death o f fun” in Ottawa.

“You don’t really see as many MPs making the rounds in Ottawa as you used to,” he says, though, with a smile, he credits the Reform/Alliance party for main­

taining some routine. “The MPs that you’re still likely to see on the street are Alliance M P’s Myron Thompson and Darrell Stinson in their cowboy hats. Some of the younger MPs, Rahim Jaffer, Jason Kenny, like to party too.”

Many people familiar with Parliament Hill feel that the decrease in social interaction among MPs is having an adverse effect on federal politics. “There is relatively little socializing now and it has affected the efficiency of gov­ ernment,” notes founding Director of the Parliamentary Institute, Peter Dobell. “Parliament has become a circus.”

♦

arts

;enterta T u e s d a y A p r i l 3, 2001

Ocean Hope is swimmingly good Jason Bajada is one sexy enchilada Shan Soe-Lin

As is so often the case, when you least expect it, the unexpected happens. While drinking a beer one Thursday night at Petit Campus waiting for Pigeon Hole to take the stage, I watched opening band Ocean Hope set up. Somewhat bored and tired after a long day, I had no idea that I was about to fall deeply in love. All worries about unwritten papers, imploding rela­ tionships and hunger flew out of my head as I watched Jason Bajada, their lead singer, launch into a solo version of the most beautiful song I’ve ever heard perform ed live (Adrenaline’). Each song that fol­ lowed was just as masterfully craft­ ed, carried by the strength of Bajada’s clear, powerful delivery.

Their short set was over much too soon, but the palpable buzz after their departure more than proved that they had won over the small, intimate crowd.

A week later, holed up in a

cozy café with Bajada, I found myself uncharacteristically nervous.

I was quickly put at ease, however,

cal was more than apparent.

Jum ping easily from topics as diverse as the Moffats to musical

as our conversation turned to our shared love of music. Often inter­ rupting his own train of thought to make a comment about whatever drivel was playing on the café radio, Bajada’s passion for all things musi­

masturbation, he proved to be an extremely musically aware individ­ ual. It’s probably this awareness that translates to the seduction and intelligence of his music.

Watching their performance

onstage, I was struck by how pol­ ished and connected the group was.

As Bajada describes it, “Ocean Hope is a musical territory. My musicians are happy taking my music to a higher level, although I wouldn’t use the words ‘serve my music.’ I do think it is exactly like the M att Good Band, almost the Jason Bajada band, in a good, nonmonopolitarian way.”

W ith humble beginnings as Bajada’s pet project, the band sur­ vived several incarnations as Alien Hope and January Hope and gained a small but loyal following as a cover band. W ith the acquisition of a permanent name, and experi­ ence through “playing alone, just with the mic for people eating pizza” at his local Pizzedelic, Bajada finally felt comfortable “to come out with a product that [he] was proud to present.” Soon after, with the help of producer Borza Ghomeshi (Ramasutra), he record­ ed Ocean Hope’s maiden release in a local recording studio, laying down the guitar, bass and keyboard

lines himself.

The result, The Control Freak and his Red Peace, is filled with thir­ teen stunning songs, ranging from indulgent rocky tracks to soulful and introspective ballads. W ith wonderfully perceptive lyrics like: “I dreamed up suicide and took the ledge/Played the part of the artsy kind of guy who’d wind up dead,” blended with beautiful melodic lines, the album is a thoroughly enjoyable listen. The 300 copies produced initially have sold out, and a second run is in the works with a new song, ‘O n and off.’

A trip out to Ocean Hope ter­ ritory is well worth the visit. Bajada can next be found playing an acoustic set at Club Zone on April 13th. The whole band, with gui­ tarist Shawn Moore, bassist Max 707, and drummer Marc Brazeau will be on display April 15th at the Jello Bar, playing a double bill with Modern Stories.

Photo goes pop Scanner conflates im age and sound, w ave by w ave Dan Zacks

ScannerFunk considers his lat­ est release, Wave o f Light by Wave o f Light, ‘pop.’

ScannerFunk, aka Scanner aka Robin Rimbaud, is a musician most known for his minimalist techno compositions built around stolen cellphone conversations. O ften described as a conceptual artist whose chosen medium is sound, Rimbaud’s albums have never been appreciated for their easy listening.

On his own admission, only those of exceptional endurance could lis­ ten to his earlier works in their entirety at just one sitting.

It is therefore unexpected that Rimbaud’s latest release should fall into the category of pop. But pop, as defined by ScannerFunk, is not necessarily what we have come to associate with the term. Though he maintains ‘It’s bum and thigh music, music to drive to,’ with ele­ ments o f ‘optim istic funk,’ the description hardly does the album justice.

W ith Kraftwerkian beats lend­ ing most tracks of the album driv­ ing rhythms well suited to a dance floor and organic, lush melodies

that are without precedent in his early work, Wave o f Light by Wave o f Light is certainly a pleasant listen.

But to call it pop, and have it con­

called Metasynth, Rimbaud has taken photographs and converted them into sound. A Lenny Kravitz image, for example, is the basis for

sidered alongside the works of our culture’s Backstreet Boys, is unfor­ tunately misleading.

The album is intensely layered and intelligent. Using a program

his track Cosy Veneer. The result is a slightly off-kilter rhythm line and the posing of some fascinating ethi­ cal questions. Do the sounds result­ ing from an image of a person, one

The First Montreal Throat Singing

might wonder, belong to that per­ Festival takes place on April 13,14 son? This cerebral aspect of and 15. Learn how to produce two Rimbaud’s music, an element that notes at the same time! Check out he cautiously acknowledges but the Tibetan monks of the Drepung does not emphasise, is one of Loseling Monastery!

Visit its greatest strengths. www.chantdegorge.com for details.

For all the challenging aspects of his music, Rimbaud Have you noticed that all the good, never rehearses before his per­ chunky rock is coming from formances, is extremely acces­ Sweden these days? Hellacopters, sible, answering all his emails Gluecifer, the Hives... The leaders of and willingly mingling with the pack, (International) N oise fans at concerts, and has a Conspiracy, will be in town on April strong appreciation of the 17th at the Cabaret. Call 790-1245 irreverent, having happily for tickets and info. played live at a Brazilian body­ building competition— one of It was a pick back in December, but the more surreal moments of the show got pushed, so here it is his life. again: St-Germain rules. The man Though it may not be behind the music, Ludovic Navarre, pop in the traditional sense, graces us with his presence on April Wave o f Light by Wave o f Light 12th. Once again, 790-1245 is is a fascinating and (most where it’s at. importantly) enjoyable release from a fascinating artist.

Finally, Notre Dame de Grass (get Expose yourself to something : it?) bring their bluegrass to Club refreshingly different and hope Zone April 3rd at 9:30. Cover $5, this sort pop manages to sub­ ] but only $3 with hick costume, vert and replace the rest. j There’s much, much more happen­ ing in the months to come, so keep

Look for an appearance o f i your ear to the ground and have a ScannerFunk during this year’s New j great summer!

Media Festival.

22 A&E

The McGill Tribune, Tuesday, 3 April 2001

Peace, Love and Empathy the footnote bin and give you, dear reader, the responsibility to choose for yourself whether or not to read it.

As my friend and constant-co-conspirator Eric (a.k.a. Vid E. Oest) says, I write a Choose Your Own Chris E ssert Adventure column.

Since this is my last column, I Ahem.

I told Marie-Hélène and Grace1 thought I could drop the languageearlier in the week that I’d be writing play sarcasm bullshit for a while and this column about this m onth’s try to say something important. I Summit of the Americas in Quebec haven’t actually said anything about City. Anyone who reads this newspa­ this stuff in this space before, but it’s per extensively enough to get all the on my mind all the time, and this is way to my column shouldn’t be my last chance to try to convince my hearing this from me, obviously, so legions of adoring fans that I have I’ll nip this digression in the bud something important to say, so...

Rising tides, as Dave Eggers before it even starts, and move the says, carry all boats. If there’s one related thoughts to a footnote2. thing that there’s too much of in this About those footnotes. Sorry, if society, it’s criticism. Nothing is ever like this newspaper’s Ed-In-Chief, enough for anybody. you don’t like them. I do. I think good that they keep my digression-based Whenever someone tries to do brain in check, because whenever something new,3 they’re automatical­ my mind wanders far, far off-topic, I ly greeted by a chorus of unfounded, can just throw the digression into idiotic and horrendously mean-

N ew S k i n for the Old Ceremony

Footnotes 1The best editors an idiot like me could ask for. If there’s one thing I need in life (seriously. Ask m y friends.), its to be indulged in my weird ways.

Considering that they were supposed to be keeping me under control, they couldn’t possibly have done that any more than they did.

2The way I see it, it’s just not right that our government, which is supposed to be looking out for our best interests, should be signing an agreement in which a foreign multinational company can sue said government if they think that a law that our government has passed is interfering with that foreign company’s ability to raise its (probably already obscenely high) profit margin.

It doesn’t matter if the law exists to do something as benign, maybe even hero­ ic, as to protect the environment or this nation’s beloved social services, which through gross mismanagment are rapidly losing their place as the most

minded criticism. Seriously. When someone thinks up something new, or does something in a different way, maybe instead of criticising them because you’re jealous that you didn’t think of it, why not look at what they’ve done and say two things: 1) ”wow. Good for them, I never thought of doing such a thing.” And 2) ’’seeing what this person has done, how can I look at it and possibly incorporate it into what I’m up to in order to improve on my work so that others, too, can benefit from what this person, and because of them, I have thought of.” This process, you should be saying to yourself, can enrich the world, because like Steven Soderbergh said, this world would be absolutely unbearable without Art, and anybody who’s putting themselves out on the line by pro­ ducing any art at all deserves to be lauded for their courage, not criti­ cised for their flaws.4 Secondly, and this is not unre­

lated to what I’ve just said, we need more giving5. I can’t really believe that I’m saying something so sucky, but what our culture, our art, our journalism seem to be missing as a whole is giving. W hy the fuck is everyone so afraid to give things to other people? What do they think they’re going to lose? If you’ve ever seen any movie about Christmas, you should know that the more you give, the more you receive. I know it sounds like it’s one of those things that your parents tell you (or you hear in The Santa Clause or Miracle on 34th Street.) and it is, but the rea­ son that your parents tell you all those things is because they’re all true. The more you give, the happi­ er everyone is and the better place the world will be. What are you going to lose if you give a couple hours of your time every week to do something that benefits someone besides yourself? The chance to watch six more episodes of The

important difference between this country and its significantly less compas­ sionate neighbour to the south.

Furthermore, as dangerous as provisions like this are to our country, think about how they affect the third-world countries that multinational corpora­ tions and the USA are signing on. Those countries, after years o f being the collective bitches of the IMF and the World Bank, hardly have the economic or political stability to withstand foreign companies moving on in and strip­ ping them of every valuable resource they have, all the while protected by those so-called “Chapter 11” laws I mentioned above.

3 Hello?

4 Related to that and footnote 2, it really fucking gets my goat when people go on about Summit Bandwagon people. Man, who cares if someone didn’t care about civil society before and now they do? Now they do, and that’s what’s important so get the fuck off your high horse.

Simpsons on CBC? What are you going to lose6 if you tell people you care about the truth rather than telling them half truths (not every­ thing that you could, so you can say later...oh you misunderstood)?

You’re only going to lose the chance to have another half-assed friendship and beat around the bush of your true feelings. W hat harm does it do to you to tell someone that you love them? Why are we so reluctant to tell people something that we know will enrich their lives if there’s a possibil­ ity that it might make us more vul­ nerable or put us at some relational disadvantage to them?

You’ve gotta give a little bit, people. This is the one thing that I want to impress upon everyone I meet, and all you kids reading this column right now.

And that’ll be all for now.

Thanks for reading.

5 W hat does all that I’m about to say have to do with Arts & Entertainment, the ostensible subjects of this column? The thing is, there are so many talent­ ed people whose art isn’t anything near as good as it could be, because those people don’t give their audience anything real at all. These days, anyone pro­ ducing art feels compelled to wrap their art up in sarcasm and what is called (but certainly is not) irony, because of what I’ve said above about people pro­ tecting themselves by never giving anything away. The problem with that argument is that when I tell you something in m y art, something about me, I’m giving you something, sure, but you’re definitely not taking anything from me. When I tell you who I love, who I care about, who’s broken my heart, what have you got of mine? Not a fucking thing. W hat these people are missing is that unless you give something, and I mean really sincerely give something real, you’re never going to create any art that’s worth a damn.

6 This one is important.

all B u s in e s s In c u b a t o r TheSSMUhas partneredwiththe Montreal Mayor’sFoundation forYouthtooffer thesecond annual grant for entrepreneurs, available exclusivelytostudents at McGill.

Interested in running your own business?

With this new initiative you can win a grant to own a operate your own business.

For more informationcontact: Andrew Tischler andrew.tischle@mcgill.ca Applications will be available at the SSMU Front Desk beginning Tuesday April 3rd and are due Tuesday April 17th

MONTREAL POURLA JEUNESSE

The McGill Tribune, Tuesday, 3 April 2001

A&E 23

In the future, everyone wears the same thing A silver spandex one-piece with a red racing stripe and, for the sake o f my story mak­ who think that fun is the devil ing sense, you do. Now, remove (That is, your kind of fun). Well, yourself from this environment (I this is the story of my life.

Select Start Fortunately, the end to my don’t care how — it’s up to you) Vid E . Oest and place yourself in a community entertainment-deprived existence is of Quakers. These people are all near. It started with the launch of o, Mr. Kubrick’s and Mr. about basics (no, this does not Playstation 2 in the fall of 2000 Clarkes vision o f the world in mean having the original NES and will culminate with the release 2001 didn’t exacdy materialize. rather than N64) and, as a general of the Xbox, Microsoft’s first stab at I mean, yes, there is a space rule, anything they own will prob­ the lucrative console industry, later station and we do have computers, (probably around ably be old and crappy (not to be this year but our station isn’t nearly as epic offensive, but, com ing from a Christmas). These next-generation and our computers have yet to take technophile, an ox and a plough gaming machines will not only play on personalities that come close to games but will offer a whole slew of are not cool tools). rivaling the awesome power that is So, now that you’ve been wel­ additional features. Both the Xbox HAL 9000 (ignoring the fact that comed into the Quaker communi­ and Playstation 2 for example, will computers do, in fact, act as the ty, your first inclination (obviously) play DVDs and will have broadstrong, silent types that repeatedly is to go for a ride on one of those fuck you over by deleting your pre­ horse-drawn buggies. cious files). Still, like it or not, we You figure that are living in the future: People can your desperate talk to each other through the air need for technolo­ using tiny com m unications gy can only be sat­ devices; Japan has toilets that talk isfied if you leave to you (I imagine that their pur­ and make your pose is to offer encouragement or, way back to civi­ perhaps, to remind you to wash lization. The ride your hands); you can track a col­ begins without a hitch lared monkey using GPS to within and, despite the slow a metre (if one were so inclined); pace, you’re confident that and, most importantly, the line you’ll get to wherever you’re between reality and the virtual b an d going. On the way, hundreds of world is blurring at an incredible access to the cars pass you by on the highway rate. W ho knows? Scenarios à la internet. The latter fea­ and, as the day progresses, you Total Recall are probably not that notice that the same cars are now ture will allow the user to access the far away. To be perfectly honest, I passing you in the other direction. web, send e-mail, and, o f course, say it’s about time. You see, I’m in Families have gone to the water- play games over the net. I’m partic­ the unfortunate situation of having park, floated around the lazy river ularly interested in the online gam­ been born about 200 years too hundreds o f times and come home ing aspect as it will allow console soon and, as a result, I’m stuck here in the time it has taken you to get users (i.e. cool dudes who like toiling with terribly basic enter­ from one rest stop to the next. videogames) to venture into the tainment devices that I cannot even Mildly annoying that this is, you’re com puter geeks’ Valhalla. Their pretend to enjoy (certainly not determined to finish your journey stupid games o f online A D& D will when I know what the future holds and press on. As the evening begins never be the same (Oh no! You’ve in store). To help you understand to set in, you notice a skyline in the just beaten my level 99 W hite my dilemma, let’s describe a situa­ distance: your journey is almost Mage with an Ore wielding the tion that comes close to illustrating complete. Sadly, just as you knew black sword o f Balzaben! — what the pain that is my entertainmentthey would, your antiquated trans­ the hell is he talking about?) Aside deprived life. portation devices fail you in the from the additional features, these Picture yourself as an incredi­ form of a broken wooden axle. The next generation consoles will also bly wealthy person who is also a journey is over and you’re forced to be powerful computing machines. I huge technophile. Obviously, due eke out your lame existence in the suspect that they will finally put an to your incredible wealth, you’re confines o f a musty wooden bed­ end to the belief that consoles are able to purchase all the techno­ room amongst a bunch of people nothing more than a poor man’s amenities that your heart desires UDUDLRLRABAB

S

computer. To get an idea o f the power, think o f the story regarding PS2 and Saddam Hussein. Rumour has it that he contributed to the dearth o f PS2s due to his need for a supercomputer. The trade embargo had prevented him from purchas­ ing any computers faster than a 486 (very slow) and, consequently, he decided to use the power of the PS2 to aid in Iraq’s weapons research (I’m sure this is false — Saddam, like everyone else, loves FIFA 2001 and just wanted to be able to play it with his friends).

Either way, the PS2 as well as the Xbox and Nintendo’s GameCube are worthy computing machines and all o f them could have han­ dled the Apollo Space missions w ithout too much difficulty (of course, if they were used I imagine that the mis­ sions would have been less than successful.

W ho would bother m onitoring the mis­ sion when, instead, you could be playing a really souped-up version o f Pong?)

Even with all o f these addi­ tional features and powerful innards it’s good to remember that, ultimately, these machines are still meant for gaming and, from what I’ve seen so far, they do not disap­ point. Since viewing games on PS2 for the first time, my life has become nothing more than a black and white facsimile o f the more real and vivid World: the Virtual World. O f late, my insatiable crav­ ings for longer glimpses o f the Real World' have resulted in greatly

reducing the complexity o f my life; I no longer need food and the resultant increase in cash flow has helped me to purchase more games and, more importantly, helped me to create a fund through which I hope to purchase a larger portal to the Virtual World (for the layman, this roughly translates as a televi­ sion.)

Anyway (a lazy segue, I know, but this is really beginning to drag on), I know that a majority o f the people reading this article (4 o f the 6) are n o t as interested in videogames as I am and I know that you may be a little wary o f the pending videogame-crazy future, but do not fear; videogames are going to get more and more realis­ tic and, consequendy, there's an obvious limit that will, one day, be reached. I call it the Oest paradox (seeing as nobody has ever both­ ered to contemplate such an absurd issue): Videogames are required (as dictated by gamers' tastes) to push the virtual envelope; they need to get more and more realistic.

Unfortunately, this will push them to the point where they will mirror everyday life. Then, the impetus to purchase and play videogames will be gone since the real world will offer the same thing at a fraction of the cost.

So, to all the videogame detractors, I say rest easy. It seems that everyone's day in the sun will come (quite literally). I imagine that in about 50 years, registration for house league soccer will be way up and the World's population will never have looked slimmer.

g e e c o îz orra I t-iRed

ofstadc/ing...

Sumthing special Dan Zacks I

I really can’t tell you much about Sum Magazine. It will be free, largely the result of McGill students, and will focus on culture and related interests.

But if the magazine manages to capture even a small portion of the energy that was generated by its fundraising party, last Thursday at Le Swimming, it’s going to be one very hot rag.

There were at least several hun­ dred people who forked out the five-dollar cover to support the magazine and to listen to funk/rock

group Seventy* Eight, the ska-punk stylings of The Delegates and the always sweet mixes of DJ Apex. No one could rightfully be disappoint­ ed. Though I missed the first act, The Delegates played an hour-long set of with the intensity, humour and skill that has won them an ardent and occasionally over-enthu­ siastic fan base. Their keyboardist’s trombone solos during the opening two tracks were particularly impres­ sive and well received by the crowd.

There were few surprises from DJ Apex, the fellow to whom we owe so much for bringing Antibalas to Montreal in early March. His mixing is excellent, his crates full of

nifty gems, and his involvement in Sum guarantees the magazine an authoritative musical voice.

The vibe in Le Swimming was laid-back and friendly, having been nicely lubricated by drink, and the organiser’s efforts were obvious.

The candy at the door was a nice touch, and the earnest Sum mem­ bers working as doorpeople were a pleasant change from the surly steroid monkeys that one usually encounters.

Beer, good tunes, and happy people make for a good party. If Sum is half as much as its fundrais­ er then we are in for a treat.

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398-m m 398-6246 m on - s a

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24 A&E

The McGill Tribune, Tuesday, 3 April 2001

Luna Luna Live Arena Rock/4AD

Fronted by Dean Wareham, ex-lead of the fabulous Galaxie 500, Luna has been together for the bulk of the nineties and has released five well-received, almost interchange­ able, albums. Wareham continues

to play the same dreamy pop he did in 1992 (when Luna Park was released), and continues— compul­ sively, redundantly— to harp on Lou Reed/VU as a reference point.

W hat makes Wareham worthy of continued interest is, first, the increasingly tight musicianship on his records and, second, the pro­ duction on those records. The latter is indelible— Kramer’s haunting, delicate production of Galaxie 500’s seminal On Fire (an aesthetic which, by the way, can still be heard on Damon & Naomi’s records) remains breathtaking, as does the anthemic chime of Luna’s 1994 release, Bewitched.

But Luna’s most recent release is a live album— sans studio— and, to a certain extent, the magic neces­ sarily dissipates. Songs are flatter

than they usually are (‘Sideshow by the Seashore’ is surprisingly under­ whelming given the band’s heart­ breaking recorded version), and Wareham’s frequently silly lyrics are awkwardly audible, undisguised by ethereal effects. There is a danger­ ous sense here that without the treated, pretty sounding guitar and VU echo, Luna is simply a generic pop-rock band. Fortunately, this is not the ultimate suggestion of Luna Live. Redundancy is broken by the horn on ‘Hello Little O ne,’ an epiphany, given the sameness of arrangement found on three-quar­ ters o f the album. The guitar lick on Galaxie 500’s ‘Fourth o f July is equally, dependably noteworthy, and the album ends with Luna’s live staple, ‘Bonnie and Clyde,’ where Wareham’s passable French is mod­ erated by Britta Philips’ uncanny Brigitte Bardot impression. And, of course, there are songs like ‘Tiger Lily’ and ‘4000 Days’ which are simply great, irrespective of studio gloss.

lude)’. It’s basically women mouthing off about men, which, though entertaining, is not neces­ sary. O f course, men’s problems with women are also aired on this album. The song T G ot Love (scars)’ starts out with what you think will be a love song: “I got love for you all, don’t think I’m a hater__This one’s for the ladies,” but then takes a turn with the lyrics: “Don’t bug out when I call ladies bitches...biatch.” Interesting. O f course, these days you can’t find an album that doesn’t slam the other sex or talk about love. As a result, this aspect o f Mars/Venus should not take away from the better songs. ‘Qualified,’ which is silky smooth, has a gospel feel. Another favourite is ‘Quickie,’ a tune with attitude and great exposure of both singers’ vocal skills. For the most part though, despite the few songs that I did thoroughly enjoy, I found the album repetitive. It’s not some­ thing I could listen to again for a while.

— David Balzer — Judith Drory

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Koffee Brown Mars/Venus BMC

Run-D.M.C. Crown Royal Arista Record/BMG

Koffee Brown is a smooth R&B and soul group consisting of the unusual combination o f female and male vocalists. This is a nice touch, as they get to fully utilize the higher vocal range of Vee and the deeper base of Fonz. Together, they make for a sometimes strange, sometimes jumping album. This group has talent, but by the end of the album, many of the songs are repetitive and run into one another.

My initial impression of Koffee Brown was that they were some­ what misguided and tacky: their first song clip intro consists of a sung definition of Venus (which is represented by women), set to the theme song from The Young and The Restless. The group’s first single is ‘A fter Party,’ which is a fairly decent song, but not one that should be what the group is riding on. Instead, they should have released ‘Didn’t Mean to Turn You O n’ featuring du-ganz, a catchy tune that had me singing along after the third listen. Despite Koffee Brown’s combination of male and female, which you’d think would counter out problems between the sexes, Mars/Venus still drifts off into angry songs about the other sex. On ‘Fingerpointing,’ there is a long rant after the actual song about when it’s time to let men go. The theme ••ecurs in the song ‘The View (inter­

Run-D.M.C. is back in the rap game with Crown Royal and they are about to show the world their influence on music is still strong, now and forevermore.

These innovators, collabora­ tors and hitmakers have been mak­ ing noise since the early 80s with such hits as ‘Walk this Way’ and ‘It’s Like T hat.’ They originated the blend of rap and rock that is popu­ lar today.

R un-D .M .C . were the first rappers to appear on MTV, American Bandstand, Saturday N ight Live and in Rolling Stone M agazine. They have trailblazed their way into a new century with Crown Royal and are ready to take young hip hop lovers back to a time when they ruled successfully.

Crown Royal is an album that allows them to work with some up and coming artists like Nas, Jermaine Dupri, Sugar Ray and Everlast. O n the track ‘It’s Over,’ featuring Jermaine Dupri, RunD.M .C. raps with macho bravado behind infectious beats. This track, along with ‘Rock Show’ featuring Stephen Jenkins of Third Eye Blind and ‘Simmons Incorporated’ featur­ ing Method Man, are dub-bangers that stand out on this album. All the tracks have guest appearances and the kings never seem to stand alone.

Run-D.M .C. wants to rock your world and the majority of the tracks are not deep or with spiritual drive. They stick to their winning formula that has brought them mil­ lions o f fans from around the world.

Run-D.M .C. s Crown Royal is not an exceptional album, or a clas­ sic, but it provides listeners with a trip down memory lane. The group’s out to prove that they never left the game and the album is a solid effort and accomplishment.

This is a new beginning for RunD.M .C. and Jam Master Jay, and the possibilities are endless as to what they’ll do next.

Hey kids! I f you liked this, you'll LOVE... 2Pacs double CD, Until The End of Time, and Eve’s Scorpion.

— Ricky C. Gordon

Various Artists World Connection: accessible world music for wide audience Times Square Records

The title of this CD read like a joke— a very funny joke. Clearly, some great wit was using this album to poke fun at all the abysmally mediocre, painfully bland compila­ tions clogging shelves along the international aisle at music stores.

O r so I thought.

The reality is that, either as a result o f heinous stupidity or depressing cynicism, the folks at Times Square Records thought describing their ‘world music’ as accessible and for a ‘wide audience’ would be a selling point. This bog­ gles the mind. W hen the unifying theme of a compilation is ease of lis­ tening and the desire for wide expo­ sure, the artistic integrity of the musicians becomes highly suspect.

More suspect, however, are the poor saps who are going to buy this CD because they think it’s ‘accessible.’

Even though World Connection can be dismissed solely on the basis of its title, it offers some surprising­ ly strong pieces. The two tracks from Peru Negro are tight, happy examples o f traditional afroPeruvian music and stand as the highlight o f the CD. The Argentinean tango o f Trio Fundacion’s Astor Piazolla is con­ servative and offers few innova­ tions, but the tracks are nonetheless gut wrenching in the way that only tango can be. O n the other hand, Yanka Rupkina, from Bulgaria, is the C D ’s great embarrassment. His lyrics don’t survive the translation from Bulgarian and his Tom Waitsstyle crooning is a cultural appro­ priation that simple doesn’t work.

— Dan Zacks Stereophonies Just Enough Education to Perform V2/BMG

Since

the

early

90s,

the

Stereophonies have made a con­ scious effort to escape early and erroneous comparisons to formerly-controversial fellow Welshmen the Manic Street Preachers by delv­ ing further and further into the

sterile world of cheese-core pop.

Nonetheless, in this process of sonic sanitization, the band has somehow become more offensive.

For instance, while promoting their big North American single ‘Pick a Part That’s New’ a few years ago, the band claimed they were using their Canadian success as a back­ door to breaking the States. And what about that frightening per­ formance at the 2000 Brit Awards with the equally frightening Tom Jones? N ot one pair o f ladies’ underpants earned Air Miles that night. But I digress...

So, the Stereophonies are tak­ ing another crack at Canada (i.e. the States) with Just Enough Education to Perform. Now, like a recovering drunkard downing tur­ pentine at the height of withdraw­ al, a desperate British music fanatic may be tempted to pick up the album for a quick and cheap hit o’ Brit. But be forewarned: drinking paint thinner and listening to the Stereophonies may seem like good ideas at the time, but Anglophile and alcoholic alike shall live to regret it. T hat is, if they can man­ age to retain consciousness through the experience.

The album starts off on a quite decent foot with ‘Vegas Two Times’, which boasts a mock‘Madchester’ sound, complete with the obligatory forty seconds of instrument tuning at the start and some smooth soul backup vocals.

Then, everything is damned to Britpop hell in a handbasket from there. Tunes like ‘Have a Nice Day’ and ‘Watch Them Fly Sundays’ plod forth from Kelly Jones’ scratchy throat with all the vitality o f a sloth on fairly inexpensive dopamine. The proposed first sin­ gle, ‘My Writer’, is equally cursed and blessed with catchy spullessness that should usher it straight into FM charts, like so much o f the happy, daffy British music that inexplicably receives exhaustive North American airplay these days.

Still, if bliss is ignorance, then the Stereophonies should play on.

— Leah K. Nchama

Daft Punk Discovery

I’m torn. Guy-M anuel de Hom em Christo and Thom as

Bangalter, the French duo and elec­ trofunk pioneers behind Daft Punk, released Discovery this m onth. ‘O ne More Tim e,’ the album’s first track, has already topped the dance charts in Europe and N orth America. The album rediscovers sounds from the past, fusing them in altogether new ways.

I can’t explain how, really. Have you ever heard an electric guitar solo over a rubber band disco beat? I hadn’t. Now I have.

The album rises in waves. ‘One More Time’ pumps with energy. DJ Sneak fans are treated to a guest appearance in track three, ‘Digital Love.’ Track five, ‘Crescendolls,’ is a

Funk’ and ‘A round the World,’ with the robotic-sounding vocoder on lyrics, caught the ear of every DJ in every club. Bangalter’s solo work as Stardust resulted in ‘Music Sounds Better W ith You’, one of the club anthems of 1998. Now, in 2001 Discovery wins over the listener almost immediately, and has enough of everything to keep lovers o f dance, alternative and pop com­ ing back for more.

— André Nance

Still, one would never gather any o f this from 100 Broken Windows, with its plucky melodies and lilting vocals. There are even cheekily explosive sing-along cho­ ruses, nicked from the early 1990s Pacific Northwest music scene, which the band often cites as a direct influence. Rather than trans­ lating the aggression o f their live performances into an onslaught of brazen jock-rock cacophony, iDLEW iLD have taken a more reserved approach in the recording studio, opting to infuse their lyrics with any and all stockpiled ire.

Vocalist and sole wordsmith Roddy Woomble knows all too well that the weak comply whilst the mighty complain, direedy imploring us to be less real and more cynically post­ modern. The whole ordeal is pep­ pered with the occasional high-gain power chord and shouted art school nonce-word that jab iDLEWiLD s brilliant brand o f subdued anarchy directly into one’s consciousness.

attempt to represent the feel of dance music and club culture with­ out a fluid mix. Despite this draw­ back, W.O.P.A. still offers a fairly comprehensive look at D.C. artists.

Plus, a portion of the profits goes to a W ashington organization that educates youth about H IV and AIDS. — Jeff Flail-Martin

A word from your editors In the

final

issue

of our A&E

Editorship here at the good ship Trib, we would like to thank you. “Who am I?" you ask. You are our writers, our readers, our co-editors, our photographers, our reps & promoters (espe­ cially Steven, Patricia and Sujinder), our beloved layout gum Eric, our John Salloum. You are also anybody w ho has ever supported art or cul­ ture in this fabulous city. You are all our friends. And you are what you eat.

iDLEWiLD 100 Broken Windows EMI Records

forever rising dance-floor-anthemto-be. ‘Voyager’ has airy tones and thumping bass. ‘Too Long, the final track, ends it all with the smoothest o f grooves. The songs in between are just as good.

Back to being torn. W hat tears me in two is DaftClub.com, the official Daft Punk website. First off, you have to buy the CD before you can access the site. You need the personalized membership ID in the C D case. After hours of download headaches trying to install the “Daft” software needed for the site, your reward is, behold! One lousy song that is “exclusive.” Nothing else. No other downloads. Betrayed, disappointed; if I didn’t have the CD , I don’t know where I’d be.

Daft Punk made waves with their last album, Homework, released in 1997. Songs like ‘Da

Although Scottish malaise-core quartet iDLEWiLD was formed back in 1995 and have two fulllength releases already under their belt (both presumably lost some­ where in U.K. import purgatory), 100 Broken Windows is their first LP to receive widespread majorlabel distribution in N orth America.

As a result, word of the band’s raucous reputation has long preced­ ed them. W ith a style repeatedly described as the sound of “a flight o f stairs falling down a flight of stairs” and notoriously intense live shows (to the point of near-epidem­ ic band member tooth-loss), iDLEW iLD is touted as every British band’s favourite British band.

— Leah K. Nchama Various Artists Walking on Pennsylvania Avenue Open Source Music

In this diverse compilation of electronic music, the Open Source Label displays the wide range of tal­ ent that exists in the Washington, D.C. scene. Disc one o f the two disc package dwells in the downtempo, groovy side, moving from jazzy house to atmospheric drum and bass. Disc two picks up the pace with a more progressive feel, melding house and techno beats with live guitars and vocals. Several big-name D .C . acts have con­ tributed tracks, including Deep Dish and Saeed & Palash, and these stand out as the best on the album.

However, the fact that the discs are unmixed takes a lot away from the compilation. It is unrealistic to

Though we had no idea what to expect when we embarked on our voyage, it has, happily, proved to be a remarkable one. We’ve gone from hip hop to beebop, from Philadelphia to Graceland, from only music & film to TV, food, dance, the­ atre and a host of other (equally wonderful) destinations.

There were some stormy periods along the way, of course, but we bat tened the hatches, swabbed the deck when they were over, and car ried on beneath clear, warm skies.

As we slide into the harbour and pre­ pare to disembark, we tip our hats to you all and wish you the best.

With all our seaworthiness & love of the Trib, Captains Marie-Hélène Savard and Grace Carter.

A tt e n tio n : A ll R e tu r n in g M c G ill U n d e r g r a d s fr o m th e G T A !

00 Prize 1 The McGill Alumni Association of Toronto is accepting applications for its Annual Community Service Prize presented to a returning undergraduate student from the Toronto area who has demonstrated an exceptional commitment to community service both at McGill and in their community.

Please visit us online at www.mcgilltoronto.com to apply or nominate someone for this prize, or call Jennifer at the McGill Ontario Region Office at (416) 974-5795 '

.f

26A & E

The McGill Tribune, Tuesday, 3 April 2001

Not just another nebulous modernist event The Therem inions Captivate Peter Koven

given the utter uniqueness of the soundscapes being created.

For those unfamiliar with the theremin, it was invented in the early 1900’s by the physicist Leon Theremin. Unlike any other instru­ ment, it is played without touch.

There are two antennae protruding from it to control pitch and vol­ ume, and an individuals closeness

The performance of the Thereminions, six musicians play­ ing theremins, at the Société des Arts Technologiques last month was promoted ironically as “Another nebulous modernist event,” but “THE nebulous modernist event” would have been more appropriate

to each antenna determines the sound that emerges, making the range and potential types of sounds almost endless. The instrum ent unfortunately went out of style in the mid-twentieth century, although you’ve probably all heard before it in the form of the “wahwahs” in the Beach Boys’ ‘Good Vibrations.’

The SSMU Is seeking students from April 30th until June 15th to sell advertising space for the student handbook and other publications. These positions are proven money-makers for talented, dynamic, articulate individuals who can close sales. w

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The performance of the Thereminions (Neil Conway, Brian Damage, Anna Friz, Francois Martel, Adam O ’Callaghan, and

Katarina Soukoup) marked one of the rare occasions in which theremins are used, and it was a truly remarkable sight to behold, with six totally unique yet somehow complementing sounds protruding

Only serious candidates need apply

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PAUL SLACHTA 398-6806

The myths and realities of music at university (in order of descend­ ing disappointment)...

Myth: You go to a kegger, slap on some Kingsmen vinyl, party all night, wake up the next morning and still ace the final.

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Reality: This was definitely not the case. The chances of possibly finding yourself dancing a ‘little bit louder now’ to Otis Day and The Knights playing Shout were about the same as finding a Frat boy cool enough to have any idea o f who Otis Day and The Knights actually were. Not only do Frats at McGill completely avoid doing pranks that could get them expelled; they also avoid lamp­ shade wearing Louie Louie blast­ ing parties. Sure, there were a couple o f ‘70s parties where all the white guys put on afros and thought it was pretty funny, but seriously, that is no substitute for the R+B loving antics o f the PI KAPS.

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Universities are home to many interesting musical groups.

Myth:

Reality: W ith very few excep­ tions, almost all university bands are awful. The number of ‘drum ­ ming groups’ is appalling. Far too many musical ensembles involve bongos and acoustic guitars. Ani Difranco is good, but Ani Difranco covers are tiresome. As for a capella groups, do they real­

from the instruments, engulfing the audience in something truly special.

An additional accordion and an electro-magnetic jawharp also helped set the mood.

The concert made use of the silophone, a grain elevator in the Port of Montreal full of sound (try projecting your own voice through it for a cool experience by dialing 844-5555 or 1-8775 11-SILO).

While there were a few evi­ dent technical glitches, these did not detract at all from the perform­ ance, as the audience sat spellbound watching hands fly­ ing around antennae at incredibly rapid speeds, producing sounds unlike anything we had ever heard.

Nebulous modernity can be a won­ derful thing. Go figure. ly expect to be taken seriously?

For the majority of my life, I have despised funk, mainly because of the abundance of white 30-some­ thing bar bands named something along the lines o f “Funkgasm.” It wasn’t until last year that I discov­ ered the rich and interesting his­ tory o f early funk bands, regain­ ing the genre some of my respect.

Sadly this was destroyed by arrival at university and the consistent bom bardm ent o f ‘funk fusion’ music.

Myth: Studying classical music should give someone a level-head­ ed view of pop music, therefore music students have admirable taste in pop music.

Reality: Sadly, the faculty of music has possibly the worst taste in pop music. I guess they spend so much time playing serious music that they forget what nonserious music is even supposed to sound like and end up buying the new M oby single. Hell, even heavy metal-loving engineers are more interesting than that. I sug­ gest all music students listen to only atonal music. That way, at least they will look smarter than everyone else.

Conclusion: As it turns out, the best experience to be had with music at university was found no further away than the cafeteria.

Every morning you were guaran­ teed great tunes from the dish­ washing staff. They played a con­ sistent mix of quality rhythm and blues, rock and roll, rockabilly and the occasional hip hop num­ ber. Be it RVC or BMH, the dish pit rang out with musical integri­ ty. Thank you, dishwashers.

The McGill Tribune, Tuesday, 3 April 2001

A&E 2 7

The McGill Tribune Review o f Books Salman Rushdie and the horrors of marginalia

T he Ground Beneath H er Feet ________ Salman Rushdie________ There has never been a novel that has made me com m it the unspeakable horror of marginalia underlining bits o f text and making notes in the margins. If I’m not get­ ting tested on it, turns of phrase and new vocabulary haven’t inter­ ested me that much. That is, until I read The Ground Beneath Her Feet

by Salman Rushdie.

Described as a remaking of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, The Ground Beneath Her Feet is the story of a love triangle between Vina Aspara, a popstar, Orm us Cama, a stunning musician and songwriter and Umeed Merchant, a photographer. The triangle of love is underscored by a triangle of ideas - love, art and death and the extent to which each can outlast the other.

Beginning in Bombay, moving to London, and ending in New York, the novel is the global tale of rock and roll, and has been herald­ ed by critics as the first true story of that genre. Vina Aspara and Ormus Cama begin a love affair when she is only 13 years old - a promise made by him not to touch her until she turns 16 sets the tone for a fiery and sensous romance that is broken up when Vina’s adopted mother, and the real mother of Umeed have a violent fight and Vina escapes from Ormus’ life for the next ten years.

They meet next when Vina flies to London and rescues Ormus from a coma; their reunification creates the band VTO , whose international fame is inevitably the cause of their undoing.

Through the epic, Umeed, nicknamed Raj by Vina in their childhood, hides behind his camera and his emotions: the sometimes lover of Vina, confidant of Ormus and narrator of the novel. It is through Raj’s eyes that we see the impact of popular music on three unique metropolises and three dif­ ferent decades. Through Raj, we feel what it is like not to belong —to family, a community, a city, a coun­ try, a lover. This is a novel about exile as much as it is about sex, drugs and rock and roll.

Rushdie’s words smolder on the page like the sexual heat between Vina and Ormus, or ghost­ ly linger, like Ormus’ dead twin who feeds him songs in his sleep, songs that will one day become great hits. It is Rushdie’s outstand­ ing wordplay, choice deployment of commas, vivid descriptions — from bored children on airplanes, to the emotional anguish o f the lover scorned — that had me picking up a pencil again and again to under­ line the messages and mantras so subtly present in the text. This is a novel worth reading twice — once for the story, and again for the

words.

Rushdie plays with words as much as he plays with history - the Watergate scandal becomes little more than an idea for a novel, and Elvis Presley morphs into Jesse Garon Parker. This gives the novel

an otherworldly character, as though the story is happening in a universe parallel to our own.

Indeed, with ghosts and witches slipping in and out of lives of the characters, it very well may be.

In addition to writing the prose for the novel, Rushdie also composed all of the song lyrics for Vina and O rm us’ solo musical careers and the one they built together. It’s a prolific feat - it is one thing to write a novel about a world famous band — it is another to create lyrics so excellent that U2 has recorded them. Rushdie sent the manuscript to Bono of U2 to ensure that the lyrics were of the caliber of high quality musicians.

Bono was impressed enough to record one of the songs, which went on the soundtrack album to the Million Dollar Hotel and is now being played on the radio.

Rushdie is the author of six other novels, including the contro­ versial The Satanic Verses, which

sent him into exile in 1988 after Ayatollah Khomeini called on Muslims worldwide to execute Rushdie for profanity against Islam.

He emerged from exile in 1991.

— S te p h a n ie L e v itz

Survivor Chuck Palahniuk “If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, does it really rot? And if Christ had died from a barbiturate overdose, alone on the bathroom floor, would he be in heaven?”

-

x

So muses Tender Branson, the unlikely anti-hero of Chuck Palahniuk’s masterpiece Survivor.

JVhile his debut effort, the now infamous Fight Club, was a truly significant work in its redefining of the nature of mid-life crisis and the male role in American society, it is with Survivor that Palahniuk truly seems to tap into the essence of the American infrastructure in unique and hilarious ways.

In general, Survivor is an ingenious satire of those ever-so-

impenetrable (but definitely not mutually exclusive) forces of Western society — religion, fame, the media, and especially market­ ing. Tender Branson is the last sur­ viving member of the Creedish Death Cult — a religious suicide cult whose members are dying off at an increasingly rapid rate, much to the joy o f the American media.

W hen Branson is left as the last surviving mem­ ber, an agency quickly seizes the opportunity to physically mould him (with the aid of anabolic steroids, bar­ biturates, collagen injections, etc.) into the ultimate Christian media messiah and m ir a c le - p r e d ic to r , thereby achieving their goals o f record TV ratings and adver­ tising revenue. And like any good Jimmy Swaggart-esque media God, a variety of Tender-Branson themed products and projects enter the market along with him, including the classic Book of Very Common Prayer, and America’s new landfill for used pornography, the PornFill. Things start to get very inter­ esting after this, but to give away anything more would be a crime.

Survivor is, quite simply, the funniest look at American val­ ues and culture in the latter twentieth centu­ ry that has yet been put to print.

Like Fight Club, much o f the insightful political commentary is often sacrificed for the benefit of a few laughs, but this is forgivable given the unabashed hilarity of it.

The characterizations in particular are brilliant, notably that of Branson’s weaselly agent, whose company made its fortune by patenting all potential names of future pharmaceutical drugs before they’re invented, thus forcing drug companies to pay them for the rights to distribute their own prod­ ucts. Brilliant! Some have claimed that the satire is far too exaggerated to be taken even remotely seriously, and while it certainly is in one sense, one look at 100 Huntley Street or the Super Bowl these days suggests that isn’t that far over the top — provided one forgets the scene involving a gun and several million tons of used American porn, that is.

Don’t listen to Barbie; math isn't so bad

A History of Mathematics, an Introduction.

V ictor]. Katz Reading this book is great because it turns the guilt of procras­ tination into entertainment.

First of all, this is non-fiction, but secondly, this is a textbook, complete with questions at the end of each chapter. The great thing is that you don’t have to do the prob­ lems, although the answer to every odd number is provided in the back. However, the real guilt comes from the very nature of the book: the whole thing is like one of those F.Y.I. sidebars contained in regular math books. This is full of great sto­ ries about the discoveries and pro­ gressions of all facets of mathemat­ ics from a geographically historical point of view, including extensive coverage of China, India and the Islamic world. It also refers a great deal to original sources and pro­ vides examples o f early original problems that led to various proofs. d(math)/d(t)=fun — David Barclay C aro l S h ie ld s en ters ja n e A u ste n 's w ritin g roo m

Lives — Jane Austen Carol Shields James Atlas, editor of Penguin’s marketable Lives series, has already proven himself a rather consum­ mate matchmaker. He has success­ fully paired Virginia Woolf with Nigel Nicolson (Nicholson is a descendant of Vita Sackville-West, W oolf’s muse for Orlando) and Marcel Proust with Edmund White (past and present chroniclers of a certain “queer consciousness”). And with an Andy Warhol Life by the flamboyantly pomo Wayne Koestenbaum as well as an Elvis Presley bio by white trash lit maven Bobbie Ann Mason on their way, he is assured of more successful match­ es to come.

The newest Lives, however, concerns a figure who is arguably the most successful matchmaker in Western literature. Pairing Jane Austen, that prudish, protoVictorian maid (always a match­ maker, never matched herself), with another literary luminary must have been a trying task. Atlas has chosen well. Carol Shields’s new biography of Jane Austen is an astounding, warm exercise in creative biography, and is perhaps his most fortuitous match to date.

Jane Austen works, for the most part, because it refuses to take biog­ raphy objectively. From the start (where we are told of her trip with her daughter to a geeky convention o f Austenphiles) to the ending

— Peter K o v e n continued on page 28

28 A&E

The McGill Tribune, Tuesday, 3 April 2001

continued from page 27

acknowledgements (where Shields proclaims, “My debt to Jane Austen herself is incalculable”), Shields is unapologetic about her love for “Jane” (her preferred moniker for the author). But like the heroines in Austen’s novels, her affection is always somewhat restrained, always conscious of the precarious balance that must be struck between ration­ al details and hum an interest.

Shields boldly enters the strange alter of Austen’s personal drawing room, collecting facts and objects (as she did for Daisy Goodwill Flett in The Stone Diaries) and then pro­ ceeds to sit down to tea with her subject, all smiles and adoration.

Only Carol Shields could get away with such a delicate balancing of flagrant partiality and strict fact gathering.

A comparable stylist here is Virginia Woolf, who at times is obviously the missing link between a writer like Austen and a writer like Shields. W oolf’s nonfiction (and, in fact, her discussion of Austen in A Room o f One’s Own) is just as clear, just as fond (and fawning) as Shields’. And it is also, like Shields’ work, full of juicy, speculated tid­ bits on the author that reflect as much on the subject matter as they do on the cridc/biographer herself.

Shields is particularly aware that we know very little about Jane Austen, and constantly informs us o f this fact throughout the pages of the biography. We have two badly drawn sketches of Austen, both done by her sister Cassandra. We know next to nothing about her love life (she never married), and her correspondences mysteriously die out for extended periods of

time. Instead o f shrugging her shoulders at this lack of detail, Shields does what any good fiction writer would do — she creates sto­ ries, colours events, and adds per­

sonal anecdotes.

Considering Cassandra’s probable cattiness as a reason for the famously unattractive portrait of Austen, Shields describes the face in the picture “looking sideways . . . perhaps at that lack of event that was said to characterize her life.” And when Shields sug­ gests that “breast cancer seems a likely cause” o f Austen’s death, there is no mistaking the personal ele­ ment she brings to this particular study.

The ultimate strength of Jane

Austen, though, is the way Shields manages to evoke, through all the m inutiae o f Austen’s social and practical existence, the formation of Austen’s ingenious artistry. Shields’ discussion of words said and not said in Austen’s novels, for instance, cleverly broaches the paradoxes that emerge when expressive, brilliant women are immersed in a stifling world o f verbal econo­ my. Especially a c c ura te , though, is her acknowledge­ m ent o f Jane Austen’s study of “trivialities” as momentous events. Austen made a universe out of her small world, and Shields is wise to take this world seriously, imbu­ ing it with all the tragedy and com­ edy it most certainly deserves.

The writing is thus appropri­ ately, wonderfully nuanced.

Everything, from the “sharp” pen of a snotty, anti-provincial sister-inlaw, to the trauma o f the Austen family’s relocation to Bath, becomes part of Shields’ reserved biographi­ cal melodrama. A description of Austen’s writing room is most likely the highpoint of the study, detailing the unthinkable placement of Austen’s writing desk smack in the

middle of the family drawing room.

Jane was a necessarily social crea­ ture, Shields stresses, because she almost never wrote without another body in the room. Notable as well is Shields’ maternal description of Austen’s art - of her unfinished Watsons as a stillbirth, and of her six completed novels as a prodigious little brood.

Shields is famous for taking the inconsequential and domestic into the realm of profundity. Austen’s life is sometimes seen as grandly inconsequential, but it is lit up by Shields and endowed with the attention and gravity it deserves. At its best, Shields’ Life does with Jane Austen precisely what Austen does with Elizabeth Bennett (Pride and Prejudice), Emma Woodhouse {Emma) and Anne Elliot {Persuasion)— it acknowledges, through wit and poignancy, the range of a life all too often dis­ missed.

— David Balzer

T he D eath of Vishnu M anil Suri It is difficult not to be incredi­ bly jealous o f those people who are geniuses both scientifically and artistically. Indian author Manil Suri, author of The Death o f Vishnu and Professor o f Mathematics at the University of Maryland, is a master­ m ind who you cannot help but to feel a little envious of after reading this innovative work of fiction.

I can’t deny that I bought The Death o f Vishnu almost solely because of the beautiful photograph on the cover, but the old saying proved wrong this time. Halfway through it was obvious that this book is an important work of con­ temporary fiction, in part because of the riveting style it is written in, as well as the perspective from

which the story is told. It is also an excellent introduction into other unique works by Indian-English authors.

Vishnu, in Hinduism, is the protector and God o f the Universe.

Any English major could probably write a lengthy essay on the title alone, yet the subject matter of this work is not nearly so daunting as the title. The story is a unified work, and yet it revolves around the lives of many people and is essen­ tially many stories. It is a tale of sev­ eral people who live co-operatively in an apartment building in India.

The characters are all concerned with Vishnu, a sick man who sleeps in the stairwell of the building.

W ithin the building, there is a con­ fluence of cultures and languages, which at times run into conflict with one another. O n a larger scale this may be a metaphor for the tur­ bulence within the nation of India, yet the characters and subject mat­ ter who are at the centre o f many run-ins are so comical that you can­ not help but to laugh out loud.

The genius of this work lies both in the language and the way in which the story is told. While it is written in prose, there is more than a subtle hint o f poetic expression that seems to give a musical quality to this piece, and lends itself to the mystical and spiritual landscape which predominates in India. The ending is magnificent and even more surprising than I ever could have dreamed it to be. O ut of all the books out there right now, this is the perfect summer read. It makes you feel hot, it makes you feel cold, and above all, it brings you right into a place you might not think you’d ever go.

—jesse Andrews

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S p o rts Wearing and Davis McGill

Tuesday,

Tribune male co-athlete of the year Greg Davis has come a long way from the days where he was the shortest and skinniest member of his Bantam team in Calgary, Alberta.

While he is still slight in terms of weight, Davis has grown to be 6’3” and a force in Canadian university hockey.

He had such a successful year that National Hockey League scouts from organizations like the Dallas Stars and the Philadelphia Flyers made the trek to McConnell arena to see him play.

“But I’m still the skinniest guy on the team,” said Davis, who weighs 195 pounds. “The scouts always tell me to bulk up. In the summer I lift weights and I try to get bigger. No matter what I do though, I always seem to stay skinny.”

Aside from his lack of weightlifter’s physique, Davis is the prototypical hockey player. He is a tremendous skater and has a scorer’s touch near the net. His quick hands are nearly as impressive as his quick feet.

Davis has another important attribute for a successful hockey player, and that is consistency. Earlier this year, he compiled a 28-game point scoring streak. That was enough to eclipse a McGill record held by George Burnett.

“The record was an important part of my season,” commented Davis, who led McGill with 41 points this year. “You have to have a little luck to get a streak like that.

Bounces have to go your way.”

Davis also credits linemate and playmaker extraordinaire Dave Burgess for some of his success.

“I’ve never had a center like Dave pass me the puck before,” explained Davis. “He’s the reason I’ve done so well. He finds me whenever I’m open and it allows me to have more space.”

Despite the connection that Burgess and Davis have, Burgess is not Davis’s alltime favourite teammate. That distinction would go to brother Ken Davis, who is cur­ rently playing for the Medicine Hat Tigers of the Western Hockey League.

The Davis boys played Midget AAA hockey together back in Calgary. That team was extremely successful and managed to finish in third place at Midget nationals.

“Ken and I had a great season together,” said the older Davis, whose father was also a university player at Dalhousie. “After that year we became best friends.”

Greg is hoping that he and Ken can meet up again in the pro ranks. Ken Davis,

April

2001

Tribune co-athletes of the year

Joltin' Greg looking to make mark in N H L Neil Schnurbach

3

a 6’4” 213 pound forward, had 19 goals and 15 assists in 69 games for Medicine Hat. He was a 1999 draft pick of the Detroit Red Wings.

Greg Davis’s prospects of going pro are looking extremely good as well. Before this season, Davis had a tryout at the

Washington Capitals training camp. While he knew he was not going to stay at camp for the long haul, it nonetheless gave him confidence.

Davis was able to play with NHL superstars like Adam Oates, Peter Bondra and Olaf Kolzig. He also had the opportuni­ ty to compare his skills to those of lesser known players.

“That tryout built up my self-esteem,” said Davis, a first team conference all-star.

“It made me see that some of the guys in the pros are not much better than I am. Don’t get me wrong, there are stars that are incred­ ible. But I could see myself playing at that level [the NHL] in a few years.”

Greg Davis can take pride in the fact that a teammate from last year has cracked a National Hockey League line-up. Davis still keeps in contact with former McGill Redmen forward and current Columbus Blue Jacket Mathieu Darche.

“I’ve talked to Darche a few times and he offers up advice,” said Davis. “I admire his work ethic. One thing I learned from him last year is that even the best player on a team has to work hard. It was great to see him succeed this year.”

“It goes to show you that it doesn’t mat­ ter where you play,” said Davis. “You can make it to the NHL from a number of places. As long as you improve your game and work hard, you have a chance.”

Wearing offensive hero for Redmen this year Jeremy Kuzmarov

Not since Michael Soles made the jump from the Canadian university ranks to the Canadian Football League in the late 1980s has a member of the Redmen football team’s

offense gone on to play professionally.

Tribune male co- athlete of the year Ben Wearing is hoping to break the dry spell.

This weekend,Wearing, who broke the alltime McGill record for receptions this season, showcased his talents before a pack of scouts at the CFL combines held at the Olympic stadi­ um.

“It wasn’t until January that playing pro­ fessionally even crossed my mind.” said Wearing, a senior. “It’s a strong draft for receivers but I hope to get selected early on. I’m not putting too much weight on playing pro, but it would be a nice interlude before starting a real job and career.”

As a prelude to the combines, Wearing was invited to work out before Indianapolis Colts scout Cal Murphy.

Murphy made a special trip to McGill two weeks ago to see Redmen defensive lineman par excellence Randy Chevrier, whose uncanny long snapping skills may earn him a spot in the National Football League next season.

“I was grateful Randy gave me the chance,” said Wearing. “It was good prepara­ tion. It was nice to see some cameras there, and it was a good opportunity to get used to being under some scrutiny.”

Though the CFL game is a far cry from the brand of pigskin being played in the Canadian Interuniversity Athletics Union, Wearing feels confident in his abilities.

He is ready to step in and make an impact in the top Canadian professional league.

“I watched a lot of Als games this year, and it didn’t seem so far fetched for me to be out there playing,” said Wearing. “I watched a guy like Jock Climie play, and I think I have the

potential to be comparable. I think I could compete out there. I’ve got the route-running ability, and the quickness, and my ability to play on special teams helps a lot. If I do get a chance, that’s likely where I’ll start out.”

Whatever happens next season, Wearing can look back on his exploits at McGill with pride.

A star for the Redmen in his two seasons’ with the team, Wearing, a transfer from Brown University, dominated the CLAU ranks in 2000.

He did it all for the Redmen football team, which earned the moniker ‘the come­ back kids’ after overcoming a half-time deficit in their first five games to start the season undefeated.

Besides being the go-to receiver of quar­ terbacks Josh Sommerfeldt and Philippe Couillard, Wearing was a force for the Red ’n White on special teams.

His most memorable moment came at Concordia in the Shrine bowl, when he weaved his way through the entire Stingers’ team en route to a game-breaking 94 yard punt-return touchdown.

“The first five games were a major high­ light,” said Wearing. “You can’t beat the feeling of coming back like we did, and it was nice to play a role in the wins.”

On the whole, Wearing led McGill with 43 receptions for 653 yards to break Glen Miller’s 16 year record.

He also went over the century mark in all­ purpose yards in every game except the regularseason finale when he suffered a concussion.

The injury forced him to sit out McGill’s disheartening 50-3, playoff loss to the eventual Vanier Cup winning Ottawa Gee-Gees. The Redmen had finished the regular-season at 5-3 in coach Charlie Baillie’s swan song.

“It was frustrating sitting out in the play­ offs, and it was somewhat of a sour ending to the year.” commented Wearing. “I’m glad though I was here for Baillie’s last year, and I’m glad I got to play for him. I’m also happy to have played with quality guys like Randy, Josh Sommerfeldt and John Macdonald while at McGill.”

Though graduating in the spring, Wearing still has one year of eligibility left.

Should his fortunes in the CFL not pan out, he is not averse to coming to play for one more season at McGill.

A key consideration may be the hiring of Chuck McMann, a former coach with the Calgary Stampeders, as Baillie’s replacement.

While defence was the bread and butter of most Baillie coached teams, McMann’s experi­ ence on the offensive side of the ball may help to spark a reversal.

“I’d love to play semi-pro football in Europe like Loris Lucchetta who’s playing in Italy,” said Wearing. “If it doesn’t work out in the CFL, I’ll come back for the fall semester to play one more season, and hopefully help us do better than last year. I can definitely learn something from coach McMann and that might help me in the long-run.”

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Ali-Khan wins Andrew Raven

For a woman who’s been pro­ filed more often than the Texas Seven, runner Sarah Ali-Khan still doesn’t mind dealing with the media. “You know what,” said the third year post-grad student, “I real­ ly don’t mind talking to [reporters].

Sometimes they ask the same ques­ tions like ‘What got you started in running?’, ‘How long have you been in Canada?’ and ‘what does it feel like to win a race?’, but its not so bad.” In case you’re wondering, the answers to the above questions are: she’s not sure, four years and good. If Ali-Khan keeps running at this pace, she’ll have a lot more sound bite-inducing questions to answer.

The Baie-D’Urfé native and New Zealand resident is running out of trophies to win. She was named to the Quebec Student Sports Federation All Star Team in both track and cross country and

Tuesday, 3 April 2001

Sports

31

Tribune female athlete of the year award

won the conference athlete of the year award in both, thanks in large part to an astounding 14 gold medals. Oh yeah, did we mention that she ran the fastest 1000m in the CLAU this year and added to her McGill record of eight medals at the National Championships with a gold and two silvers. There’s also the six McGill and four QSSF athlete of the week awards crammed into her trophy case along with a whole bunch of other good­ ies to numerous to mention.

Remarkably, it has taken only a few years for Ali-Khan to become such a dominant runner. “I have been running competitively for four years now,” said Ali-Khan in her charming Kiwi accent. “I ran in New Zealand, but not like I do here. I thought that it would be a good way to meet people and do something outside school.” She attributes much of her success to track and field coach Dennis Barrett. “He taught me all I know about running competitively.” As

Go, Sarah, Go

Pat Fok

for role models, Ali-Khan looks up a fellow Oceanian, Kathy Freeman, one of the premier runners in the world and owner of two Olympic gold medals.

Like most student athletes, Ali-

Khan has had trouble balancing schoolwork and athletics. “During the season we train every night for a couple of hours. Plus we have meets on the weekend. It’s gets hard to do that stuff and still go to class and do labs,” said Ali-Khan who’s in the third year of a daunting six or seven year pharmacology program.

W ith all that studying and practice, Ali-Khan has little time for anything else. “I used to do heaps of stuff before I came to M cG ill...,” she said, her voice trailing off. She does sheepishly admit to occasional indulgences like Survivor and Sex and the City, but says for the most part “I don’t really watch TV.” AliKhan has a wide range of movie preferences, listing the polar oppo­ sites Blade Runner and Erin Brockovich among her all time favorites. She particularly enjoyed the latter because of the spirit of the title character. “I like Erin Brockovich because the character was tough and determined. I tend to like movies about strong

women.” Ali-Khan also likes to snowboard, but worries about the danger it poses to her track career.

“I would like to do it more, but I can’t get past the thought of break­ ing my ankle.” The sound you just heard was track coach Dennis Barrett breathing a sigh of relief.

As for her running career, AliKhan isn’t sure what the future holds. “My immediate goal is to do well in cross country events this summer and to possibly compete at the nationals.” Next year, she plans to return to the track and cross­ country teams and continue her neverending quest for a Ph.D. “I haven’t really thought about run­ ning after school is over. I guess the next step would be to hire a coach and train a lot to try to compete on [an international stage]. But I don’t know if I’m good enough for that.”

For someone who only took up competitive running at 24, any­ thing is possible.

The woman with the golden foot Tribune female athlete of the year runner up Allen refects on magnificent season James Eitipringham

In only one year, Martlet star soccer forward Amber Allen has compiled an impressive list of accomplishments which reads like the prized portfolio of a prodigious talent.

In 2000, Allen was named Quebec conference first team allstar, conference MVP, first team All-Canadian, first team national championship all-star, and McGill athlete of the week not once, but twice. Allen also broke the McGill single season record for goals with with 29 in 22 games, which led the nation.

Allen’s scoring heroics also helped lead the team to an unde­ feated regular-season record, the only team in the country to attain such perfection. What can she pos­ sibly do for an encore?

“Our performance at the national championships was disap­ pointing,” the 24 year old Masters of Business Administration student quickly admitted. “There is no doubt in my mind that we were the most skilled team at nationals, but I don’t know if everyone’s head was in the right place.

“Next season from the start, the national championship is our goal. Now we know that all of our hard work is directed towards that goal, we’re pumped.”

Looking ahead to next year Allen decided to undertake an off season workout regiment which included training with the track team under the guidance of track and field coach Dennis Barrett.

Allen enjoyed the training so much

that she says she is pondering com­ petitive track to keep her busy on top of playing soccer and taking a full-graduate level course load next year.

“I would like to try running the 60meter and 300meter sprints next year,” she mused.

Apart from athletic condition­ ing, Martlets’ head coach Marc Mounicot feels that Allen can improve on her mental approach to the game.

“Amber needs to improve her understanding of the game, and become more consistent. I would like to see her become more of a leader...she was too shy last year.

There is no doubt though that she has amazing potential as a player and if she continues her improve­ ment, I believe that she could some­

day play at the national level.”

Mounicot is in no rush, though, to see Allen leave his pro­ gram to pursue a spot on the national team.

“When I first starting coaching at McGill, I outlined a four year plan to win our first national cham­ pionship. Next year is my fourth year and Amber is just the type of player who could help McGill win the champi­ onship. She was able to change results of games on her own last > 5 year.

Aiding both Allen and Mounicot in their quest for a c h a m p io n s h ip will be the much anticipated return of former M artlet goal­ scoring record holder Eva Melamed, who spent last season on exchange in Israel. The thought of Allen and Melamed playing togeth­ er next season is scary for McGill’s QSSF opponents.

“She is a phenomenal player,” enthused Allen in reference to Melamed. “You probably won’t see either of us score as many goals next year as we have, but I feel sorry for the defense of the opposing teims who have to play us.”

On whether or not there will be enough opportunities to satisfy

them both, Allen is diplomatic.

“I still have to come out and play my style of game, but some­ times when last year I would have shot, next year I’ll be looking for Eva. Right now we’re still trying to sort out where each of us is going to be on the field.”

Mounicot explains that while both players are highly talented, their type of play is different.

“Amber is more of an open field runner, where as Eva plays bet­ ter in front of the net. I think that their styles compliment each other nicely. I don’t think that there will be any jealousy at all between them.” said Mounicot.

Away from the field, Allen has enjoyed her McGill experience, after spending her years as an undergraduate at the University of British Columbia.

“Living in Montreal has been amazing, and I’m having so much fun. Even the winter weather hasn’t been as bad I was prepared for, though I’m sick and tired of the snow already,” she only half chuck­ les.

Perhaps one of the only dis­ couraging experiences Allen has been through this year has been what she feels is a lack of fan sup­ port, which permeates athletics at McGill.

“At UBC we would get a lot of fans coming to the games, but at McGill [there] is hardly any sup­ port. Nationals was very nice in that way because there were so many fans. I wish that would improve.”

One more year like last and it just might.

O n S arah A li-K h a n

“I’ve read all about her. She’s an amazing athlete and she excels in academics. To perform well in both athletics and academics shows a lot about a person, that’s for sure.”

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32 Sports

The McGill Tribune, Tuesday, 3 April 2001

Rowing team puts on show in Amsterdam Jeremy Kuzmarov

Tucked away at the periphery of the McGill sports scene is the McGill rowing team, which despite its tier 3 funding status, boasts many of the top athletes in the school.

Case in point is lightweight world champion Ben Storey, an alternate on the Canadian Olympic team at the Sydney Olympics, who was a member of the McGill crew for two seasons.

Another McGill Olympian rower is Alison Korn, who made sure to remember her roots after winning a bronze medal in Sydney.

Korn, who first picked up the sport at McGill, thanked all of her friends back home on national tele­ vision following her third place fin­ ish.

Storey and Korn are far from anomalies within the ranks of the McGill crew.

Currently, there are several tal­ ented Redmen and Martlet rowers who are poised to make an imprint in international competition.

Former speed-skater Doug Vander, a key member of the McGill eight heavyweight boat this year, has been training in Calgary in the hopes of cracking the National team roster.

On the womens side, Emily Poupart looks to become a member of the National team as well. Upand comers like Ulrika Drevniok, and Colleen Ahart also look to get their shot at the big-time.

“There’s a lot of great rowers that have come through the pro­ gram at McGill,” said crew member Darian Silk. “A large part of our program is development. Though we don’t have enough money to hire a full-time coach, we often get great people, like former Olympian Doug Herren to devote a couple of months to coaching us, especially during the fall season. A lot of peo­ ple only take up rowing at the uni­ versity level, and we groom young rowers as Novices to start out.”

For Silk and his teammates, training with people like Storey, who may come back to the team next year, has been a great learning

experience.

“He’s a very humble guy; he doesn’t act like he’s better than any­ body else,” said rowing team presi­

More so than other team sports, group cohesion is of para­ mount importance in rowing.

Having a gifted rower like Ben

dent Philip Hedrei, who’s been with the crew for three years. “He’s ultracompetitive, and he pushes himself to the max, and that rubs off on everybody else. He leads by inspira­ tion.”

Storey in your boat isn’t necessarily a guarantee of victory.

“There’s no superstars in row­ ing,” said Hedrei. “Having a guy like Storey is not like having a Michael Jordan in basketball. To be successful everybody’s got to pull their weight and be in sync.”

“The sociology of the sport in that way is very interesting, and appealing at the university level,” he added. “It’s completely team orient­ ed, there’s a great camaraderie prob­ ably even stronger than sports like soccer and basketball. You’re com­ pelled to work hard so that you’re not letting the other guys in the boat down.”

While most McGill students associate the crack of dawn with sleep, crew members associate it with practice.

During the fall season, which runs through mid-November, the Redmen and Martlets train six days a week starting at 5:45 A.M at the Olympic basin at the Old Port.

Though the schedule seems suicidal, it has become second nature for crew members whose dedication to the sport overcomes any sense of regret over lost sleep.

“I’m an early bird for two months of the year,” said Silk.

“We’ve got a good chain call system to get everybody up and ready to go, but you get used to the routine.

It pays off in the long-run.”

The pay-off is especially sweet when you win.

The McGill men’s heavyweight eight crew was highly competitive against their mostly-Ontario based rivals, and won a divisional regatta at Ottawa this year.

One women’s crew competed at Nationals at Victoria, and placed sixth.

A major disappointment was the series of events which unfolded at the provincials in St. Catherine’s Ontario, where poor weather delayed the start of the race from Saturday to Sunday.

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more night, the McGill crew was forced to abandon their dream of a conference championship, and head back home empty-handed.

“The situation at provincials blew,” said Silk candidly. “We’ve had a lot of turnover in the past few years, but we had a strong season.

It’s too bad we didn’t get our shot at provincials.”

For many members of the McGill team, the unfortunate inci­ dent at provincials exacerbated their frustration at the McGill athletics department which has offered very little in terms of tangible support.

“Since they re-worked the funding structure in the early 1990s we’ve been relegated to tier 3, so we get nothing,” said Hedrei. “At Nationals, the women had to pay part of the way. It’s probably most disheartening on the recruiting front. We get a lot of skilled rowers coming from prep schools who’ve heard the McGill name and are interested in our program. When they realize they’ll have to pay to compete, they decide to go else­ where.”

Love of sport for the majority of crew members overrides any con­ cern over finances, though.

Despite having to pay their own air-fare, Hedrei, Silk and six other crew members jumped at the chance to travel to Amsterdam to compete in a tournament against European clubs.

The McGill rowers relished in the opportunity to square off against crews from places like Denmark and Germany, with whom they matched up pretty well.

“It was a make-shift crew of guys willing to miss a week of school and pay their own way, but we placed third in our category which was great,” said Hedrei. “It was great training for our year-end match-up against Queen’s, and it was also a great experience to get to know the European rowers, and to meet a lot of interesting people. The view of Amsterdam from the Amstel river was breathtaking.”

A major shock for Hedrei and his teammates was the amount of publicity they received, and the popularity of rowing in Europe.

While receiving little attention here at McGill, the Redmen crew was surrounded by reporters after finishing their race which was broadcast on national television.

“It was nice that people knew the McGill name over there,” said Hedrei. “We got interviewed a lot by newspapers and TV stations interested in our story because we were the only North American team there. Rowing as a sport is growing in Canada, but it doesn’t compare to the following overseas.

There were tons of spectators, and tons of press which for us was unusual.”

The McGill Tribune, Tuesday, 3 April 2001

Great memories from seasons past Out of left field

In July, Randy Chevrier was incapacitated in the hospital feeling (6) Joltin’ Greg Davis does a great lucky that he was alive, after being Joe DiMaggio Impression stabbed by some nut while working Following up a fine rookie, sea­ (3) Scholar Linebackers Break all- as a bouncer at the Peel Pub. Two short months later, the son, Redmen hockey star Greg time Tackles Record Redmen star was back in peak form Davis outdid even the great No one has ever taken McGill doing what he does best: pummel Mathieu Darche in 2000-2001.

W hile he did not lead the for Jock U, but Olivier Lefebvre opposing quarterbacks, and stymie nation in scoring as Darche did last and Jean-Philippe Darche took the any enemy jersey that comes in his year, Davis did display a model of term student-athlete to new levels path.

A standout for McGill consistency that may not ever be during the course of their banner throughout his career, Chevrier, in duplicated. five year careers at McGill.

The lanky sophomore forward While being the backbone of spite of the off-season setback, was notched at least one point in 28 able to rise to the occasion during the Redmen football team, Darche, straight games to carve his name in his senior season, where he was vir­ who now suits up for the Seattle the Redmen hockey record books.

Seahawks of the NFL as a long- tually unstoppable. Despite facing He broke the previous mark of 27 snapper, was an honours science constant double and triple teams, student who was in medical school he mustered 48 tackles and 8 sacks. set by former NHL coach George for his final two years with the He also created a lot of room for fel­ Burnett in 1982.

Davis’ record-setting point team. Recipient of the Russ Jackson low defensive lineman John trophy for excellence in academics, Macdonald and Stephen Young, came against Queen’s where he earned a third period assist on a who both had stellar years.

Chevrier won a slew of goal scored by linemate Dave awards, including the J.P Metras Burgess. trophy as the top defensive lineman (7) McGill Fieldhouse photo fin­ in the country.

His prolific long-snapping ishes propel 4X800 relay squads to skills have NFL and CFL scouts medals at Track Nationals alike drooling over the prospect of Forced to drop out of the 1000 having him play for their teams.

“The doctors went from saying meter race because of an asthma I’d be out all year, to I’d be out for flare-up, Martlet anchor Tracy Gold two months; I went for a second was a ball of nerves as she waited to opinion and he said six weeks. I receive the baton as the anchor of chose to follow the latter doctor’s the McGill women’s 4X800 relay advice,” said Chevrier, nicknamed squad at the track nationals two “Crash” ever since he was the victim years ago.

Rather than let her illness get of a car accident in the summer of the best of her, a gasping Gold per­ 1999, when he missed all of train­ severed in her leg of the race, and ing camp before coming back to miraculously had enough energy to earn second-team All-Canadian sta­ overtake Victoria’s Larissa Managh, tus with the Redmen.

“I lost a lot of weight during who’s team had led from the start, athletics and community service, the whole ordeal, but I was able to in the split second that she crossed Darche shattered Vince Colizza’s regain my strength and endurance. the finish line to secure the gold all-time McGill tackles’ record as a It was a source of personal pride to medal.

“I was worried the whole race fifth year senior in 1998 with 308 be able to return, and to play effec­ about my asthma,” said Gold, who tively after such a terrible experi­ for his career. was mobbed by teammates and For four years Darche played ence.” supporters at the McGill fieldhouse side-by side with Olivier Lefebvre.

Ollie was equally adept at (5) Kim St-Pierre stands on head after her nipping Managh to the hunting down opposing team quar­ to beat Stingers for first time since finish. “When I first crossed the line, I was overcome with relief that terbacks as a linebacker for McGill, 1985 to win bronze at Nationals I had finished the race.” as he was acing science exams in the W hile the McGill men’s As Jonathan Colford so elo­ classroom.

After graduating with distinc­ quently wrote in the Tribune four 4X800 relay team did not take tion, he took up a Master’s degree weeks ago: “Boy George and Duran home a gold medal the following in Astrophysics, and now works in Duran were all the rage, Mikhail year at the Track nationals, they did the Aeronautics industry. W hile Gorbachev became the leader of the provide nearly as much excitement.

Redmen anchor Yohsuke mastering a subject which most of USSR, and Steve Penney backHayashi grabbed the baton before a stopped ' an underachieving us will never even remotely be able cheering crowd at the Fieldhouse to understand, Lefebvre broke Montreal Canadiens team to the with his team in third place.

Darche’s career tackles record as a prince of Wales Conference Finals senior in 1999. After being injured the last time McGill had defeated Trailing Western’s Jim Wardle until the last second, Hayashi dove in early in the year, Lefebvre put forth Concordia” The centrepiece of the Martlet desparation at the finish line and a Herculean effort against Bishop’s in a must-win game for McGill, and team for the last three years who has managed to nip his ounterpart to notched a whopping 17.5 tackles to helped to restore respectability to help McGill win a cherished silver surpass Darche as the all-time the once dormant program, St- medal.

“This is the greatest moment Pierre made 38 saves in McGill’s Redmen tackles king. bronze-medal victory over the of my life,” exclaimed a jubliant (4)“Crash” Chevrier overcomes Stingers at Nationals in Calgary. Hayashi. “M y teammates and the off-season stabbing to have mon­ She also stopped all five shoot-out crowd cheering me really helped me shots to preserve the bronze medal to gain extra energy. What a great ster year in 2000 feeling!” win.

tory cigar after win five against Bishop’s.

Jeremy K u z m a ro v While attendance figures have been disappointing, the past three years have been a veritable golden age for McGill athletics. In my three years of affiliation with The M cG ill Tribune, I’ve had the pleas­ ure of covering future professional athletes like the Darche brothers.

I’ve also had the pleasure of watch­ ing some highly competitive teams generate a great deal of excitement.

Here is a list of my favourite moments and storylines from the McGill sports scene during the past three years.

world to me.”

(2) Comeback Kids make Baillie’s Finale a memorable One Though reality eventually set in for the McGill football team, there was a time in mid-October when the Red’n W hite seemed

(1) One-legged Darche propels Redmen to near upset of UQTR W incing in pain, a Roy Hobbesian Mathieu Darche suited up for the Redmen against arch­ rival l’Université de Quebec à Trois Rivières in the third and decisive game of the Ontario University Athletics finals despite a torn medi­ al collateral ligament in his knee.

After leading McGill to a vic­ tory in game one of the series against the hated Patriotes, who had won 10 of the last 11 champi­ onships, Darche was badly injured in a 5-0 loss in game two. W illing to jeopardize a lucrative National Hockey League contract to play in the series finale, which could have led to permanent knee damage, Darche, was spotted skating on the McConnell Arena ice just minutes before the team bus was leaving for Trois-Rivères. The outspoken team captain ---- who became the first McGill player in nearly two decades to lead the nation in scoring for the Redmen who had their best regular season finish in nearly 50 years — provided a major boost to his downtrodden teammates by playing despite being unable to walk with­ out crutches. Heroically, he played on the power-play and set up one of McGill’s goals. Unfortunately his efforts weren’t enough to catapult the Redmen past the Patriotes, who extended their dominance in the Quebec university hockey ranks.

“There was no way I was going to miss this game,” said Darche, while receiving physiotherapy after the 5-2 loss. “I was maybe 50 per­ cent out there, and I took a risk by playing, but this game meant the

invincible. After trailing at half­ time for five straight weeks to start the season, the comeback kids’ always managed to kick it into high gear in the second-half, and magi­ cally pull out the victory. In week one against Concordia, the hero was unheralded defensive back Loris Lucchetta who tallied three second half interceptions, including a record 105 yard touchdown return to propel McGill to victory over Concordia. Ben Wearing also provided some second half heroics, with a game-breaking 94 yard puntreturn touchdown against Concordia, and a 77 yard touch­ down catch against Bishop’s. In that game, Stefan Kohaykewych also returned a punt over 100 yards.

While the legendary coach Baillie was hoping for a championship in his 29th and final season, in the end he was thrilled to have been part of an unforgettable ride.

“We’ve got great character, and a remarkable ability to stick to it, and never give up despite the score.

That’s a very good characteristic for a team to have,” said coach Baillie, while lighting up his customary vic­

Sports 35

34 Sports

The McGill Tribune, Tuesday, 3 April 2001

'71-'72 Redmen were nuthin' but buttah continued from page 1

home. “They felt like my brothers in a lot of ways. I enjoyed coming down the floor and m aking a behind the back pass to [guard] Chad [Gaffield] and have him hit for two from the outside. I would love to yell at [forward] Kit [Kennard] to keep his eyes on me, because I could hit him with a pass from anyplace on the floor — he was so big. ... [guard] Bob [Wylie] would make sure everyone was loose in more ways than one and [guard] Phil Ross, well Phil was just Phil and could go do anything and say anything and he would still smile —even at the refs.”

It was one month before the newly formed Quebec University Athletics Association basketball season was going to start, and McGill still did not have a team.

That is when two young men approached athletics director Harry Griffiths with an idea to save the McGill basketball program.

Sam Wimisner, a 24 year old for­ mer McGill basketball player, and Ira Turetsky, a 23 year old law stu­ dent proposed an idea where they would raise $1,000 for the basket­ ball team to compete.

They would provide their own transportation to the games, pay for gas, supply their own uniforms and even coach the team. This was an offer that Griffiths could not refuse.

McGill alumni were so embarrassed that two young kids could raise the money, they even pitched in an extra $200.

“There were many amusing incidents,” recalled guard Phil Ross

Cheech or Chong? No, it’s Big John Naponick

fondly from his home in beautiful Golden, Colorado. “I do recall that whenever we were in a restaurant we would always tell the waitresses that it was [forward] Howie Roseman’s birthday, and that they «Fniild do something about that.

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The season was now approach­ ing quickly and the team needed some of the more important things that a basketball team possesses — like time to practice, equipment, uniforms - and players. That is when someone caught assistant coach Ira Turetsky’s eye... how could he not? He was 6T 0” and weighed a svelte 350 pounds. His name was “big” John Naponick and he was attending McGill medical school. Naponick was a former football standout at the University of Virginia who was drafted by the Oakland Raiders of the National Football League. Big John played one year of professional football for the Canadian Football League’s W innipeg Blue Bombers.

He agreed to play for the resurgent Redmen.

Naponick was not even the tallest man on the team.

A holdover from the 1970-71 squad was Kit Kennard, a 6T 0” forward, although he was the same height as Naponick, he was much trimmer at 200 pounds. Joe Prah, the team’s starting point guard was a great player in Pennsylvania before com­ ing north. Wingman Chad Gaffield was an accurate shooter. They were joined by forward Paul Lemaitre in the starting line-up. Although standing at only 6’2” tall - which is small for a forward —Lemaitre was a ferocious rebounder. **** “Tom Mooney was the head coach before Sam and I arrived,”

said assistant coach turned Florida attorney Ira Turetsky. “Mooney was a middle American and he wanted his team to look that way —clean cut and shaven with nice uniforms.

Sam and I had a slightly different approach. Our guys didn’t have to shave or cut their hair. We wanted other teams to wonder if they were playing McGill or the Hell’s Angels.

You can just imagine John Naponick - all 6T 0” of him with shoulder length hair and a long beard. It was quite a sight.”

McGill got off to a nice start in the 1971-72 season, winning three of their first four games and sitting comfortably in second place in the QUAA. Naponick was a force in these games averaging over 30 points and 20 rebounds a contest.

Kit Kennard also emerged in the team’s third game - a win against Laval with 26 points and 19 rebounds. While the Redmen were compiling victories, some sportswriters were not happy with their slow and methodical style of play: George Burger of the M cG ill D aily had this to say: “The Redmen to date have been miserable... It seems like everyone is improving except for McGill.” ****

Chad Gaffield... displayed more moves than an unshackled bosom.’

“I can pinpoint one practice, just after the end-of-the year break, where we changed from a team of potential to a team to be reckoned with,” said Ross. “We were playing with no sense of purpose until John said: ‘let me show you a little 2-3 zone that we used to run at UVA. He taught the zone to us in 15 min­ utes, and then had the second team scrubs use it against the starters. To everyone’s surprise, the scrubs baf­ fled the starters for the entire scrim­ mage. From that point on, that was virtually the only defense we used, and it provided the focus we had been looking for. It’s still a pretty good defense if it’s done right.”

The basketball team ended the season in an impressive fashion winning their last five games en route to a 16-5 record to end the season.

This mark was good

“Because of the way the season got off, people underestimated how good we were,” said guard Chad Gaffield while taking a break from his busy job chairing the history department at the University of Ottawa.

“We were less interested in the show and more inter­ ested in the substance.

We prided ourselves in not looking like the neat teams with elaborate warm-up suits. But we were a talented team. We were good individually and collectively we did okay.” **** After eleven games, the Redmen were 8-3 after spanking Sir George H.Rosenburg Williams University 95- Kit Kennard; second twin tower 62 in a battle for second place. McGill was sparked by the enough for second place. Fans were return to the line-up of two missing starting to come to the Currie gym­ warriors. Team leader Joe Prah had nasium to see the team. Big John missed a few games with an injured Naponick was the star of the show, hand but returned to face SGWU. but fans enjoyed seeing the team in Perhaps even more significant was their funny looking gear and win­ the return of the team’s star forward ning ball games. **** from the 1970-71 season, Howie Roseman, who had missed the “We were lucky that Sam entire first half of the season Wimisner was connected in the because of academic reasons. clothing indsutry,” remarked for­ McGill was riding high and even ward C.A. (Kit) Kennard who now D aily sportswriter Burger was lives in Toronto. “I’m 6T 0” and so jumping on the bandwagon: “We was Naponick. He had to have a do have a good basketball team...

Please see O DYSSEY, page 35

The McGill Tribune, Tuesday, 3 April 2001

35 Sports

Sports 35

Lasting images from the 2000-2001 season

Patrick Fok

Odyssey to Nationals for scrappy team continued from page 34

hand knit uniform. The funniest was in warmups when John would come out wearing one of those typ­ ical 1970s leisure suits. Not to be outdone, Bob Wylie wore one of those African outfits, I think it was called a dashiki. And, of course, Joe Prah had his trademark Kentucky Fried Chicken shirt that everyone loved. It was like a competition to see who could come dressed the poorest for warmups.” **** The playoffs were going to be a tough challenge for the McGill Redmen. There were two teams that they had struggled against in the regular season and those were the Macdonald College Clansmen and the Loyola Warriors. In order to advance to their first Canadian Interuniversity Athletics Union championship ever, they would have to beat both of those tearris.

In the QUAA semi-finals they faced Macdonald and disposed of

them by a count of 79-76. The Redmen were paced by their superstar Naponick who scored 24 points. Chad Gaffield and Kit Kennard chipped in with 19 and 18 apiece.

In the finals of the QUAA the Redmen had to beat first place Loyola to advance to Nationals.

Loyola had defeated McGill in their three regular season contests.

McGill jumped out to a quick start and were up by four points at half time. W ith 2:13 remaining on the clock, McGill was up by eleven points. But their celebrations were premature as the Warriors pulled to within two points of the Redmen.

Alas, the Warriors did not have enough time and the Redmen were off to Nationals, winning the game 73-71. Naponick led the way with 24 points, 29 rebounds and seven blocks.

“The thing that sticks out most in my mind is the Quebec champi­

onship game against Loyola, a team that had beaten us three times dur­ ing the season,” said former coach Sam Wimisner. “I wasn’t sure we believed we could beat them. Joe Prah went to the basket in a play eerily similar to the one in which he broke his hand a month earlier. In both cases we were down by a point late in the game and we had to make a statement to Loyola that we have the confidence to beat you...

Despite breaking his hand on a sim­ ilar play, when the same play pre­ sented itself Joe never hesitated and made the basket and was fouled.

That was the difference in the game.” **** So it was off to Vancouver for our heroes who were assembled at the last minute and with a paltry $1,200 budget.

In fact, the team was not expected to win the QUAA cham­ pionship and did not budget for such a trip. So after more fundrais­

ing, the team was able to send its troops out west.

The trip to Vancouver was a learning experience although the team only finished in fourth place.

The team with facial hair and rag­ tag uniforms got standing ovations every time they touched the ball.

They did, however, lose 84-67 to Acadia in their opening match and followed that with an 87-84 loss at the hands of Windsor. Despite the losses Naponick was the high scorer at the tournament. **** “At the national playoffs in Vancouver we had one too many players, so I didn’t dress,” said guard Brian Riordan who now doubles as an attorney. “Not wanting to waste my vast talents completely, Ira entrusted to me the critical job of sitting at the scorer’s table and keep­ ing track of ‘vital’ statistics, such as the number of turnovers, the num­ ber of baskets off a turnover, the number of stoned-out hippies who

asked John Naponick how the weather was up there, and the like.

“Well, as it turned out, I might not have been that great a player by that team’s standards, but I was a first-class spectator,” added Riordan. “Accordingly, I promptly became totally engrossed in the game to a point where I had the bit­ tersweet duty to report at the half that this game would go into the Guiness Book of Records for having absolutely no turnovers in the whole first half. Ira was not amused.”

And that is the story of a group of giants, sages, doctors, lawyers and professors that overcame all odds and managed to succeed.

It will probably be a long time before McGill sees another group of student athletes like this one.

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