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News
The McGill Daily, Thursday, October 1, 2009
3
Abdelrazik returns from Sudan Canadian says accusations of terror links are baseless Alexandra Dodger The McGill Daily
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lacklisted Canadian citizen Abousfian Abdelrazik kicked off a cross-Canada speaking tour in Montreal on September 24 to exonerate himself from allegations that he had ties to al-Qaeda and to demand legal recourse for a six-year ordeal that left him stranded in Sudan. Abdelrazik has also filed a civil suit for $27 million against the government of Canada and Minister of Foreign Affairs Lawrence Cannon, for violations of his rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Members of Project Fly Home, a coalition of Montrealers who fought to keep his story in the news throughout his time in Sudan – organized Thursday’s event to help “build opposition to the national security agenda” that labeled Abdelrazik a terrorist. Speaking at the Centre d’éducation populaire in Little Burgundy, Abdelrazik recounted his experience of living under Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) surveillance in Montreal, his imprisonment and torture in Sudan, and his frustrating predicament of being unable to return to Canada because his name was – and remains – on a
United Nations no-fly list. Abdelrazik fled Sudan as a refugee in 1989, following the coup that brought Omar al-Bashir to power. The coup was followed by a collapse of human rights within the country, which has since seen hundreds of thousands killed in the Darfur region. Abdelrazik spoke softly when recalling the violent conditions in Sudan that forced him to leave. “Above all, I feared the mukhabarat,” he told the crowd, using the Arabic word for “intelligence,” and describing how government agents would torture or kill dissidents. “For anyone coming from Sudan, mukhabarat is a very scary word.” Abdelrazik settled in Montreal, married, and had children, becoming a citizen in 1995. In the late nineties, CSIS officers began following him, often waiting outside his apartment. When they first visited his home, he said they identified themselves as “the Canadian mukhabarat.” On September 11, 2001, CSIS agents went to Abdelrazik’s home to ask him if he knew whom the hijackers were. In 2003, Abdelrazik’s mother fell ill, and he flew to Sudan to visit her. In Khartoum, he was detained by the mukhabarat. He would be imprisoned, tortured, released and rearrested several times, but was
unable to flee the country. Abdelrazik’s lawsuit accuses the Canadian government of complicity in his detention and his desertion, a charge against Ottawa that has also surfaced in the cases of Maher Arar, Suaad Hagi Mohamud, Abdullah al-Malki, Muyyed Nureddin, and a host of others from the Arab and Muslim communities. “The Canadian government is responsible for the missing six years of his life, and in the torture and detention of yet another Canadian citizen abroad,” Abdelrazik’s attorney Yavar Hameed told the crowd. Abdelrazik said the first Canadian officials who came to visit him in Sudan were the same CSIS agents that had followed him in Montreal. Instead of offering consular assistance, they told him “You are not Canadian; you are Sudanese and you will stay here forever. Sudan will be your Guantanamo Bay.” After repeated requests to be put on a plane to Canada, the Canadian consulate informed Abdelrazik that he was ineligible to fly home. He was detained again, and just before his second release in 2006, his name was added to the UN’s no-fly list. It remains unclear as to which
Alexandra Dodger/The McGill Daily
government asked that Abdelrazik be added to the list. Stranded in Khartoum after his release from prison, Abdelrazik camped out in the Canadian Embassy, where staff kept him in the men’s washroom. “My home was a toilet in the embassy for three years,” he said. It took a Federal Court order to compel the government to finally issue Abdelrazik a new passport and fly him home. Last June, Federal Judge Russel Zinn said the UN Committee, which added
Abdelrazik to the no-fly list, was neither independent nor impartial in its decision. “It is difficult to see what information any petitioner could provide to prove a negative, i.e. to prove that he or she is not associated with al-Qaeda. One cannot prove that fairies and goblins do not exist any more than Abdelrazik or any other person can prove that they are not an al-Qaeda associate,” Zina wrote in a legal judgment calling for Abdelrazik’s repatriation.
There’s room to improve grad student resources 40 per cent of ombudsperson complaints come from grads
Connecting the dots Alison Withers News Writer
T
hree years ago, when McGill set their sights on raising gradate admissions by 25 per cent before 2010, they may have underestimated how this could affect the equilibrium of services provided to graduate students. In their 2006 White Paper, which laid out priorities and policy guidelines, McGill emphasized that graduate students were “an essential part of [our] research mission” and pledged to step-up their retention, supervision standards, office space, and funding availability for grads student. But Daniel Simeone, the presi-
dent of the Post-Graduate Students’ Society (PGSS), said that many graduate students feel short changed when it comes to office or lab space, funding options, and faculty supervision. A glance at statistics from the McGill ombudsperson’s report, presented at Senate on September 16, clarifies this issue: 40 per cent of claims filed with the ombudsperson last year came from graduate students. Taking into account that grads compose roughly one-fifth of the university population, this figure represents a disproportionate amount of concerns. Ombudsperson Professor Spencer Boudreau, who’s been in the position for nearly a month, explained the imbalance as an
effect of the highly intense nature of graduate students’ worries about supervision. “If something goes wrong during your graduate degree, the stakes are so high,” Boudreau said. He was unable to comment on the trend of concerned grads. However, Richard Janda, McGill Law professor and president of the McGill Association of University Teachers (MAUT), thought more could be done overall to improve the quality of the supervision experience, which he identified as a critical problem. “We certainly have the capacity [to improve the graduate experience,] and we all believe in its importance,” Janda said. “Whether there’s an adequate commitment is another question.” There is movement afoot to improve graduate supervision with best-practices workshops and panels geared toward both faculty and students. In a presentation made to Senate last April, Dean of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies Martin Kreiswirth indicated that although most graduate students had a positive experience with their supervisors, McGill was still out-of-step with the current best practices.
“[Supervision] is a priority for PGSS and for McGill University, so we’re very excited by some of these workshops,” Simeone also noted. The PGSS is also hoping that graduate students will see their space concerns swept away as McGill prepares to invest considerable resources into updating its research facilities. “We’re asking that graduate student space is a priority in the design and redesign of university space,” Simeone said. McGill seems committed to their White Paper plans to push ahead with the growth of their graduate program, with an eye to improving services as well. In an email to the Daily, Dean Kreiswirth emphasized, however, that the University is being responsible about admissions by balancing the staff, support, and space required for graduates. “High-quality graduate research student enrolment is based not just on increasing admissions, but on evidence-based ‘Strategic Enrolment Management’,” Kriesworth noted. As McGill is vying for a top slot on the world stage as a leading research centre, there’s no doubt that they will need to build their
graduate base. During an interview with Macleans, McGill Principal Heather Munroe-Blum and the other leaders of the Big Five, an elite academic quintet of schools, requested funding to boost their institutions’ capacity to train graduate students. The Big Five’s pitch for more money and special status as graduate magnets didn’t quite catch with most provincial governments, who by-and-large control the purse strings for post-secondary funding. Most Canadian universities, including McGill, also witnessed their endowment funds shrink considerably last year, leaving them in a financially strained position to absorb a high influx of new staff and expand their services. McGill has committed to making the graduate experience a worldclass one, and we should expect that the services required for students to excel are part of that mandate.
Connecting the Dots is a bi-monthly news analysis column
4 News
The McGill Daily, Thursday, October 1, 2009
West Bank case rejected by Quebec court Niko Block The McGill Daily
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n September 18, the Superior Court of Quebec dismissed a lawsuit brought against two Quebec-registered companies by the West Bank village of Bil’in. This lawsuit claimed that the two companies were complicit in Israeli war crimes. In this first ever application of Canada’s War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity Act to a civil case, Justice Louis-Paul Cullen’s judgment stated that it “would clearly be more practical to try the action in Israel rather than in Quebec.” He also stated that the plaintiffs, the Bil’in Village Council, had not presented sufficient evidence to suggest that the case could not be heard in Israel in a fair and impartial manner. The two Montreal-based companies, Green Park International Inc. and Green Mount International Inc., are both based in Montreal, and have been contracted to construct high-rise apartment buildings and houses in the Israeli settlement of Modi’in Illit, which is adjacent to the village of Bil’in. The Bil’in Village Council disputes the companies’ claim to the land and insists that the construction of the settlement, as well as the surrounding security barrier, have cut them off from the bulk of their farmlands and olive groves. Mark Arnold, the attorney who represented the Bil’in Village Council at the proceedings in midJune, stated that Cullen’s ruling – a forum non conveniens in legal jargon – was “an error of law.” “The Quebec Superior Court has jurisdiction over Quebec compa-
nies and directors who are residing in Quebec. To suggest that it goes to the Israeli High Court of Justice is simply an error,” said Arnold. The plaintiffs moreover claimed that the two companies are complicit in Israel’s violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a signatory, and which states that in cases of military occupation, “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” “What that means in the IsraelPalestine context,” Arnold said, “is that Israel, the occupier of the West Bank, cannot be removing West Bank population and replacing it with Israeli population. To do so is a war crime.” He added that Israeli courts have never heard a case based on the Fourth Geneva Convention, and that Cullen’s decision indicated a skewed perception of the Israeli legal system. “The problem is that [Cullen] is fundamentally wrong. The Israeli High Court of Justice will not hear this case, so he has sent this case into oblivion.” But despite the Judge’s dismissal of the suit, Arnold said that the Superior Court’s decision to hear a civil cause of action for the commission of a war crime has set an important precedent. “[The Judge] said in theory you could have a civil claim brought in Quebec for the commission of a war crime. But in this case, he said, the Israeli court is better suited to hear the case,” said Arnold. Ronald Levy, the attorney representing the two corporations, said that his clients had legitimately acquired the rights to develop the land when they purchased it from
another company, which in turn, he said, bought it from its Palestinian proprietor. Levy added that the two corporations had refused to register their title to the land for fear that the proprietor would be subject to violent attacks from other Palestinians. “They stopped registration to save the lives of Arabs from whom they purchased land,” Levy said. Levy refused to comment on the judgment due to the possibility of an appeal, but did state that any future land claims cases brought by the Village Council to the High Court of Justice of Israel “would be, as they have in the past, properly and impartially dealt with.” Arnold, however, was skeptical of the judgment’s faith that the case would ever be fairly litigated in Israeli court, and added that the Quebec Superior Court was the appropriate venue for such a proceeding. “The Green Park company has no presence in Israel, it’s not incorporated in Israel, it carries on no business in Israel. And the village of Bil’in has no presence in Israel; it’s located in the West Bank. And the director of the Green Park company, who lives in Quebec, has no connection to Israel,” Arnold said. The Bil’in Village Council remains in discussion with Arnold on whether to pursue further legal action in Quebec’s Court of Appeals. Bil’in has garnered increasing attention in the international media since its residents began staging weekly protests against the Israeli military occupation over four years ago. The demonstrations are regularly broken up when the Israeli military fires upon them with tear gas and rubber bullets. Mohammed Khatib, a member
Olivia Messer / The McGill Daily
Superior Court Justice rules that Bil’in land dispute should be heard in Israel
Israeli defense forces often fire tear gas on the village of Bil’in. of the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements, visited Canada during the summer to participate in a speaking tour with Arnold. Upon returning to his home in the West Bank, he was imprisoned by Israeli authorities for over a week. “[The speaking tour] was aiming to mobilize support for the struggle of this village and also in general for the Palestinian popular resistance movement,” local activist and Tadamon! member Stefan Christoff
said. Christoff asserted that the Israeli army has stepped up its nighttime raids on the village in response to the Council’s legal actions. “It was only after they visited Canada and spoke publicly in Canada across the country to major media – during [which] CBC and the Toronto Star published interviews with Mohammed [Khatib] – that Israeli military forces started [increased] nighttime raids on the village,” Christoff said.
Former student politician sues health plan provider Defamation suit seeks $130,000 for public accusation of extortion Jacob Serebrin CUP Quebec Bureau Chief
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ONTREAL (CUP) – A former Concordia Student Union (CSU) politician is suing Concordia’s health plan provider and the company’s owner for defamation. Steven Rosenshein claims that Lev Bukhman, who owns Alliance pour la santé étudiante au Québec (ASEQ) – the company that provides Concordia’s student health and dental plan – attacked Rosenshein’s reputation. Last February, Bukhman sent an open letter to the CSU, university officials, and campus media, alleging that the CSU acted in bad faith toward him and his company. In the letter he also accused Rosenshein of asking him for a
$25,000 kickback, which would have allegedly gone to fund the Unity slate during the Spring 2007 CSU elections. Acccording to Bukhman, the CSU cancelled their health plan contract with ASEQ because he refused to pay the kickback. Instead, the CSU signed a plan with the Canadian Federation of Students-Services, through their National Student Health Network. That decision has since been reversed and the CSU has re-signed with ASEQ. According to Rosenshein’s statement of claim filed with the Quebec Superior Court, Bukhman “decided to defame Rosenshein as part of a larger plan to discredit the 2008-09 CSU executive and to try and influence” Concordia student politics, in an effort to remain the CSU’s insurance broker. Rosenshein is seek-
ing $130,000 in damages and legal fees, with $75,000 for damage to his reputation, $25,000 for punitive and exemplary damages, and $30,000 to cover his legal fees. Rosenshein had a long career with the CSU, serving as council chair, vice-president of communications, and as a councillor. During his council term he came under fire for sitting as a representative for independent students despite not being an independent student, which is forbidden under CSU rules. Bukhman claimed that Rosenshein asked for the bribe on March 6, 2008, after a speech by Al Sharpton at Concordia. While Rosenshein’s claim acknowledges the two talked about money that evening, he claims that he was asking Bukhman about a $12,500 donation he said Bukhman had prom-
ised the CSU. According to the statement of claim, Rosenshein was worried “as the next year would bring in new executives who might not know about the donation.” While Bukhman’s letter claimed Rosenshein had acted as campaign manager for the Unity during the Spring 2007 CSU elections, according to Rosenshein’s claim, he “barely involved himself with the CSU campaign; in any case the campaign itself was uneventful,” as the slate ran unopposed. The statement also claims that “Rosenshein never intended or tried to influence the 2008-09 executive to sever its ties with ASEQ.” While Rosenshein admitted that he questioned the renewal of the contract, other councillors also shared his concerns. He also
denied taking action on the issue beyond asking questions at council meetings. Moreover, Rosenshein claimed the allegations made against him were more damaging because he was an employee of the Canadian Federation of Students-Quebec at the time Bukhman made them. None of the allegations have been proven in court. The case, which was filed in April, is still in the discovery phase, in which the two parties can gather evidence and question witnesses. Rosenshein has until October 14 to finish discovery. If the case does make it to trial, a court date would still be months away. Requests for comment from Bukhman and to Rosenshein, through his lawyer, were not returned by press time.
News
The McGill Daily, Thursday, October 1, 2009
5
Facing death and prison injustice Former death row inmate and Canadian lifer on parole speak at McGill Caitlin Manicom McGill Daily
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uan Melendez, a man who spent 18 years wrongfully convicted of murder on Florida’s death row, and Michel Dunn, a Canadian lifer on parole, spoke to the McGill community Monday night at the Moot Court. The event was co-coordinated by Innocence McGill, a student-led centre at McGill’s faculty of law that investigates “claims of wrongful conviction in the province of Quebec,” along with Amnesty International Quebec and the Association des services de réhabilitation sociale du Québec.
NEWS BRIEFS Villanueva judge steps down Judge Robert Sansfaçon, the judge who was to preside over the inquiry into the 2008 shooting of Fredy Villanueva by a Montreal police officer, abruptly retired last Friday, citing health issues and personal choice. The case, postponed in the spring due to the Villanueva family’s inability to afford legal counsel, was set to resume on October 26. Despite the setback, Public Security Minister Jacques Dupuis told the CBC he is trying to replace Sansfaçon as soon as possible so that the trial can begin. Alain Arsenault, the lawyer representing the Villanueva family, said he respects Judge Sansfaçon’s retirement and believes it will not have a negative impact on his client’s case. “While I would like to go to trial with [Sansfaçon], he has some health problems that we need to respect and we will have to wait for a new coroner. It will have no negative impact on my client’s case,” Arsenault said. Villanueva, an 18-year-old Honduran immigrant, was playing dice with his brother and friends at a park in Montreal North on the evening of August 9, when police approached the group and arrested his brother. During the ensuing argument, Villanueva was shot three times and died early the next morning at Sacré Coeur Hospital. Two of his friends suffered gunshot wounds. The police officer responsible
Melendez was born in Brooklyn, New York, raised in Puerto Rico, and returned to the U.S. as a migrant worker. When he was arrested for homicide, he said he was “naive to the [English] language, naive to the law.” Like 95 per cent of death row inmates in the U.S., Melendez could not afford his own lawyer. Melendez recalled that for many on death row, the only way to freedom was suicide. “I never saw my friends kill themselves because I can’t see through the walls...but I did see them bring bodies out,” he said. He also highlighted the lack of medical attention that the penal system offers its death row inmates. “Why give the best medication
to a person who’s condemned to death?” he asked. In 2002, 17 years, eight months, and one day after his imprisonment, Melendez was released. The State of Florida gave him $100, a pair of pants, a shirt, and no public apology. “I was saved in spite of the system,” Melendez said. The Juan Melendez Voices United For Justice Project now works to prevent cases like Melendez’s from recurring – their ultimate goal being abolition of the death penalty. During his speech, Dunn was also candid about his crime, and the life sentence he received. “If the death penalty had exist-
ed in Canada I would not be here today.... I would not have had time to grieve and to see the suffering I caused,” Dunn said Since being released, Dunn has worked for Option-vie, a program run by ex-prisoners who work with inmates currently serving life sentences, which also helps integrate them back into their communities if they are paroled. A representative of Amnesty International noted that while the death penalty does not exist in Canada, the Conservative government still fails its citizens in the realm of criminal justice. He felt the government’s “case by case basis for defending citizens overseas, and failing to seek clemency” suggests
that the government does not adequately protect its citizens. The representative also cited the cases of Canadian citizens Ronald Allen Smith, on death row in the U.S., and Muhamed Kohail, awaiting a death sentence in Saudi Arabia. Judi Caruso, the director of the Melendez Project, also explained what she sees as the racist underpinnings of the death penalty in the U.S. In order to sit on the jury of a death penalty case, one must sign a statement that they are willing to sentence someone to death. “Most Latinos and African Americans oppose the death penalty,” Caruso said. “Therefore they can’t even sit on the death-qualified jury.”
for the death, Constable JeanLoup Lapointe, has contended that the shooting was in self-defense, although no motive or warrant has been established regarding the arrest of Villanueva’s brother. The shooting has raised questions regarding police violence, racial profiling, and immigrant rights; the days following the shooting saw a two-day riot in which cars were overturned and set on fire.
in urban centres. Other workshops offered knowledge sharing on topics such as setting up community bike shops and do-it-yourself bike repairs. “As a result of the various cycling workshops this weekend, community bike shops, which make bikes more accessible to the public and promote safety, are much more likely to survive,” said Vélo! Vélo! organizer Bettina Grassman. “These kinds of things have a ripple effect.”
The event aims to be environmentally conscious – all meals will be catered by students in the school of dietetics and human nutrition and prepared within the guidelines of the Hundred Mile Diet, with produce strictly from local farmers and suppliers. “This conference is designed to benefit students,” Madramootoo said, emphasizing the opportunity for students to not only inform themselves, but also create valuable networks and contacts during a Networking Cocktail on the first evening of the conference. The event will be held Monday, October 5 to Wednesday, October 7 at New Residence Hall at 3625 Parc. For those who cannot attend the conference, a free public lecture is planned for Monday, October 5 at 5 p.m, titled “Global Food Security: Effects of the Global Recession and Future Prospects.” Pre-registration is required for both events at mcgill. ca/globalfoodsecurity.
that “on top of the $2.15 million, the Fund will pay the employer portion of payroll taxes” in order to rectify these violations. A frequent employer of university students in the U.S., the Fund is hired by organizations such as the Sierra Club, the Human Rights Campaign, and Environment America to employ canvassers. As an extension of the American Public Interest Research Group (U.S.–PIRG), the group provides funding and organizational support to PIRGs across the United States. Livingston Miller (U2 English), a McGill student who worked for the Fund this past summer canvassing for Environment America, said that the U.S.-PIRG’s “overtime policy is quite horrible: half-time for all hours overtime, which seems to me completely immoral.” The Fund, and the canvassing model it uses to support activism, have come under criticism for both its labour practices and ineffectiveness. Dana Fisher, a professor of sociology at Columbia University and author of the book Activism Inc., surveyed 115 of the organization canvassers. In her book Fisher found that despite the group’s progressive politics, they have engaged in “union busting tactics [that] have been employed by corporations like Wal-Mart,” including closing down a California office when the workers attempted to unionize. Miller noted that his experience with U.S.-PIRG’s labour standards could have had greater implications: “If I weren’t a very resolute person it would have disenchanted me altogether toward progressive politics,” he said.
—Evan Zatorre —Mari Galloway
19 groups meet at Bike Conference The push to make the streets of Montreal safer for cyclists moved into high gear this past weekend with Vélo! Vélo!, an idea-sharing conference organized by the city that brought together bicycle enthusiasts, cooperatives, and bike shop operators from several Canadian cities. Cycling in Montreal has become increasingly hazardous in the past few years. Last year, the number of serious accidents rose 22 per cent from the year before, according to La Presse – though even more bikes are on the road now with the Bixi system. The safety of the St. Urbain bike path also made major headlines after STM bus drivers petitioned their union and City Hall to improve it. Vélo! Vélo! was attended by 19 groups from Montreal, Laval, Toronto, and Ottawa, including Right to Move/La Voie Libre at Concordia and The Flat at McGill. The conference included workshops on initiatives underway in several Canadian cities to alleviate the increasingly dangerous conditions facing urban bicyclists. There was discussion of subjects such as the vulnerability of cyclists
McGill to host Global Food Security conference The McGill Global Food Security conference will be held over three days next week and will host over 400 participants. The goal of the conference will be to help define a Framework for Action at the end of the conference, which will enable participating countries and organizations to pursue actions leading to global food security. Students, academics, and development experts will take part in the exchange. Government officials including the French Minister of Agriculture and the Nigerian High Commissioner are also expected to attend. “Everyone in the room has an opportunity to debate and participate in the discussion with the experts, including students,” said Dr. Chandra Madramootoo, a professor in bioresource engineering and Dean of the Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. “The conference is [also] an entire course on global food security in three days. You will have access to the most up-to-date information that all the important players have,” Madramootoo added.
—Beth Hong
U.S.-PIRG Fund sued for $2.15 Million by employees The Fund for Public Interest Research, a fundraising and canvassing operation that raises money for American non-profit organizations recently settled a $2.15-million class action suit brought on by canvassers who worked for the organization between December 2000 and May 2007. The suit alleged that the Fund failed to pay workers for overtime, improperly classified them as independent contractors to avoid paying social security, withheld wages, and often paid below the minimum wage. The settlement also required
—Peter Hurley
8 Features
A selection of short fiction by Aaron Vansintjan
Veil of Veronica
I
was pretty young when this happened so I don’t really remember every detail, and I might even be confusing things with a dream I once had. It was a humid-hot Sunday in late August, and I was on Canarsie Pier, a concrete square in Brooklyn built on top of a landfill and – pointlessly, it seems – jutting out into Jamaica Bay. Furnished with benches, a parking lot, an abandoned restaurant, and frail sapling trees, the pier is fenced by green railings. Ever since it was built, locals used it as a place to park their cars and fish from a polluted lagoon surrounded by threatened salt marshes. Despite the city’s neglect, the pier was always crowded on weekends, and there was a certain sense of community. Only 15 minutes ago, Mrs. Parker bought Jerome and me a popsicle from the ice-cream truck, on the condition that we hush up while she’s trying to get the fish to bite. Jerome wanted to test his new bicycle, and I had a basketball. But, beaten by the heat, we sat quietly in the shade, licking our popsicles, watching the grown-ups weathering the sun, each with a bucket, a hat, a foldable chair, and a beer. I looked up and saw clouds gathering. I didn’t think anything of it. I finished my popsicle and waited for Jerome to finish his. I stood up, walked to the water fountain, and leaned down to drink. A strong gust of wind swept my oversized Yankees hat off my head, and it flew toward the water. I cried out and ran after it. The wind sped up, and my hat lifted up a few yards in the air, hovered for a second, and dove like a seagull into the water. Jerome and I ran to the railing, held the metal bars tight and watched helplessly as the hat slowly sank, overpowered by the waves. The wind sped up. Jerome said something, but I didn’t hear it. I looked at him, and then felt something wet hit my side and land by my feet. I looked down and saw a shiny, rainbow-scaled fish with violet wings flopping at my feet. I grabbed it without thinking, unafraid of holding it. It wrestled with me, but its flimsy oversized fins were no match for my eight-year-old hands. “A flying fish!” Jerome shouted. I gaped at him, and then gaped at the fish, which gaped at me. The man who was fishing next to us put down his beer. “Son, you just caught yourself a flying
fish!” he shouted. There were dozens of fish flying through the air. I think a school must have hit the pier, because the next thing I knew I was seeing rainbow-coloured fish everywhere, and children were either running around screaming or trying to catch one for themselves. Jerome was zig-zagging through the barrage, trying to get a hold of one but they kept on slipping past his tiny fingers. The wind picks up faster, and I notice the sun is gone. I look up and see a mass of clouds. There’s a white mass, a large blanket, accelerating toward me. The moment stiffens, the air engulfs me, I am caught in a large net, I make a noise, a shout, a cry, and the rain hits me. It forms its way around my face, which is gazing, transfixed, at the sky. Like an inverse veil of veronica, that blanket of water that I saw coming at me only a split second before leaves an impression on my face. Around me, everyone has stopped trying to catch fish, and starts running for cover. I stand, still transfixed. Jerome grabs my arms, tells me to come, but I can’t hear him. The deafening sound of heavy air and heavier water engulfs me. All the rainbow-coloured flying fish escaped, except one. I stood holding it as the rain slowed down. It breathed in the humid air, but that wasn’t enough – when the rain stopped, I felt it getting weaker. People crowded around me, and Jerome begged to see it, he asked to hold it, he would lend me his bicycle, or his Game Boy. But I stood still, staring at the clouds moving away fast. I looked down at my hands, and saw, felt, the rainbow twitching less and less. I looked out at the bay, and saw a rainbow receding away from me, rising up from the water. The rain had stopped now, and left a rainbow in its wake. I swung the fish as hard as possible, and it spread its ugly wings, balanced itself in the air, and became a moving speck of the rainbow. An instant later it plunged into the water, and then the rainbow was gone too. It’s almost as if there was magic at hand, or maybe God was trying to say something. If anyone has some idea of what God was trying to tell me, I’d like to know. I still don’t understand it, and I never will; maybe He was talking to the wrong person. Maybe it was just another moment in the colourful dream of childhood.
S
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ship. I Wa motor Green away f silence everyt gruff v tide. W He did not he “Le He group outsid words The tery w ed and and hi literall “Lo said W seeme been e The where tinatio hand b Wa time N Som
The McGill Daily, Thursday, October 1, 2009
Les Falaises
W
Epilogue
x years later, Joan was found in her bathtub, staring at the ceiling; a bullet had hole-punched her right breast. The funeral was one of shared loss and damaged friendIncluding the priest and driver, nine people showed up. alter attended. It was a humid day, and he could hear rs making a sticky residue of sound on the parkway nearby. nwood Cemetery had a distinct silence; it was not the haven from the city it pretended to be. Instead, Walter felt like the e was manufactured. A loud synthetic murmur swallowed thing; whispers, birds, and the shuffling of feet. The priest’s voice was smothered by a seemingly ever-rising rumbling Walter did not hear the over-fertilized dirt hitting the coffin. d not hear the hearse starting up and driving away. He did ear soft-spoken Natalia whispering in his ear. et’s go.” e followed her out of habit, and watched her feet as the p made its way to Fifth Avenue. The cluster of friends waited de a deli, and Charlotte bought some water bottles to, in her s, “wash out this oppressive noise.” ey stood on the pavement, drowning the noise of the cemewith Poland Spring brand water. As the roar of silence recedd sputtered out, the sound of their thoughts rose higher igher, until they heard each other and the street seemed ly quiet but metaphysically loud. ooks like Joan figured out a way to get us together again,” Walter, out loud. The rest nodded, but didn’t catch on. They ed estranged, and he realized then that the damage had exacted a long time ago. e reunited party of seven made their way to Fourth Avenue, e they would take the D, M, N, or R trains to different desons. On the way, Natalia brushed by his shoulder, and his brushed hers. alter soon found himself in JFK, waiting for a flight. This Natalia was with him. me relationships, he discerned, are reparable.
ell-known are the Falaises de Martel – the Cliffs of the Hammer – that stretch for several miles in southeast France. They seem to be a geographical blunder, but are in fact remnants of a long-ago sea that crashed its waves against the mountains and sloping hills of the Massif Central – an oversized and amputated “leg” of the Alps that covers a sixth of France. This sea, which has eons ago receded, left in its wake vegetated dunes that furnish the kilometres in front of the cliffs. Thus, when reached by way of the mountains behind them, the viewer will imagine a vast expanse of water, but when actually standing at their edge, the viewer sees nothing but the dry contours of vineyards and occasional white specks of sheep. And yet the ocean haunts these cliffs; when standing at their edge, you will feel as though the falaises – which are really escarpments, for they are inland – are actually the breaking point of a wave that has hit land. Those mountains and hills of the Massif Central are the swells and peaks of an excited sea, a dry sea, but a passionate sea. Here you are atop the cliffs, standing on the final wave, and to your right, to your left, the ocean merges with the land. From behind comes the massive power of the mountains, pushing you forward against your will, and you feel drawn to the chalky sun-smitten rocks that lie fifty metres below. The rocks seem to be mocking, demeaning, and waiting for a victim to fall prey to their blank purity. And indeed, many deaths have occurred at these Cliffs, and many men and women have been tempted by those innocent and uncaring rocks, and have let themselves fall upon them – if only to stain them with impure blood. Better known are the caves that reside within. Hollowed out by that ancient sea, the Caves of the Hammer are situated below the halfway point of the falaises, and are protected from plain view by a group of boulders fallen from the crumbling cliffs. To get to the caves, you must hike through the dunes, up a rising hill, and on hands and feet, make your way between the cracks of an awesome boulder broken in two. Absailing down the cliff is also a possibility. The caves are also called the Cathédral, because, once you’ve passed the single boulder, a series of caves and cliff walls reveal themselves, formed in such a way that suggests those giant European edifices meant to be a testament of God’s power. There are turrets, and carved from rain and wind above the largest cave sit two figures not unlike gargoyles. And because the caves cannot be viewed from a distance, their majesty does seem great when you see them so close and so suddenly. You crawl out from under the split rock, and they rise before you in all their white brilliance. Like the top of the cliffs beckons you downward, these caves call upon you to enter. And strangers do enter. The caves are also called la Cathedrale du Diable. Facing south, they barely ever receive sunlight, and if the sun does deign to shine in their direction, the boulders block most of its slanted rays. So the caves are pitchblack. And you would imagine a satisfactory echo, like the one heard in a church, but the only sound is an absorbent thud. You shout, and they mumble buh, which seems to not only sap the importance of your shout, but its volume too. You walk, and the caves declare buh. You hit the wall, and they reply with a dying buh. You drag in your drumset – one with double-bass pedals and several tom-drums and even three different types of snare drums and a meter-wide ride cymbal – but the caves refuse to echo. Buh, buh, buh, buh, they maintain. It is the sound of a bird dying in mid-flight and hitting the ground, or wet earth hitting a coffin, or a drumstick hitting a mattress, or perhaps a car colliding with a massive pillow. It is the sound of a wet turd hitting the dusty ground. If hearts made a final sound when they stopped beating, it would be that sound. Or if the soul made a noise when it left the body, a dull buh would be heard. It is with a resounding no that these caves reply. If you ever find yourself in the Cavernes de Martel, you will find yourself in limbo – in an antithesis of society, and all your beliefs, sometimes suspect, will forever be annulled. So much for world peace, so much for humanity, so much for the environment. A geographical blunder will stop you in your tracks.
All photos by Aaron Vansintjan / The McGill Daily
9
10Commentary
The McGill Daily, Thursday, October 1, 2009
COMMENT
Braden Goyette and Erin Hale
A
t the event hosted by McGill’s Choose Life club last Thursday, three speakers from the Silent No More Awareness Campaign shared their personal experiences with the negative effects of abortion – in the hope, they emphasized, of warning students of the dangers of a practice that the rest of society promotes as an easy, straightforward solution to unwanted pregnancy. Angelina, one of the speakers with the Campaign, criticized a co-worker who suggested she get an abortion when she found out she was pregnant after being dateraped. “My fears were used against me,” she said. Just mentioning that there was a way to terminate her pregnancy without outlining the potential consequences, she asserted, helped manipulate her into a choice she later regretted. Unfortunately, this is exactly what Choose Life and the speakers they bring to campus are doing: using scare tactics to influence young women into making a particular choice. Preying on women’s fears with horror stories, rather than laying out the consequences of all possible actions in a non-partisan way, muddies an issue that is
already difficult to see with clarity, a choice between options that all carry significant consequences. Everyone has the ability to make his or her own decisions and cannot be “forced” into something by listening to a talk. They can be intimidated and unfairly manipulated, however, and Silent No More’s pretensions of being a support group open to sharing the deeply personal experience of abortion while pushing a clear anti-abortion agenda, made the event more than problematic. Abortion isn’t like any other intellectual issue – deciding what action to take when dealing wih an unplanned pregnancy is a question that goes to the most intimate spheres of our existence. Personal, political, and practical considerations come to a head around it. Burdening this already difficult thought process with fear and intimidation only hinders it and does harm to people faced with this choice. There is no one-size-fits-all formula for how to live responsibly, a concept the speakers invoked repeatedly, as opposed to taking “the easy way out” by getting an abortion. Responsibility is the outcome of balancing the well-being of everyone who stands to be affected by your actions, of weighing com-
plex and contradictory considerations. This includes the future welfare of the unborn child: the socioeconomic realities the mother will have to face, whether the child is going to be entering a life in which they can be adequately provided for, and whether they are set up from the start to be treated as a burden. The view that every fetus is akin to a living human being, and has the same right to survival, is in itself a hot-button issue that should be debated independently and not glossed over as a “fact.” Choose Life has a track record for engaging in shock tactics – many students were upset last November by their public display of images of fetuses at the crossroads. At Thursday’s event, students were confronted with an image of crowds of women with the words “I regret my abortion” written over them – the subtext being that, if all these women regret their abortions, you probably should too. Their rhetoric is only about to get more outrageous: next Tuesday, Choose Life will host a speaker who likens abortion to the Holocaust. While Choose Life’s mandate dictates that the club “educate” students on the pro-life position and “encourage dialogue,” their events don’t appear to be productive forums for student debate. Instead,
they rely on shock and fear to pressure students not to have abortions. This is why we don’t think Choose Life has a place on campus, and support the motion at SSMU Council to censure them. SSMU’s priority should be to equip students to weigh their options as best they can when facing this decision, and to protect them from anyone trying to prey on their fears and exploit them as vehicles for an abortion-related agenda. This goes for the corporate interests behind the abortion industry that the speakers criticized on Thursday, as well as groups with religious or otherwise ideological anti-abortion agendas. Public debate about abortion should continue on campus. But when it comes to such a polarizing and emotional question, the best facilitators for a discussion on abortion experiences, counseling, and education are those without a political or religious agenda, like McGill Health Services, the Sexual Assault Centre of McGill Students’ Society, or members of the Union for Gender Empowerment, who are trained to be active, non-partisan listeners. Let’s make sure that fewer peo-
Rebeccah Hartz for The McGill Daily
No to anti-abortion intimidation
ple get a one-sided version of this issue; that fewer people look back in anger and regret on choices they would have made different had they not been intimidated into them; that more people can weigh all the consequences of all possible actions alongside each other and make more informed choices. Braden Goyette is a Master’s I German studies student and Erin Hale is a U3 Philosophy and IDS student. They are respectively the Mind&Body and coordinating News editors. Write them at mindnbody@mcgilldaily.com.
HYDE PARK
How my father learned to swear Rana Encol
I
made my dad read Dave Eggers this summer. Having read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius the summer before, I delighted in seeing him take the plunge into heartfelt Americana while experimenting with the joy of profanity. The car became “the fucking car” and the economy became “the fucking economy.” When he was stuck in traffic, he would grip the steering wheel, screw up his face, and yell “Jesus fucking Christ!” and this would amuse the hell out of him.
Claudine Benoit-Denault for The McGill Daily
He’d laugh with that almost soundless laughter, tears coming out of his eyes. Those were the funniest three words for him, and it killed him to say them. My father, whose native language is not English, relishes each new word like a child toying with the limits of acceptable self-expression. He came of age in a country rocked by instability and military coups. Imagining alternatives to the Turkey of his day was the vital stuff of college life and was resolved in two ways: clandestine Marxist learning and escapist forays to the “Great West.” The two, although along the same plane, eventually proved incompatible – his life in the New World was marred by the disappointment of working at something his heart disagreed with. Not so much my dad’s unique experience as the popular modern condition, really. But he became even more of a caricature of that condition, an ideologue relentlessly talking the talk without walking a step of the walk. Any action short of violent, orgasmic revolution was accomodationist, reformist.
A fairly pat example: my attempt to sell him on fair-trade chocolate at the grocery store was greeted with derision. I was advocating a feeble and inconsequential move. I shouldn’t be buying chocolate at all – chocolate was a paradigm of luxury that should be toppled along with the rest of the supermarket, made into rubble as we ravished the cashier woman-cum-peddler-oftwo-decades-worth-of-meaninglesscash-transactions. That whole bit was my literary imagination, but it’s an accurate expression of his basic political vision: annihilate the fucking structure. Dad felt slightly disinterested toward the end of Staggering Genius. He understood all of the anger, the rebellion, the joyous outpour, but failed to see where it might lead. Perhaps there is something distinctly American about anger, rebellion, and joyous outpour without resolution. Or just literary: what can a book really resolve other than the mathematics of fitting neatly between two covers? I never got my dad’s final take on the book, but I know something stuck with him. Maybe it was mainly the joyous obscenity. In any case, I certainly don’t think that the book was just an inconsequential anecdote in his summer. He went on to attend a series of career workshops hosted by the
community centre. He figured out that he had a “blue” personality type, and would have expanded on that theme with another workshop the next morning had he not lapsed into drinking the night before. That act of despair reminded me of myself. I think many of us are well-practiced in the game of trying to create something positive and concrete despite all of our misgivings and failed attempts to rationalize our decisions. At the critical moment, one has to take respite from the capricious mind in pure, unadulterated action: we also have the choice to sabotage everything we’ve accomplished and melt into, say, the forgiving auspices of a distilled spirit. How does an engineer meaningfully say adieu to 20 years in the auto industry when the next plausible move is to return to the job market he so morosely despises? Yes, the gap between a bleak present and an unknown future is often bridged with the bottle. Isn’t the rather mechanistic hedonism of nights and weekends intended to spit us back into our daylight world of work and scruples? From a systemic perspective, maybe. But we’re all just fucking people, trying to eat and sleep and feel a good belly laugh once in a while. Last time I checked, systems don’t publish literature. Systems don’t conspire with other systems
on how to overthrow still other systems. Maybe in fiction. Maybe in reality, too, but my point is that not everything is about cause and eventual effect. Expression is perfectly timeless because it can be both the cause and the effect. Is there anything more self-contained and selfserving than a sincere impassioned “OH!”? It may be prompted by something else but I think it originates in the human. Irreverence is the needed respite from the incoherence of our lives. A breaking through the system, if you will. My dad and I devour the satirical rags that his friend has brought home from the mother country. I am learning the vernacular of my mother tongue, rich with its own peculiar irreverence and vulgarity. I realize that my dad says, “Let me sell his mother!” every time he wants to swear in his native language. I wish I could adapt his vulgarisms with the same ease that he has essentially adapted mine. Sometimes it’s not so much the words that count as the space between them. It can be our chance for emotional catharsis, oral or otherwise. In fewer words, it can be a chance for action.
Rana Encol is a U2 English literature student. Write her politely but with vulgarity at rana.encol@mail. mcgill.ca.
Letters
The McGill Daily, Thursday, October 1, 2009
11
But really, this is about one question, which anyone who has supported Choose Life’s club status should ask themselves: is this what you wanted your SSMU fees to fund? Quinn Albaugh U3 Political Science and Daily columnist
Sit-ins are so last century Re: “Queering Montreal” | Commentary | September 24 I was disturbed by the violent attitude that permeated Adam Wheeler’s Hyde Park last week. I could not help but imagine myself, with a cohort of my chalkie friends, “recontextualizing” Club Choices, 1815 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, in a guerrilla whiting operation. What sort of reaction would we receive? In fists or in words, it would be angry. The response to a queer group storming a “hetero-bar” would be quite similar, I think. In either case, social differences would aggravate the ensuing situation. But “power dynamics and oppressions” do not change the violence inherent to the action. The act of storming a space, however “political,” is aggressive. Thus it is not surprising that Wheeler’s call to action was couched in the language of war. What is jarring is the imprecision and brutality evident in his justification of this “war,” coldly and uncompromisingly divided into the side of the “deviants” and the side of the “moral masses,” the faceless, voiceless, unequivocally evil “them.” I hope that Queer McGill’s participants were able to explain the “need to keep challenging bars, restaurants, and venues” to the targeted masses of moral patrons, because Wheeler did not. “Who are these people? And why are they bothering me at a bar?” Consider yourself interrupted over a drink, on a date, during a dance, wherever, by the surprise recontextualization of your surroundings. Your feelings on power dynamics, your complicity with oppressions, or whatever, would not be the primary source of your irritation. We must consider the genderless, raceless, sexless, apolitical significance of our ideological aggression, whatever its end purpose. There may be a “better way to challenge them than by bringing in a host of queers for a pervy party!” Mike Prebil U2 History
Don’t deny Choose Life’s clubhood Choose Life is a pro-life club that seeks to promote respect for human life and human rights from conception. We believe that every loss of human life is tragic. On Tuesday, October 6, we are hosting Jose Ruba of the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform, who will give a presentation entitled “Echoes of the Holocaust.” While no two atrocities are identical, parallels can often be drawn. The presentation will focus on how dehumanization and denial of personhood has justified some of the greatest atrocities the world has seen, including the Holocaust and abortion. The Holocaust was a major affront to the dignity of the human person, and resulted in a horrific loss of life, the tragedy of which cannot be described in words. Choose Life, through this event, fully recognizes that reality. Moreover, we recognize that abortion is also an affront to the dignity of the human person, and that the denial of personhood to the unborn is unjust and arbitrary. This event, then, contributes to our mandate by recognizing and advocating for respect for all human life. Furthermore, it is fully in line with SSMU’s tenets of social justice, anti-oppression, and respect. We seek social justice for all human beings from conception, we work to expose and denounce the fatal discrimination facing the unborn (oppression), and we aim to promote respect for all human life. I recognize that members of SSMU have differing views about what constitutes oppression and respect. Denying our right to provide a differing perspective on these terms is unacceptable in a community that embraces diversity and the freedoms of speech and assembly. Others who disagree with our club’s mandate and with the comparison of abortion and the Holocaust are free to voice that opinion. Demanding that we stop dialoguing and sharing our own views, however, is unjust and does not fall within SSMU’s anti-oppression mandate. As a member of SSMU, I sincerely hope that the Students’ Society that is meant to represent the diversity of the student body will do everything in its power to allow this event to continue. Natalie Fohl U3 Biology & Political Science President, founder, Choose Life
I didn’t choose Choose Life Choose Life has a pattern of engaging in questionable events, including displaying photos of fetuses at the crossroads, and more recently hosting a supposedly “non-political” group on campus that openly states on its web site that it wants to make abortion “unthinkable.” Now Choose Life is planning an event for October 6, comparing abortion to the Holocaust, which is purely, on the face of it, insulting to an astoundingly large number of groups. SSMU can and should step in to stop this event by passing a motion calling for the administration to intervene and for SSMU to censure Choose Life. Frankly, I believe it should go further and revoke Choose Life’s club status – the group has clearly violated the portion of its constitution that SSMU requires stating that it shall “shall carry forth its mandate from an anti-oppressive standpoint.” But really, this is about one question, which anyone who has supported Choose Life’s club status should ask themselves: is this what you wanted your SSMU fees to fund? If so, then by all means, continue to support Choose Life’s club status. If not, I ask you to reconsider. Because this isn’t about freedom of expression or of assembly, as many have argued, since Choose Life’s members could express themselves or organize outside of a SSMU club – this is about whether we as members of SSMU want to collectively fund Choose Life. I know I don’t. Quinn Albaugh U3 Political Science Daily columnist
Seeking: honesty
Don’t do what you deplore
Re: “Seeking : pro-choice champion” | Commentary | September 28
Re: “Speakers share abortion experiences” | News | September 28
Really, Ms. Sawyer? Why can’t Choose Life find a pro-choice speaker to come play with them? Shall I list some possibilities? Perhaps as you mentioned, the club is lying. Frankly, it would not surprise me – or perhaps the club executive is honest, but useless – maybe they don’t know where to look – or maybe all the pro-choice speakers in Canada suddenly contracted swine flu. Or maybe, just on the off chance, nobody cares. Personally, I’m entertaining the last reason. If as you said, abortion was still a controversial topic in Canada, then any half-wit could summon scores of willing candidates; a very vocal opposition would undoubtedly exist in such a leftleaning community as Montreal. But this is not the case. You cannot find a pro-choice speaker because such activists have no role in contemporary Canadian society. In fact, a quick Wikipedia search of abortion in Canada reveals that “the goal of the pro-life movement in Canada is to first change the general culture’s stance on abortion, and then eventually support legal restrictions [on] abortion.” So, Ms. Sawyer, this leaves you with two choices: either admit that you are deluded as to the lack of debate on abortion in Canada (a rather embarrassing revelation for an executive member of a pro-life club) or admit that you are telling shameless lies in an attempt to provoke a response to your extremist agenda (a much more likely explanation). In any case, it is certainly not the fault of the McGill student body that Choose Life is incapable of properly organizing their own event. Truthfully, Ms. Sawyer, you sound like someone whose viewpoint is going to “collapse under the weight of its own stupidity and irrelevance.”
Thank you for your fair and balanced coverage of the September 24 event hosted by Choose Life, “Silent No More.” I was particularly struck by the comments you quoted from one unnamed protester, who said, “Whether [individuals] are made to feel ashamed [about having an abortion] for a minute or for the rest of the year, it’s not okay,” a sentiment echoed a little further on by Erika Pierre who found the event manipulative. This is a curious standard to apply in a university setting; the reasoned discussion of almost any sensitive topic is bound to make someone feel uncomfortable, but this cannot shut down the discussion. I had to make a difficult decision about a grueling round of chemotherapy for my late mother, a decision I very frequently wonder about and often regret; does that mean my personal, private, sincere anxiety trumps everyone else’s right to discuss, or even to allude to, the merits or morality of chemotherapy? Of course not. Part of being an adult human is living with the consequences of our decisions, and facing the reality that decisions can be hard, and they can be questionable, and they can certainly be the object of intelligent inquiry. The leadership of Choose Life has made it abundantly clear that they have no desire to make anyone feel bad for the sake of making them feel bad; they simply want to raise legitimate questions about a topic that is by all appearances taboo in Canada. If the civil exploration of this utterly vital problem makes anyone feel sorrow or shame, that is genuinely unfortunate, but it is no reason to pretend that the debate isn’t there; still less to muffle that debate. Rise to the occasion; if you are convinced that the pro-life case hasn’t a leg to stand on, be bold and prove it. Don’t exploit wounded feelings to try to shame the pro-life voice off campus – for in that case, who’s really being manipulative?
Rohith Bhargavan U3 Microbiology & Immunology
Richard Bernier PhD IV Religious Studies
The Daily received more letters than it could print this issue. The rest will appear next time. Send your letters to letters@mcgilldaily.com from your McGill email address, and keep them to 300 words or less. The Daily does not print letters that are classist, biphobic, or otherwise hateful.
14Culture
The McGill Daily, Thursday, October 1, 2009
A musical feast Cagibi improv series brings musicians together Gillian Teo Culture Writer
E
ntering the back room of café Le Cagibi on a Tuesday evening is like stepping into a Narnia of sorts. In the warmly lit, inviting space, the audience leans forward to watch as a woman extracts different pitches from a futuristic-looking machine, while another musician coaxes new and foreign sounds from a saxophone. This is Mardi Spaghetti, the brainchild of curatorial quartet Josh Zubot, Philippe Lauzier, Pierre-Yves Martel, and Gordon Allen. All talented improvisational musicians themselves, the event’s curators seek to foster a comfortable, inspiring space in which different forms of improv music can find a home to grow and be shared with the local community. Since this weekly improvisational music series began in March 2008, it has attracted close to 200 musicians to Cagibi’s stage. “A guy can show up with his guitar case one evening
and end up playing the next week,” says Allen. Apart from the incredible local talent that Montreal has to offer, Mardi Spaghetti has also welcomed a number of musicians from far-flung locales like Norway and Mexico. The event’s participants play a diverse variety of music, ranging from jazz, noise, new music, and rock to sound art, dance, and more. Any and all musicians are encouraged to participate, with no restrictions in regard to musical training backgrounds, as long as they are interested in the spirit of improvisation. In this way, Mardi Spaghetti serves as a unifying forum for Montreal’s up-and-coming improv community, allowing musicians to interact and create music with one another. At Mardi Spaghetti, participants are given the opportunity to experiment and grow, to recreate traditional structures in music, and to surprise both themselves and fellow performers. To beginners who have yet to explore improv music, Allen, a trumpet player, offers no clear definition of the form. Instead, he takes
a moment to sip tea from a chipped Barbie mug, and says finally, with a hint of mystery, “Just come to Cagibi on Tuesday and find out for yourself.” “Go more than once,” Martel advises newcomers. “Give it more than one chance.” Each week features a different set of performers, speaking different languages and with varying backgrounds, so that if one week isn’t quite your scene, visiting the next ensures that you’ll see something else completely new and distinctive. Even the future ambitions of this weekly series take on an improvisational character. All of Mardi Spaghetti’s cre-
ators simply wish to “keep it going,” and ideally to become a regular fixture on Tuesday evenings. So this Tuesday, get over the hump of the week with some good company and live music that literally has never been heard before.
After all, Zubot says with a laugh, “Everybody likes spaghetti, right?” Le Cagibi is located at 5490 St. Laurent. For more information about Mardi Spaghetti, visit myspace.com/mardispaghetti.
Ariel Appel for The McGill Daily
Cagibi’s Mardi Spaghetti welcomes newcomers each Tuesday.
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