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Volume 98, Issue 15

October 23, 2008

McGill THE

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News

The McGill Daily, Thursday, October 23, 2008

April 8, 2008: AGSEM strikes; conferences are cancelled and TAs refuse to mark final exams

October 2007: McGill and AGSEM begin negoitations for a new collective agreement

2007

1974: Arts TAs form McGill Teaching Assistants’ Association (MTAA)

1970

1980

1992: TAs unionize; AGSEM is created

September 24, 2008: Quebec Labour Board rejects 138 complaints from TAs against the University after it suspended them from unrelated on-campus employment

April 23, 2008: The Quebec Labour Board rules that professors who grade final undergraduate work do not constitute scab labour

June 13, 2008: TAs vote 98 per cent in favour of adopting McGill’s contract proposal

3

June 18, 2008: TAs vote to resume work

2008

1994: AGSEM negotiates first agreement with McGill; during negotiations,TA budget falls by 15 per cent, 100 positions are eliminated, and undergraduate enrolment increases

1990

2000

2008

1998: 1,400 days since the start of negotiations, AGSEM signs a contract despite its failure to address concerns of salary, workload, and harassment Will Vanderbilt / The McGill Daily

Quebec dismisses fired TAs’ grievances McGill teaching assistants fear lost wages are gone for good Henry Gass

News Writer

A

Quebec labour relations commission rejected grievances filed by McGill teaching assistants (TAs) against the University for suspending them from secondary, on-campus employment during last spring’s strike.

The McGill administration fired TAs from secondary campus jobs – positions such as exam invigilators, sessional lecturers, and research assistants – during the TA union’s ten-week strike. Many TAs working in these positions were never informed of their suspension and continued to work.

They are now still waiting for the University to pay them for work they continued during this time.

The ruling, made public September 24, applies to all TAs who

were suspended from their jobs, even those who did not join the picket line. One hundred and thirty eight TAs filed grievances with Quebec’s labour relations board.

The Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill (AGSEM) counts approximately 2,000 graduate student members.

AGSEM president Richard Hink interpreted the ruling as licensing employers to fire strikers from all their on-campus positions – a provision which many, except for the University, find unjust.

“This ruling means that thousands of on-campus workers do not now enjoy the same protections guaranteed to every other worker who is governed by Quebec labour law,” said Ronald Cameron, president of the Fédération nationale des enseignantes et enseignants du Québec (FNEEQ-CSN), in a press release about the ruling.

According to Hink, McGill is pushing for an arbitration hearing to determine whether the students – regardless of their participation in union activity – should receive their lost wages.

Some of the TAs were also unionized in their secondary positions,

The suspension was based and many who did not strike out of concern for their working relation- on section 109.1 of the Quebec ship with supervisors were also sus- Labour Code, which intends to protect unions from scab labour. pended.

“TAs are owed hundreds of dol- The labour commission ruled that lars,” said Hink, “but the University McGill was within its rights to susis planning on presenting their case pend all TAs. Yet McGill has selectively quotto not pay the TAs – even though a lot of them didn’t strike – to an arbi- ed the legislation. In a letter to The Gazette on April 25 Deputy trator.”

AGSEM’s contract with the Provost (Student Life & Learning) University expired on June 30, 2007. The two par[McGill] is planning on ties began a series of slow and tense negotiations in presenting their case to not October of that year. pay the TAs ... to an arbitrator On April 8 – just before – Richard Hink the final exam schedule AGSEM President began – AGSEM took to the picket lines. Their strike, lasting until June, impeded the mark- Morton Mendelson, in defense of ing of final exams and caused the the University’s actions, wrote that University to cancel many summer the section states, in part, “For the duration of a strike declared courses.

The union’s previous contract in accordance with this Code or a negotiations, ending in 2003, also lock-out, every employer is prohibited from... utilizing, in an estabculminated in a strike.

In defense of the suspension, lishment where a strike or lock-out McGill told Quebec labour rela- has been declared, the services of tions Commissioner André Michaud an employee who is a member of that the University terminated all the bargaining unit then on strike TA employment in order to prevent or locked out.”

Mendelson cut off the section in picket-line violence.

“

mid-sentence. The phrase continues: “unless (i) an agreement has been reached for that purpose between the parties, to the extent that the agreement so provides.”

AGSEM and the University, thus, could have agreed to allow TAs to keep their other jobs.

Hink believes that the commissions ruling was meant to maintain a “balance of power” between the University and the union.

“We’re working to get the law changed,” said Hink referring to the section of the labour code in question, “but it’s not easy to appeal.”

However, the impact could have a much more significant effect on the University as a whole, should AGSEM launch another strike.

“McGill may regret this move,” said Hink. “Should AGSEM strike in the future, the impact on the University will be far more serious, given the number of jobs our members do on this campus.”

Although the TA strike officially ended on June 23, the relationship between the union and the University remains hostile and was only aggravated by the recent decision on the TAs’ grievances.

4

News

The McGill Daily, Thursday, October 23, 2008

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Andrea Damiano News Writer

A

bout 50 protesters confronted the Canadian Pacific Spirit Train in Montreal on its last stop of a four–week cross-Canada tour promoting the upcoming 2010 Winter Olympics.

Protesters said the Olympics are set to take place on land stolen from First Nations people during colonization that the government has no right to develop, lease, or govern.

Many of B.C.’s First Nations communities never ceded their land in treaties to the British government during colonization.

Equipped with megaphones, signs, and musical instruments blasting loud music, many chanted, “No Olympics on Stolen Land,” “Shame the Spirit Train,” and “Homes not Games.”

“Projects are being developed now on rightful Native land [in B.C.]… this is simply a propaganda tool of the Canadian Government and the first of many tangible symbols of the Olympic Games to protest,” said a protester over a megaphone.

Some of the Spirit Train attendees, however, responded with apathy and anger. Many had been attracted by the family-friendly events.

“Could their music be louder?

Someone should shut them up – they’re fools!” said one woman, who asked to remain anonymous.

The level of anti-Olympic protest has varied across Canada. In Ontario, a week before, members of the Olympic Resistance Network (ORN) locked themselves to train tracks – causing several hours of delay. At Smith Falls, Ontario, however, attendance was almost non-existent.

Over the last few months, resisters have also vandalized corporate property of Olympic sponsors including Bell Canada, McDonald’s, RBC, and Delta.

Zig Zag, an active member of the ORN, however, considers such tactics legitimate.

“[Future actions] will depend on the tactics and strategies of those who gather, and those of our opponents. There is always a need for stronger action until we achieve our objective,” Zig Zag said.

In addition to the violation of historical First Nations land rights, the ORN and other 2010 protesters have voiced concern for the broader effect the Olympics will have on the environment, the homeless, the poor, rising public debt, and corporatization of B.C. First Nations communities in

B.C. live with high rates of poverty, unemployment, suicide, illness, and violence.

Zig Zag suggested, “There are many types of social movements.... I think what unites these movements is a general anti-oppression sentiment and belief.”

While Olympic officials have recognized the Spirit Train protests, they claimed the Spirit Train was a success.

“Despite the efforts of small groups of protesters at some stops along the route, the enthusiasm and

participation of local Canadians was evident at each stop,” read a press release issued from the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC).

Some First Nations communities, including its four hosts, the Lil’wat, Musqueam, Squamish, and TsleilWaututh, have publicly supported the 2010 games and are proactively working with VANOC to ensure Native representation particularly at sporting events, in the arts and culture, and with employment opportunities.

Kristin Li for The McGill Daily

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News

The McGill Daily, Thursday, October 23, 2008

Wal-Mart scraps only unionized outlet Gatineau garage closure follows in Wal-Mart anti-union busting

Niko Block

The McGill Daily

W

was unprofitable is clearly bullshit.”

Lemay added that Wal-Mart simply did not want to set a new precedent by establishing a working relationship with a union and acted against the law closing them down.

“In the Quebec Code, you’re not allowed to close a store because a union comes in, and that’s exactly what they did,” Lemay said.

According to Lemay a worker can file with Commission des relations du travail (CRT) if they feel their rights have been violated. The Minister of Labour also requested report of closure.

Wal-Mart took a similar course of action in the summer of 2005 when it laid off 190 workers in Jonquière after they voted to form a union.

Derek Johnstone, a communications director for UFCW, said that

al-Mart’s labour tactics prompted nationwide outcry when it shut down a Tire and Lube Express in Gatineau– its only unionized outlet in North America– Thursday.

In a press release, National President of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Wayne Hanley accused Wal-Mart of violating a 2007 Supreme Court In the Quebec Code, you’re decision that guaranteed not allowed to close a store the right of workers to organize for the purposes because a union comes in, and of collective bargaining. that’s exactly what they did “[It] is another attack – Dino Lemay on its workers, on the Representative for the Federation community, and one more Des Travailleurs du Quebec example of its blatant disregard for Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms,” Wal-Mart’s tactics in Quebec have he claimed in the release.

After three years of legal haggling, always been focused on union-bustthe garage’s eight employees gained ing.

“What happened in Gatineau this union accreditation in August, when an arbitrator from the Quebec Labour week was a complete deja vu,” he Relations Board ruled in their favour said. “The contract had been arbitrated by the Quebec Labour Relations and established a collective agreement.

The binding contract guaranteed Board, and the company completely the workers a minimum of $11.54 per ignored the right of the workers to hour, up from $8.50, with a top rate organize.”

Wal-Mart employees have also of $15.25. But once the contract came into effect, the company cut the staff voted to unionize in Hull and St. down to five employees, citing the Hyacinthe in Quebec. Johnstone higher costs of running the garage expects those locations will likely be shut down as well if the Quebec with unionized workers.

Following the closure last week, Labour Relations Board continues to Wal-Mart spokesperson Andrew ratify the union’s applications.

The FTQ will represent the Pelletier told The Ottawa Citizen that the contract would have made Jonquière workers in the Supreme Court in December, and Lemay said the garage unprofitable.

Dino Lemay, a regional repre- that the court may also address the sentative for the Federation des Gatineau closure in the same proTravailleurs du Quebec (FTQ), dis- ceedings.

Lemay also accused Wal-Mart agreed. He pointed out that local labour laws in Montreal and some of of deliberately mismanaging the the surrounding municipalities force Jonquiere outlet in order to justify employers to pay garage workers a the closure. “They started selling skis in the summer and golf clubs much higher wage than in Gatineau.

“There are 32 Wal-Marts in in the middle of winter, so business Quebec where they have to pay their went down,” he said.

Wal-Mart representatives were garage workers at least $16 an hour,” said Lemay. “So for them to say that it unavailable reached for comment.

“

mcgilldaily.com

A vision for African development?

5

Ben Peck / The McGill Daily

Francophone Africa Today Emily Clare

News Writer

S

even African leaders, including those from Rwanda, Burkina Faso, and Madagascar, met at “Francophone Africa: An Economy in Full Growth” in Montreal Monday. The event was organized by the Canadian Council on Africa and the Montreal Council on Foreign Relations. “[The conference] affords the African side a platform to present our vision of development and to seek Canadian business partners who are able to understand our needs and can engage in mutually beneficial ventures,” said Saaka Minimaana, the vice-president of the African Diaspora Association of Canada (ADAC).

The seven important figures only drew in a small number of students, buisness persons, and guests. There was no overt security presence at the event, though there were several protestors outside from the Group for Research and Initiative for the Liberation of Africa (GRILA).

The protestors questioned the legitimacy of the President of

News brief SSMU to research student-run food services After letting the chance of a student space in Cafe Rama slip away last spring, SSMU has decided to survey student-run food services at other Canadian Universities.

Burkina Faso, Blaise Compaoré, who spoke at the event. Compaoré was responsible for the violent 1987 coup and alledgedly the murder of the iconic president at the time, Thomas Sankara, and 12 other officials. “[Sankara] wanted to go against the system and cut off imperialistic ties. He went against a system still going on today,” said Djbril Ndiaye, a member of GRILA. Ndiaye added that Compaoré’s presence was representative of the lack of knowledge around trade in Africa. He felt that awareness was needed to change the current terms of trade with western investors and the African elite.

Aziz Fall, a member of GRILA and the coordinator of the international campaign Justice for Sankara at the United Nations, agreed.

“As with apartheid, you have to know where your money is going.

The conference represents a neoliberal agenda where Africa is easy access for investment. It is a continuation of the colonial legacy, but with a new disguise,” he said.

But while the conference touched momentarily on conflict resolution

and issues surrounding development, the main focus was bilateral investment opportunities and the marketing of one’s country.

“You are selling a product. That is, your country as an investment destination, but also competing with your other African counterparts for investment dollars,” said Minimaana. He felt that businesses should be aware of different realities, but ultimately can either choose to take something into account or not.

In spite of the business-driven appeal of the conference, problems were also acknowledged.

Marc Ravalomana, the president of Madagascar, reiterated the importance of Canada and globalization.

He profiled the improvements his country was currently undertaking to minimize corruption and improve infrastructure.

“We have a ferocious struggle against corruption,” said Jean Louis-Roy, the President of the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development in his opening speech. “Corruption is one of the things we share most in our world today.”

“Basically, a lot of people were unhappy with the decision – well that’s an understatement,” said SSMU President Kay Turner.

One reason, however, many SSMU councilors voted for the corporate Cafe Supreme was a lack of information on how an independent services would run, she added.

Turner, who voted for a student run space, said SSMU hopes to prevent the same thing from happening again the next time the lease runs out in Shatner.

“We’re doing the work now so

they can have a reference point in the future,” she said.

SSMU has sent out calls for two student researchers to survey the other schools. Once their research is completed, a working group will compile the information and draft a set of recommendations for McGill.

Turner recognized that of student run space remains a relevant issue at McGill.

“We want to try and harness some of the residual interest,” she said.

– Erin Hale

6

Commentary

The McGill Daily, Thursday, October 23, 2008

volume 98 number 15

editorial 3480 McTavish St., Rm. B-24 Montreal QC, H3A 1X9 phone 514.398.6784 fax 514.398.8318 mcgilldaily.com

coordinating editor

Jennifer Markowitz coordinating@mcgilldaily.com coordinating news editor

Shannon Kiely news editors

Erin Hale Nicholas Smith Alison Withers features editor

Claire Caldwell commentary&compendium editor

Max Halparin

coordinating culture editor

Leah Pires

culture editors

Joshua Frank Braden Goyette science+technology editor

Stephen Davis / The McGill Daily

Physics professor Ken Ragan chats about astrophysics and his intramural hockey team, Cold Fusion. Apparently they’re not doing very well.

The case for irrelevance

Lindsay Waterman mind&body editor

Nadja Popovich photo editor

Stephen Davis

The conversationalist

graphics editor

Ben Peck

production & design editors

Will Vanderbilt Aaron Vansintjan web editor

Ian Beattie copy editor

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Stephen Davis le délit

Maysa Phares redaction@delitfrancais.com Contributors

Rosie Aiello, Komal Ali, Kelley Baldwin, Jacqueline Bird, Niko Block, Steven Campbell, Emily Clare, Madeline Coleman, Rupert Common, Andrea Damiano, Dana Drori, Corey Gulkin, Henry Gass, Becky Harris, Shu Jiang, Ivy Johnson, Thomas Large, Kristin Li, Evan Newton, Erin O’Callaghan, Aditi Ohri, Sasha Plotnikova, Dominic Popowich, Kortney Shapiro, Alana Taylor, Morgan Teeple Hopkins, Cathryn Theriault

The Daily is published on most Mondays and Thursdays by the Daily Publications Society, an autonomous, not-for-profit organization whose membership includes all McGill undergraduates and most graduate students.

Rosie Aiello

I

love Romantic poetry, but according to my uncle, it’s “completely useless, and contributes nothing to society. It’s a self-indulgent, selfsatisfying area of study, and as long as I live, I’ll tell you so.” This got me feeling bad for feeling deeply in love with anything so chimeric as poetry.

But then I talked to Ken Ragan, Professor of Physics at McGill. He was part of a team of scientists that discovered the Top Quark, which is of no practical use, but whose discovery solidifies our current theories of matter. He told me many “useless” and fascinating things about black holes and anti-matter, and he said some-

thing that – to me, in my current state of self-doubt – was particularly useful: “I sleep very well at night, knowing full well that what I do is irrelevant.”

I feel quite an affinity for Ragan’s way of thinking, because if it weren’t for people like my uncle, I would sleep well at night knowing full well that Romantic poetry is irrelevant.

Since neither the study of astrophysics or Romantic poetry is directly driven by humanitarian or economic ends, they are naively deemed irrelevant. Although I may appreciate Ragan’s corroborating my beliefs about education, the discussion begs the question: why in the name of all

that is relevant do we continue investing hours and dollars into these disciplines? People are dying, while we indulge our “passions.”

“In science, we talk about applied science versus curiosity-driven science,” Ragan explained. “Astrophysics is not relevant in that it makes someone’s life better or easier, but there is value in finding out how the world works....

Curiosity-driven science is a cultural endeavour, just as much as is something like Hollywood.” And when the first man laid his carefully constructed moon boot on the moon, the world watched and clutched their hands to their chests, fingers interlocked for the pride of the human race. And the celestial bodies spin around us, and we feel a sense of contentment, just knowing that we know that they’re there.

But more fundamentally, Ragan believes that so-called “irrelevant” disciplines change our approach to living. “Physics taught me that the world is an understandable place.

Physics allows you to take a large problem and break it up into small,

manageable pieces, and from there you can find a solution,” he said.

“Physics also taught me to look for proof, and to stand by conclusions based on empirical evidence.” Can you imagine if everyone made judgments based on evidence? So simple!

In my case, Romantic poetry taught me that one’s compassion is directly proportionate to one’s imaginative capacity, and appropriately, that the truest way to see the world is with a childish sense of wonder. These may be romantic notions, but they’re also constructive. In this way, every irrelevant undertaking somehow contributes to social progress and to humanitarianism.

Irrelevance does not imply “of no value.” There are certain modes of thought, approaches, and attitudes that we learn from such disciplines, the worth of which are great, though neither concrete nor quantifiable.

Rosie’s column appears every other Thursday. You can send quarks to theconversationalist@mcgilldaily.com.

Clearing up a couple SACOMSS issues

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Corey Gulkin and Becky Harris

HYDE PARK

T

he Sexual Assault Centre of McGill Students’ Society (SACOMSS) offers services to survivors of sexual assault, their friends, family, partners, and allies.

We’re writing this to clarify our centre’s beliefs, in response to recent events. One such article, “Pro-life group seeks SSMU club status,” appeared in the October 6 issue of The Daily.

The article discussed Choose Life, a pro-life group which is trying to gain SSMU club status. SSMU

VP Clubs & Services Samantha Cook was quoted as saying that SACOMSS would be a source of backlash as a group with a “more vested interest in women’s rights and reproductive rights.” Although SACOMSS identifies as an anti-oppressive and profeminist organization, we do not identify as either pro-life or prochoice. Anyone is welcome to use our services regardless of their opinions on abortion.

SACOMSS offers non-judgemental support through support groups, a helpline, a drop-in centre, and an accompaniment branch. We also offer education through community outreach. Our services are all prosurvivor, meaning that we always

believe the survivor and that sexual assault is never the survivor’s fault.

Our space and volunteer opportunities are open to people of all genders, backgrounds, and beliefs.

As a non-judgemental organization, we will not judge anyone based on their beliefs or any other criteria.

We are here to support survivors of sexual assault, and unless Choose Life was to interfere with such support, we would have no reason to oppose their group gaining club status. We are aware that the beliefs of Choose Life’s parent organization, National Campus Life Network, conflict with our pro-survivor mandate. Their literature states that they believe that abortion in the case of sexual assault

is merely a violent act in response to the violent act of sexual assault1.

However, we do not know the extent of Choose Life’s involvement with this group.

We also wanted to clarify that only the External Coordinators of SACOMSS can accurately speak on behalf of the centre’s mandates and beliefs. This means that no speaker, ally, or anyone else, even if supported by or endorsed by SACOMSS, can represent us as a centre.

Corey Gulkin and Becky Harris are SACOMSS External Coordinators. They can be reached at sacomss@gmail.com, and more info can be found at sacomss.org.

Commentary

The McGill Daily, Thursday, October 23, 2008

Letters: Sex, the military, and Zoog

Letters Inform yourself about Harper’s “harm-reduction” policies Re: “Health care issue often ignored in campaigns” | Mind & Body | Oct. 9 I was disappointed to find that your run-down of each of the federal party’s health platform in the October 9 issue didn’t include any information about their stance on harm-reduction policies.

According to the Canadian Foundation for AIDS Research (CANFAR) the number of new infections of HIV attributable to injection drug use “remains unacceptably high.” However, the Harper government continues to vehemently oppose scientifically proven harmreduction strategies, such as needleexchanges and safe tattooing parlours in prisons, and safe-injection sites. They have even gone as far as to appeal a decision made by the B.C. Supreme Court which allows Insite – a safe injection site in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside – to operate.

Health Minister Tony Clement embarrassed Canada repeatedly at the International AIDS conference in Mexico City this past summer with his rhetoric of “law enforcement” as a method of harm-reduction. With another Conservative minority in power, it is important, now more than ever, for students to inform themselves and unite to ensure that harm-reduction is taken seriously by our government. Lives depend on it.

Jamie Lundine U3 African Studies & Honours Geography McGill Global AIDS Coalition Director

Don’t insulate campus from the realities of the world Re: “Endorsement: Let’s go to the GA” | Commentary | Oct. 6 As both a student and as a former member of the Canadian military, I was disappointed by The Daily’s endorsement of the GA motion to ban military recruitment on campus.

On a strictly personal level, I don’t agree with many government policies, and I fully support the complete and open debate of all issues relevant to society. The fact is that most of the policies and actions of the government that people take issue with are not a result of the military, but of decisions made by our elected representatives.

Military members, including many in the McGill community, provide an essential service to our society, and if you do not like the way your elected representatives are employing them, I believe those representatives would be a more suitable target for your criticism. A university campus should not be insulated from society, but should encourage as much interaction as possible with all elements of society as a whole. I was recruited on a university campus, and the personal experiences I had in the military taught me more about myself and society than I learned in my entire undergrad.

The bottom line is there are many things the government does which I personally disagree with. I don’t agree with current federal environmental policy, why not ban recruitment for the ministry of environment? I don’t agree with their positions on industry and trade, so I suppose we should ban campus recruitment to those ministries as well. In fact, why don’t we put a blanket ban on recruitment to any government agency on campus, and stick with oil, mining, financial, and pharmaceutical companies instead? If this motion passes the referendum, it is unfortunate that many students will not be exposed to many excellent employment opportunities that can provide concrete benefits to society.

James Curtis Medicine I

Devon, The Daily will not call you Zoog Re: “Sane shit from a made-up super hero” | Commentary | Oct. 2 Greetings Daily! Salutations and back rubs!

Correction: back rubs only for those who do not insist on belittling a VERY REAL super-VILLAIN. Daily, The Dark Motorcyclist does not have time for snarky editors, skeptics of the existence of parallel life forms, and other feeble-minded malcontents. Your humours must be unbalanced.

Secondly, I would like to declare open war on health-consciousness.

Precious time that could be spent tearing up The Daily’s “Features Section” is wasted pondering the benefits of vegetables and carb-free diet soda.

Enough with your precious Diet Dr. Peppers! The Dark Motorcyclist, a.k.a Zoog will not stand for it.

Thirdly, Concordia’s decision to ban Facebook was an intelligent one.

All those demon hunters will now have to work twice as hard to seek out and destroy the demons haunting Facebook!

As for all you freedom-haters (the demons): Destroy those dirty pictures of your mother! Destroy your father’s dirty underpants, they’re all sniffed out!

Shantih Shantih Shantih, Zoog P.S: I demand (with a cherry on top) that The Daily refer to me as Zoog in the letter headings from now on. Appreciations and back rubs.

Devon Welsh U2 Religious Studies & Theatre

Am I too heteronormative for you, Queer McGill?

I do not like Queer McGill. It is, without a doubt, one of my least favourite campus groups. What is interesting is that after two years at McGill, I have realized that I am not alone in this. So many people that I talk with – gay, straight, Canadian, American, Quebecois, etc. – have a beef with Queer McGill. Some find its power in campus politics unsettling – granted, it’s not really Queer McGill’s fault that so many of its members participate in SSMU politics, but why should a minority platform dictate policy for the whole? Others are put off by its constant and strident advocating and mobilization for increased queer rights, equality, and privilege on campus – is there really that much queer-specific injustice on campus? Many, gay and straight alike, feel excluded from Queer McGill – they are “too heteronormative” and do not fit in.

This is unsettling. How is it that such a vital and inclusive organization – the only one on campus created to both support and represent the queer community and provide a space for discussion both within the queer community and between the queer community and the straight community – elicits such widespread dislike and feelings of exclusion?

Clearly, something is wrong. I fully support Queer McGill’s mandate and mission, and if the new executive is in fact attempting a policy of greater acceptance and alliance and less “straight-bashing,” then I wholeheartedly support them. I do not see myself as a homophobe, and I would like to see myself as an ally. However, this is impossible when I feel excluded – am I a part of the heteronormative patriarchy? If Queer McGill was a little less adversarial toward the world – it really is not out to get you! – and a little more diplomatic, I think it might have more supporters – queer and straight.

Molly Krishtalka U2 Honours International Development Studies The Daily received more letters for this issue than it could print.

They will appear in the next possible issue. Send your letters to letters@ mcgilldaily.com, The Daily edits for style and brevity, and does not publish letters that are homophobic, sexist, racist, or otherwise hateful. But we often publish silly letters.

First Nations, first priority

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According to McGill Chancellor Dick Pound, “400 years ago, Canada was a land of savages,” – savages, in reference to the large and diverse population of First Nations people. Pound, who also sits on the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympics (VANOC) and is the Canadian representative to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), said this to LaPresse in French when relating China’s history to Canada’s.

Some are calling for Pound’s resignation as McGill Chancellor, and B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell said he should resign from VANOC. While calls from groups like the Association of First Nations have garnered media attention, McGill has simply distanced itself from Pound’s remarks, stating that his opinions are his own and do not reflect the University’s values. In his defense, Pound has said that the statements were taken out of context. Still, the reluctance of both McGill and Pound to retract the racist comment is troubling, and is yet another example of the continuing negative stigma toward Aboriginal peoples in Canada.

The Canadian government’s inhumane treatment of Aboriginals has long been the country’s best-kept secret. So often we see the continuation of this treatment in countless messy drawn-out court battles over questions of legitimate land and title claims. As First Nations groups voice their demands through negotiation processes, blockades, and protests, they are too often portrayed with a negative slant in mainstream media. The paternalistic voice with which their problems and complaints are covered mirrors the ineffective top-down strategies pumped out of government offices. The poor attention paid to this demographic was driven home when the UN deemed Canada’s flippant care of First Nations a human rights concern. Further, Canada was one of only a small handful of countries to refuse to sign the UN Indigenous People’s Accord.

Canada is sadly not alone in its unfair treatment of native minorities within its borders. As highlighted by this year’s Olympics in Beijing, scathing attacks against China for its mistreatment of minorities – particularly its oppression of Tibetans and Muslims – landed these human rights issues in the centre of media criticism. With Vancouver fast approaching its 17 days in the spotlight as host of the 2010 Winter Olympics, it only makes sense that equal media attention be paid to persistent discrimination in Canada – especially in B.C. As First Nations in B.C. never signed a treaty ceding the land allotted for the Games to the government, there are growing complaints that the Olympics are being hosted on stolen land. When the Spirit Train – a cheesy, cringeinducing hype-machine designed to foster Olympic spirit – chugged its way across Canada, it was constantly met by Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals alike protesting the 2010 Games as a perpetuation of land claims injustices.

Ironically, Vancouver will likely celebrate First Nations culture in the Opening Ceremonies. With such a divide between public spectacle and policy, these celebrations become little more than tokenistic gestures. The Olympic spotlight will soon be shining on Canada, and it’s time for Canada to genuinely heed First Nations’ concerns, and for land issues to be resolved respectfully.

Editorial

A former McGill student is having a 45-minute conversation with Noam Chomsky!

Why should you care?

He wants to pose a question written by McGill students!

Send questions to coordinating@mcgilldaily.com with the subject line “Chomsky” before October 27.

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Art Essay

Catherine Theriault

The McGill Daily, Thursday, October 23, 2008

Features

The McGill Daily, Thursday, October 23, 2008

Do a little turn

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on the

catwalk Kortney Shapiro takes in Montreal’s Fashion week, and considers what makes our city a hub of urban style – both on and off the runway

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he sea of patent leather, horn-rimmed glasses, and sky-high heels at Montreal’s recent Fashion Week, made it easy to understand why so many people associate the city with a unique, urban-chic style. The fashion poured off the runway; many of the show’s attendees were strikingly fashionable young hipsters, burgeoning fashionistas, and of course friends of friends of friends who knew people in high places. All were decked out in eclectic combinations of couture and cutting-edge street style.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 10

Courtesy of Arabelle Antonio

10 Features

Steven Campbell for The McGill Daily

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 9

Fashion Week is an international event open almost exclusively to the fashion industry’s elite. Buyers, business owners, journalists, photographers, and socialites join those who are simply content to marvel at costumes and models. In Montreal, the magic occurred amid the Old Port’s cobblestones in Marché Bonsecours from October 13 to 17, and coincided with similar happenings in New York, Toronto, Paris, Milan, and London. For Montreal, the event is vital in promoting the city’s fashion to an international audience, and to defining Montreal as an important industry hub.

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ne of the highlights of Fashion Week’s third evening was Montreal designer Katrin Leblond’s show. Models in Leblond’s crafty, vibrantly patterned work stalked the runway to French circus music. A delighted model quickly captured the audience’s attention by manipulating a hula-hoop amid exaggerated smiles.

The other models, keeping with the Parisian circus theme, captivated spectators with their dramatic couture. One model was dressed in a red and black burlesque corset, and another wore a blue headdress, resembling a bride on acid. The music melted into a syrupy Spanish rhythm, and more voluptuous models in patterned spring dresses mounted the runway.

Leblond brought a dinner terrace in Madrid right home to Montreal.

The second show of the evening was from Calgary native Travis Taddeo, now an independent avant-garde designer based in Montreal.

Models of otherworldly proportions balancing atop five-inch heels owned his runway.

Taddeo’s structured frocks were made from various lacquered materials, in blacks, hot pinks, and blues. The sylphlike female models worked their “fierce bitch” expressions while orchestrating perfect balance in their stilettos, and male counterparts strutted in inky Nike high-tops and enough hair gel to supply a John Frieda salon for a year. Taddeo’s black-on-black cocktail dress – evocative of a strapless shift à la Audrey Hepburn – featured a sheer neckline and sleeves, a fresh twist on the classic little black dress.

The males’ underground-club wear – leather leggings paired with an onyx v-tank – made the show even sleeker. Taddeo took his cues from Montreal nightlife and urbanite style. “Nightlife always plays a part, because it gives me a platform to create for the outrageous,” Taddeo says.

“It will always be apparent in my collections although there are other major aspects and influences to my designs.” But Taddeo’s female models were more reminiscent of Jane Fonda circa Barbarella than Mile End or Crescent on a Saturday – sophisticated belles ready to fight off intergalactic robots in style.

One piece that tugged at my heartstrings the moment I saw it, was Taddeo’s “pink cupcake dress.” “[It was] a sculpture I had inside my head,” Taddeo says of his creation. “I wanted to make something alienesque for the campaign shoot, [and] when I finished I was like… this looks like a cupcake!”

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hen asked what his goals are for the next year, Taddeo responds, “To keep a steady growth in Canada [Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver] and maybe branch out into the states.” For now though, having just participated in his first show at Montreal Fashion Week, he prefers to be modest: “It feels like I’m getting somewhere. I feel proud to be a part of something so big,” he says.

As I chatted with Fashion Television’s Glen Baxter after Taddeo’s show, we surveyed the electrically-charged scene before us. “It was nice to see bright, new, original talent,” Baxter remarked, and in a sense he summed up the value of Fashion Week. As students in Montreal, we are constantly confronted with an array of colours, styles, and tastes so diverse that the aspiring individualist can find him or herself overwhelmed. It is always refreshing to see something stand out on a canvas of clones.

“M

ontreal is a fashionable city,” notes McGill student and fashionista Taryn Hoffman. “When you look around, just walking around campus you see so many of the students that have their own different unique styles. At McGill…everyone seems unique in how they choose to project themselves, and I respect that very much.”

Other students would sooner disagree. As one student, preferring to remain anonymous, puts it, “What is Montreal fashion? It tends to be perpetuated in this ‘hipster genre,’ and

even though these fashion-forward individuals attempt to project themselves as different, they are within themselves, still dressed the same as one another, and not unique in the least.” During the conversation, I smiled to myself as I sat cross-legged in my leather leggings and sky-high fetish boots; regardless of contemporary critiques of Montreal urban style, if you’re happy in your second skins, whether haute couture or thrift store finds, that’s all that matters to your fashion decisions.

ther Fashion Week designers included French designer Christian Chenail, Lucian Matis, Rush Couture, Balbec Collection, Yves Jean Lacasse, Simon Chang, and Evan Biddell, previously of Project Runway Canada. But it wasn’t only designers stepping up their game on the runways; industry insiders and partygoers schmoozed at glamourous VIP events.

After presenting designer Marie Saint Pierre at the W Hotel in Old Montreal, Baxter noted, “Marie Saint Pierre had a cool funky formal presentation. There were 20 models posing along side one another at the event, so people would get a better visual representation of the experience.”

All in all, fall Fashion Week was covered in a whole lot of glitter, powder, and eclecticism. But if you missed the glitz at Marché Bonsecours, don’t fret: you’ll be certain to find much of the kitschy style emulated daily on the Arts steps.

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The McGill Daily, Thursday, October 23, 2008

Inside the models’ den Dana Drori gets behind the scenes and onto the catwalk

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h, Fashion Week: the time when parking spots are denied to common cityfolk, Gazette fashion editor Eva Friede actually gets some attention, and Montreal’s small pond of designers, stylists, makeup artists, and photographers carouse and exchange business cards, sponsored beverages in hand.

Fashion Week also directly coincides with midterm week, when McLennan library becomes more of a distraction than a place to study, McGill students up their coffee and cigarette intake, and the competition and anxiety at the core of our university’s pride is palpable in the October air.

These two events are so complete in themselves that they almost seem mutually exclusive.

I was shocked, then – studious coffee-drinking nerd that I am – to find myself leaving McLennan’s sixth floor to rush over to Marché Bonsecours, the hub of this season’s Fashion Week.

There, I was stripped, pinned, sprayed, made-up, forced into spring ready-to-wear and irrationally-high heels, and thrown into that elusive fashion world, down the runway toward Montreal’s teeth-baring arbiters of taste.

But before that highly uncomfortable and anxiety-ridden moment, I endured four highstrung-yet-mind-numbing hours of backstage “prep,” during which I abandoned my vain attempts at studying and looked around, contemplating the meaning of such a gathering.

I must admit that, though I didn’t know what to expect when I walked into the models’ den, I knew that my expectations were surpassed.

The backstage fulfilled all the basic criteria for something to romanticize. It began, as most glorified events do, with a back entrance that led to a freight elevator. As I stepped out of it and onto the third floor, I felt the excitement

pour out of the long black drapes that walled off the changing rooms holding the latest oeuvres of Montreal’s top designers.

Turning the corner, I came upon rows of hair and makeup stations, each equipped with those oh-so-fun vanity lights that seem to exist solely for self-scrutiny. Around me, models practiced their walks, pointed themselves out in magazines called Eye Candy or Naked Eye, and looked every newcomer up and down.

I was instantly overwhelmed with the familiar sense of competition between the women there. They’re the girls that I see at the castings; they’re the ones who always get the jobs.

Backstage, I had a choice between three beverages: coffee, water, or Hype. The food, to my pleasant surprise, was good and fattening.

And yes, some models ate, although the woman sitting next to me did say to her plate of gnocchi: “Ugh, I’m not even hungry, I just realized,” followed by, “I’ve been eating all day.”

I was wrong to think that I had left behind my high school days of being an outsider.

Feeling increasingly foolish and nervous, I turned back to my notes and course pack and tried to distract myself with theories of conspicuous consumption and vicarious living from class. How apropos, I laughed to myself, looking at the beautiful people and appreciating the social truism with a feigned sense of mental superiority.

That’s right: feigned. My ability to synthesize theories, draw connections, and analyze literature, all wonderful skills cultivated at McGill, amounted to nothing backstage at Montreal Fashion Week. Surrounded by the city’s finest – women nearing six feet with bodies that naturally looked digitally enhanced – I found myself making the effort to buy into their world

in a desperate attempt to fit in, though I wasn’t quite as tall, thin, or well-put-together as anyone around me.

And as I sat there, timidly squashed between others who thrive in this environment, I returned to thinking about how we succumb to the superficiality of it all. Down the runway, models come and go…and we glorify them, conceding to their false sense of entitlement, and to the whole institution of fashion.

I think Montreal socialite and stylist Cary Tauben summed it up perfectly when, while teaching me how to “own it” on the runway, he said that the best part about Fashion Week was “feeling glamorous.” And I realized that I agree. Though I couldn’t relate to the atmosphere, I still enjoyed the attention and the excitement, if only for a few hours. And honestly – who doesn’t?

Modeling in Fashion Week was an experience that denied me everything that makes me comfortable with who I am. I was shoved under lights for anonymous shadows to scrutinize, like an exotic zoo animal or some rare microscopic parasite. But despite it all, I submitted to its authority; I looked in the mirror instead of at my books, and channeled my femininity through oppressively high heels. I tried to be part of its reality, and not just because I loved the muffins backstage.

Still, at the end of the long and emotionallywinding catwalk, I craved my favourite sixth floor library carrel, and that feeling of steady progress toward self-assurance that I usually take for granted during the midterm fray. Maybe it’s just me, but the nerves that I feel for in-class essays can never compare to how insecure and anxious I felt when I tried to, as Tauben put it, “stomp it out” on the runway.

Soïa & Kyo: Spring is closer than it seems

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Steven Campbell for The McGill Daily

all’s chilly breeze has blown over the city of Montreal, retiring the year’s last leafy hues to the earth’s now sombre surface.

Luckily, last week a cluster of stylish designer items fluttered in just in time to heat things up for Montreal Fashion Week 2008. The venue for this year’s Montreal Fashion Week was Marché Bonsecours located in the belle Old Montreal, where designer Dekang Gao of Soïa & Kyo presented his sultry Spring and Summer 2009 collection.

At 8 p.m., luminous purple orbs embellished the impressive venue against the dark night’s sky. The grimace of passersby indicated they were dreading the nearing nippy winter

season; however inside the fresh-faced models of the Soïa & Kyo show lightly pranced down the runway as if it were a warm April day. The models were dressed in next season’s lime green pea coats, lilac rain boots, magenta stockings, red leather jackets, and khaki shorts. The electronic rhythms pumped in the background as one-by-one, each model displayed Gao’s brilliant architectural talents involved in constructing the well-assembled outfits. Likewise, the event was the definition of success – everyone cheered, clapped, and left with an extra spring in their step.

– Alana Taylor

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12 Photo Essay

The McGill Daily, Thursday, October 23, 2008

Shutting our windows, plugging our ears

The McGill Daily, Thursday, October 23, 2008

On a rainy afternoon in February of 2003, I lay down on Toronto’s Yonge Street with a few hundred others to protest a possible Americanled invasion of Iraq. I lay there shivering, thinking proudly of how brave we must have looked to the people passing by.

Since then, the United States has invaded Iraq, I’ve attended dozens more protests, and the novelty has worn off. So a few weeks ago, watching a pro-choice march crawl alongside Mont-Royal’s Sunday afternoon shoppers, I decided to train my lens on a new subject: the spectators.

A well-organized protest can be stirring and inspirational. But too often a worthwhile message goes into a tinny megaphone and comes out garbled. And so people continue with their shopping, plug their ears, or shut their windows. But I’m optimistic. Because once in a while a protest is powerful enough to rattle those windows and shake people out of their Sunday afternoon stupors. Either way, I’ll be there. Rain or shine.

–Stephen Davis

Photo Essay

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Culture

The McGill Daily, Thursday, October 23, 2008

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The shadow of wealth Margaret Atwood’s timely lecture explores debt and morality Kelley Baldwin and Morgan Teeple Hopkins with her sarcastic remarks and Culture Writers

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spry and jocular Margaret Atwood took the stage last night at Montreal’s Centaur Theatre to give the fourth of a fivepart CBC Massey Lectures Series on debt, entitled Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth. With an arid desert as her backdrop, Atwood played off the dramatic surroundings by lowering her husky voice for ominous words like “shadow” and “revenge.” Her voice was oddly engaging, a dry monotone – think MTV’s Daria – that worked well

comical asides.

The subject of the lecture series is a surprising, but timely departure from what one might expect from Canada’s foremost novelist. With the American economy on life-support, and the average household owing $12,000 in credit card debt, Atwood’s lectures are even more loaded.

Despite the number-crunching associations that the topic evokes, Atwood’s gift of story-telling brings to life a seemingly dry – not to mention depressing – subject. Atwood is refreshingly unbounded in her investigation. By drawing on unlikely sources from history, religion, lit-

erature, primatology, and even her own experiences as a child during the Depression, Atwood’s examples took on a scope as wide as the current financial crisis. Atwood locates debt within an imaginative construction shaped by human notions of fairness, revenge, and forgiveness.

All this strives to get at a deeper understanding of why debt has been a prevalent motif in just about every society throughout the ages.

Moving from this, Atwood delves into the moral implications of the creditor-debtor pairing. Hypothetically, what is morally worse – borrowing money to feed your cocaine addiction or lending money to feed some else’s?

As we have learned from Frannie May and Freddie Mac, a creditor can be just as reprehensible.

For students with a nagging debt problem, Atwood pragmatically examines possible courses of action taken from history: one, the “Try and Collect” method where one tries to outrun the creditor; two, the “Riot and Looting” method, where one tries to burn out the paper-trail and thus the evidence; and three, the “Kill the Creditor” method where one does exactly that.

Atwood subtly delves into moral debt without spelling out the obvious applications to debt in the developing world, American financial crises, and

particularly global warming. While her lectures are highly entertaining, Atwood plays it safe by keeping her discussion largely in the realm of literature and culture. At times, she can be too subtle, failing to make the important and damning social commentaries that she alludes to.

In today’s society where the King Midas myth rings true and everything is ascribed a monetary value, Atwood makes us reflect on the moral questions underlying a society’s attitude toward money. She also points, ironically, to the insubstantial nature of a financial structure that is like air: you only notice it when something is wrong with the supply.

In an interview with The Daily, Atwood touches on values, creativity, and low-hanging fruit McGill Daily: As you have shown in your lectures, debt seems to be a recurring motif in literature and culture. Why is this so? What seems to be fundamental about debt?

Margaret Atwood: It is one of those modules we have got built in, a sense of fairness. And if you have a sense of fairness you are going to have an estimation of whether you’ve been treated fairly or not, and if you haven’t been treated fairly, the other person owes you. That’s certainly how the monkeys behave, and how the chimpanzees behave, and how we’ve seemed to have behaved for a very long time now. Little kids start really early with “that’s not fair” and “his is bigger than mine” et cetera, et cetera. We do it all the time.

“Well, I want to it to go to the arts.” It is endless.

It goes on and on because people have different values. But there has never been a society without arts ever. Art is part of being human. Just one of those things built in. So it is not about whether there will be arts or not; it is whether society owes anything to the artistic community. That’s all it is about. You can’t actually stop there being art; that has never succeeded. Why? Because human beings are inherently creative. My thing about arts funding was that the comments made were simply insulting to everybody. They implied that somebody with a job of a certain kind did not have any curiosity, interest, or talent. And that’s just insulting. We’re not defined by our jobs.

MD: While one may be tempted to say that debt is tied to the capitalist system, you show many examples where debt predates the capitalist system. Is debt exacerbated in a capitalist system?

MA: When too much of the wealth is in the hands of a few people it stops flowing and everything stagnates. It depends on how it is regulated.

It is like a river, you can make it go here or there, depending on where you put the blocks. What happened this time is that it too unregulated so that “anything goes” became a modus operandi. So unless there are checks and balances, of course things are going to get unbalanced. It made unfair behaviour possible. People lost faith in the system and when people lose faith in the system, they don’t want to lend any money. They don’t want to lend money to anyone else, and then credit rises up.

MD: In your book, you ask why we are so open to present time advantage in exchange for future onerous payments. Why are humans so short-sighted? Is this a pessimistic view of human nature?

MA: If we don’t go for the hanging fruit we will be dead. It has to do with your body. If you don’t take in nourishment, you will die. So it is no good saying, “leave the low-hanging fruit until next year, and don’t eat anything until then because then you can save up.” We’re programmed to see a goodie and take a goodie. So it is very hard to resist that.... It’s an inclination that we have, because we have to eat and drink. We have to be taught “don’t take that candy, and don’t eat that, and save up your allowance.” All of that stuff has to be hammered into your brain because your inclination is to do the opposite.

MD: Do you currently see the Canadian government as being in an imbalance of debt particularly in relation to arts funding? For example, with a taxation system, does the government owe certain repayments to society?

MA: There is always a discussion going on about what we should get in return. And that’s what people largely argue about when they’re talking about all the stuff like, “Well, I want it to go to this.” “Well, I want to build roads.”

MD: How do you think we can solve ballooning student debt?

MA: I don’t have a solution. Students borrow against their future and that’s in general a good investment, but in particular it won’t necessarily pay off. However, I wouldn’t counsel against it because an education, like a lot of other things, is an entrepreneurial thing to do. You’re speculating on the future and hoping that it will turn into something. Anyways, being educated is always better than not being educated.

Evan Newton for The McGill Daily

Culture

The McGill Daily, Thursday, October 23, 2008

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Paved paradise A pair of artists address identity and the city Thomas Large

Culture Writer

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Courtesy of the MACM

“Sympathy for the Devil” examines the intersection between art and rock ‘n’ roll.

Sound and vision Erin O’Callaghan Culture Writer

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he Musée d’art contemporain’s newest exhibit takes a critical look at the relationship between art and rock ‘n’ roll from the late 1960s to the present. Entitled “Sympathy for the Devil,” after the famous 1968 Rolling Stones song – as well as Jean-Luc Godard’s film about the recording of the song – the exhibit comprises over 100 works.

Art and rock ‘n’ roll are intrinsically linked, both are creative forms of expression, and more often than not they draw on each other for inspiration. According to the assistant curator François LeTourneux, this is the first exhibit of its kind, and he feels the exhibit is “not just relevant for Montreal – it is a global exhibition.”

Upon entering the room, I’m greeted by separate square canvases, with pictures of famous musicians in black and white, stretched along the length of the first wall. An unexpected perk of the exhibit is the pile of posters near the door, with slogans such as “What Would Neil Young Do?” free for anyone to take. The exhibit is arranged thematically, grouped into six sections corresponding to the music scenes in New York, the U.K., continental Europe, the West Coast – particularly Los Angeles – the U.S. Midwest, and the rest of the world.

The New York section of the exhibit explores the influence of Andy Warhol on the Velvet Underground in the late 1960s, and the huge sway punk and post-punk have had on art from the 1980s through to the present. From grimy New York City, the exhibit takes us to the crowded streets of London and through the craze of the British Invasion. One of my favourite pieces is a painting of a music chronology, detailing the different genres that branched off from rock over the years and the famous artists associated with each.

The record room is another highlight, a space open for visitors to walk through where the floor is entirely covered with records.

Toward the back of the exhibit, the focus shifts to film and sound mediums. One particularly innovative piece is Rirkrit Tiravanija’s “Untitled 1996 (Rehearsal Studio No. 6 Silent Version),” a recording studio equipped with the instruments necessary to record a rock song. The studio is encased in soundproof glass with headphones connected to the inside, allowing visitors outside to listen in on recording sessions. The museum offers two hours of free recording time to musicians of all levels from Tuesday to Friday until the exhibition closes on January 11. LeTourneux said that the recording sessions have been very popular and have garnered a lot of interest from the general public.

Past the recording studio, there are rooms showing films about musicians, among them LeTourneux’s favourite piece, Tony Oursler’s “Sound Digressions in 7 Colours.”

The work is made up of seven floating screens portraying videos of artists improvising a song on their respective instruments. The combination of the seven different improvised songs creates a complex sound texture, and the added lighting allows for a very interesting sensual experience.

This exhibit is definitely not for those unappreciative of experimental art, as the pieces presented take on all forms – from photography to film, to experiments with light and sound.

When asked why the museum decided to bring the exhibit to Montreal, LeTourneux answered that they “felt that it was an exhibition that really resonated within the network of current preoccupations in the world of contemporary visual arts, as well as the broader culture of art and music.” Montreal being the culturally explosive city that it is, the exhibit definitely seems right at home, and judging by the turnout last Wednesday, it has certainly piqued the Montreal public’s interest.

This is the last stop for “Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll since 1967” and it runs until January 11, 2009 at the Musée d’art

n initial glimpse at David Holden’s latest exhibition produces a slightly unnerving echo of the already exhausted Surrealist genre. His work resembles a synthesis of De Chirico’s enigmatic deserted squares rendered in the artist’s characteristically skewed, receding perspective, and Magritte’s perplexing juxtapositions of ordinary objects and locations. Sure, this wouldn’t be the worst thing – Surrealism was quite the interesting movement. And who doesn’t appreciate the odd “tribute” act? Regardless, deeper examination reveals that Holden’s series presents something less dated and more inspired.

The majority of the paintings are set in Holden’s childhood neighbourhood in Montreal. Although the locations refer to Holden’s past, the paintings reflect recently experienced events and emotions. This gives the paintings an interesting temporal dynamic and play between past and present.

Leroux Park depicts a building surrounded by a paved lot. The childhood location is rendered with adult solemnity. The scene is draped in a grey haze, the sky is overcast and pavement occupies the entire foreground. A glimmer of bright colour from a mural painted on the building struggles to breach the painting’s grey emotional atmosphere.

The mural, probably painted by children, seems to offer a glimpse back to childhood yet fails to solidify it.

There is an absence of human presence, as in all the paintings of the series. However, we sense human presence through the perceiver – or painter – as it is his emotions we are presented with and take part in.

Another work, Gift Box, depicts the back of an arena and its parking lot. The scene is deserted, save a car half out of frame in the distance and an opened red and white gift box in the foreground. The inexplicable presentation of the banal object takes on the role of the painting’s subject and perplexes us in the process.

Like in many of his other paintings, the artist celebrates an object’s ability to transmit emotion. Here, the lone opened gift box evokes feelings of rejection and desertion as we wonder why it lies on the ground of the parking lot. No childhood joy or memory of sport is evident in the painting; rather, we sense the turmoil that comes with adult relationships.

All the paintings of the series are rendered in virtuosic photorealism.

Yet, like many Surrealist works, there

is a sense of unreality in the precision of depiction. This serves to convey a sense of lucid memory as well as that of immediate, present emotions.

However, a disconnect between past and present is felt in the works. The memory does not seem to register.

We are lost in the present experience of adulthood evoked throughout the series.

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n space 2 of the gallery, Jean Francois Gratton presents a series of seven photographs of a photo booth – or photomaton – placed in different locations around the city.

This same photo booth is physically placed in the centre of the gallery, surrounded by the photographs. The exhibit provides an interesting and thoughtful comment on some formal aspects of photography, as well as an interesting comment on technology and contemporary culture.

The photographs are beautiful.

Each photo displays a skillful treatment and play of light and offers a broad palate of colour, framing the photo booth in the centre of each picture. Gratton glorifies the device with his sensitive eye, commenting on how our technological devices often take on fetishistic value.

With the device present in the gallery, Gratton provides an exposition of space. We are able to see the size of the photo booth and examine its relation to its surroundings within the pictures. It’s as if we can step into the spaces presented in the photographs by being immediately present to their subject.

The physically present photo booth adds an interactive element to the exhibit. The visitor is invited to play the role of voyeur and exhibitionist by stepping into the photo booth and having their picture taken in four poses.

Visitors are confronted with their own image staring back at them in their photos. Through this gesture, Gratton presents a manifestation of the superficial identities created through digital technologies. The dual role of the visitor through this interactive element provides an interesting comment on people’s desire in this digital age to be seen coupled with the excessive creation and recreation of their desired identities on the Internet. We are led to recognize an ambiguity between the public and private spheres.

In a final twist of conceptual ingenuity, Gratton has visitors place their portraits on the wall, transforming their initial acts of exhibitionism into an aesthetic element of the exhibit. Individuals are mashed into one collective identity on the wall of the exhibit through the unifying force of technological, contemporary culture.

David Holden’s exhibit and Jean Francois Gratton’s “Photomaton” show until November 22 at Galerie SAS at 372 Ste. Catherine O. space 416.

16 Culture

The McGill Daily, Thursday, October 23, 2008

Take that, Maisonneuve!

Creative tycoons lab.synthèse expand their empire with new magazine Madeline Coleman The McGill Daily

O

ver the overpass, under the track lighting of a converted industrial space, the inhabitants of lab.synthèse are living the po-mo boho dream. Their spacious apartment on Beaubien O. has become a hub of musical and artistic activity, with an ever-growing constituency of hepcats making their way to the venue to enjoy film screenings, theatre performances, and dimly-lit dance parties. The young masterminds behind these happenings will soon be adding another element to the roster – a magazine appropriately titled Beaubien, set to launch at November’s Expozine.

“My sense of lab.synthèse is one of an institution truly coming into its own after a tumultuous but wholly

successful year of trial and error,” says Trevor Barton, recent Concordia graduate and one of Beaubien’s seven editors. “[Putting] together [Beaubien’s] first issue is a microcosm of that process.”

The editorial team also includes Concordia student Jeff Boyd, and McGill students Rosie Aiello, Claire Boucher, and Alex Cowan, as well as “blissfully unassociated” Sebastian Cowan and Emily Kai Bock. None of the magazine’s staff have any prior experience in self-publishing – a world often fraught with minimal budgets and distribution challenges.

Luckily, Beaubien’s editors can call upon their creative friends – and Daily readers – to provide the content.

Unlike other Montreal-born magazines Lickety Split – a selfproclaimed “pansexual smut zine” – and Worn Fashion Journal, Barton

admits Beaubien’s team has not yet identified a specific theme for contributors to follow. “We are bound to take a lot from this initial experience and definitely sharpen and narrow our themes and objectives heading into future issues,” he says, “but, as simplistic as it may sound, at this point, we are merely looking to be impressed.”

Spend an afternoon perusing the zine library at Mile End café Le Cagibi, and it will become clear: the freedom afforded by self-publishing often translates directly into unbridled subjectivity. Although this freedom can also translate into unsubstantiated ranting, the world of underground publishing plays a crucial role in the ecology of the printed word.

Canada has one of the world’s most consolidated media systems, meaning that an exceptionally large amount of the country’s main-

stream media is in the hands of very few people. Once a publication is absorbed into the corporate blob, it becomes vulnerable to the whims and philosophies of the big kahuna – a recent example being The Gazette reporters’ struggle with CanWest, the newspaper’s owner. Putting out a magazine like Beaubien may not be a direct blow to corporate media, but it can be a defence of unhindered creativity. Original voices are sorely needed in the face of such massive editorial homogenization.

“Academia encourages us to constantly subsume and obscure the subjective element in any analysis,” Barton points out. “We would rather encourage the presence of the individual bend in any piece.”

While the Internet arguably affords the same opportunity, a magazine like Beaubien does what no personal blog can: give young

writers and artists the chance to see their ideas in hard copy, validated by the work of the printing press. Lab. synthèse also plans to distribute Beaubien outside Montreal – namely, in Vancouver, Toronto, and New York.

Barton says they are hoping to reflect lab.synthèse’s “aesthetic attitude which is at once esoteric and diverse” in contributions ranging from “poetry, short stories, black and white illustrations, and editorials, to research-based columns on any topic.” The Beaubien team will be accepting submissions until November 1 and debuting the first issue at Expozine, taking place at the end of November. Contribute with the knowledge that you are building something beautiful.

All submissions can be sent to beaubienmagazine@gmail.com.

Stomping to success Psychedelic Middle Eastern music finds an audience in Montreal

Jacqueline Bird Culture Writer

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ietzsche once said that “we have art so we will not be destroyed by truth.” Whether the student “truth” be midterm season or some other all-consuming situation, there’s no doubt that we all occasionally need a distraction of some kind – whether it’s a self-indulgent flail-and-wail, or a more refined performance put on by practiced musicians. So if your saving grace is music, there is nothing worse than finding yourself in a rut where all of the music around you suddenly seems like it comes from the same congealed pot of humdrum inspiration.

Let me introduce you to a project that will undoubtedly remedy your musical boredom: Jerusalem In My Heart. This project was spawned by a man named Radwan Moumneh, who was suffering from the very same problem when he first got into music making.

The name of the musical project – Jerusalem In My Heart – alludes to his home country, and makes reference to a fairly politically-charged album by the Lebanese artist Fairuz. A Lebanese Christian prima donna, Fairuz shows solidarity with the Palestinians, and

courageously demonstrates national unity through her craft. Her album consists of songs relating to Palestine, and its agitated relations with its neighbouring countries. The Palestinians and Lebanese Christians in Lebanon endured particularly tense and violent relationships throughout the 15-year Lebanese Civil War. Moumneh first arrived in Montreal with his family in 1993, from the Sultanate of Oman, where they were living during the Lebanese Civil War. When he initially moved here, he was subjected to racial slurs by both his peers and his teachers, as well as an insecurity about his identity. “It’s very hard not to feel like an alien when you have never seen peanut butter and the idea of cold milk repulses you.”

He explains that “it was a very difficult transition we made coming here when I was in my late teens. I think it, however, shaped me and my sense of what I have to say with my project.”

Despite his ostracized youth, once Moumneh entered the music scene in 2003, he found the community much more supportive of his project. He claims that “people in the art world are very safe people. I don’t feel that people would criticize something ‘ethnic’ in the same way that they’d criticize a local indie band. No one wants to come across as the person who ‘didn’t get it’ because they might seem ignorant, and that’s sad.”

Regardless of the acceptance he has received, Moumneh remains skeptical about his audience’s approval. “It does present a certain element of orientalism, and it is a hard thing to process.

Nothing lamer than feeling like you are a circus monkey performing to a

bunch of privileged anglophone white art school students.” Surprisingly, Radwan asserts that it’s easier to generate a non-Arab crowd. “What I do is weird for a lot of Arabs. Recently, however, more and more Arabs have been approaching me and telling me about their interest.”

Moumneh has been nurturing this project, which he calls his “defective child,” for the past four years or so – and each performance has been unique. He began performing alone, but the numbers have grown; member counts and instruments used vary with each show. There will be a hefty rhythmic aspect to his upcoming shows on October 23 and 24 at Montréal arts interculturels, he says.

“The beast will come from four percussionists and roughly 35 women who will be stomping and kicking their feet to the beats.”

Moumneh insists that he receives his influence both from western music and Arabic music. “I am a fan of ambiguity in art,” he says.

“I do it because I need to do it and that’s all there is to it. Pure expression and pure emotion. I haven’t made a record or tried to tour this or anything.

I’m just content with doing it here and now.”

The pieces performed are an equal blend of re-interpreted classic songs and original compositions. Go treat your ears to this true buffet of music, and indulge in an experience that will never compromise its genuine style.

Sasha Plotnikova / The McGill Daily

Culture

The McGill Daily, Thursday, October 23, 2008

17

Borough on the brink St. Henri is halfway between punk and prosperity

Dominic Popowich / The McGill Daily

Bursting the bubble

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t the foot of Westmount, tucked inside the borough of Montreal Sud-Ouest and settled atop the Lachine Canal, sits St. Henri: a history of francophone struggle, an echo of Montreal’s industrial past. As the “À Louer” signs accumulate and its crumbling factories are rebuilt as condominiums, St. Henri stands at a crossroad.

Before I knew anything at all about St. Henri, I knew that it was “up-and-coming.” It is a phrase heard tirelessly in reference to the area: St. Henri seems to be interminably on the verge of raising its property value. This friendly neighbourhood euphemism is a subtle nod toward the ominous pressures of the gentrification process.

Walking westward on NotreDame from St. Ferdinand, one can see the forces of young-people-withmoney at work. The street is peppered with new cafés, shops, and art galleries; surrounding them are older businesses that have withstood the test of time, while frequent “À Louer” signs sit atop the facades of untouched, aged, ornate architecture. A Marché aux Puces, Eglise St. Zotique’s church bazaar, and several antique furniture stores can all be found on Notre-Dame alongside stylized resto-lounge-exteriors with

names like Dragon Kitchen and Sushi Goo Goo. “Industrial chic” is what we can call this attraction to the habitation of deindustrialized spaces. Even McGill’s into it. Solin Hall, one of the University’s apartment-style residences, is a converted chocolate factory straddling the border between Atwater and St. Henri. Atwater Market, historically a local farmer’s market serving St Henri and SudOuest residents, has in Montreal’s more recent history been revived as an expensive hub of upper-class consumer activity.

The upscale developments around the market have displaced low-income housing projects and attracted a higher tax bracket to a relatively working-class area. Closer to the canal, west of the market, lives a creative community, drawn to St. Henri by its cheap rent and large spaces. Pirates of the Lachine Canal are weird punk party planners with their headquarters in the Sud-Ouest.

Centre St. Ambroise, just northwest of the canal, doubles as a music venue and a brewery.

The anglophone prestige of Westmount remains divided from St Henri’s rough francophone roots by the path of the Falaise Saint-Jacques, but a new and wealthy anglophone presence is trickling into St. Henri

from all sides. Today, an increasing number of students and young renters are infiltrating the area’s nationalist francophone identity. However, the interests of the area’s long-standing residents are preserved; in this month’s Canadian election, St. Henri voted overwhelmingly for the Bloc Quebecois.

The most impressive testaments to the deindustrialization of St. Henri can be found in the abandoned factories that litter the area – there is one on Rue St. Remi and another at Richelieu and St. Marguerite. Minimal security and wretched maintenance make it easy to hop a fence and do what you wish – the city doesn’t make it very difficult. These huge lots sprawl and loom, teeming with decay and disregard.

I am inclined to romanticize these ruins as structures with potential and limitless possibilities for creative endeavors and productive ventures, but land development is not as straightforward as many naive hopefuls – such as myself – would imagine it to be. Who will inherit these spaces? Small businesses? Condominium developers?

Artists? Batman? Only time and incentive will tell.

– Aditi Ohri

18 Culture

The McGill Daily, Thursday, October 23, 2008

Some Like It Hot: the dollar in drag Investigating the socio-political significance of a Hollywood classic

Screen scrutiny Ivy Johnson

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t can be difficult to find a classic film whose relevance to today is immediately apparent; more than that, classic comedy sometimes just doesn’t seem funny to us. Our sense of humour has changed a lot in 50 years. This makes Billy Wilder’s Some Like it Hot an even more exceptional film today than when it was released in 1959.

Some Like It Hot takes an avantegarde approach to the subject of gender performance. Twenty minutes into the film, Joe and Gerry (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, respectively) have donned dresses and wigs, lipstick and heels, and they don’t drop them until the end of the movie. Each character, in his or her own way, embraces a fluidity of sexuality and identity. This, for the year 1959, is pretty shocking.

But what is this film really doing?

The fact that it has been inducted into the American Film Institute’s top 100 movies list causes me some degree of scepticism. You could certainly argue that social and political motivations for each of the films on the list are so inextricably entwined with their artistic merits that the categories become one and the same.

So instead of talking about the film’s many artistic merits, let’s think about what this film does socially and politically, and why the American Film Institute thinks that it’s valuable.

Some Like It Hot is a comedy, so it’s safe to say that the film mocks cultural norms (in their 1950s incarnation, that is). But it is surprisingly free of the judgement usually reserved for sexual others in films of this period.

The cross-dressing protagonists are mocked gently, not treated with disgust or fear.

Like in Tootsie, the other film on the AFI list about cross-dressing, Gerry and Joe dress like women because they need a job, and they need a disguise; a gig with an allfemale band promises safe escape from the mobsters of Chicago, who the pair witnessed perpetrating something like the St. Valentine’s day massacre. The costume transforms Gerry especially; at the start he must repeat to himself, “I’m a girl, I’m a girl, I’m a girl,” trying to learn his new gender by rote. But by the end his new mantra is “I’m a boy, I’m a boy, I’m a boy” – something it has taken him about a week to forget.

The romantic dynamics of the film also function in an unexpected way. When Gerry’s millionaire fiancé, Mr. Osgoode Fielding III, finds out that they can’t get married because Gerry’s actually a guy, he quips, “Well, nobody’s perfect;” this line then ends the movie. In contrast, Joe and his girlfriend Sugar (Marilyn Monroe) are doomed from the start.

We’ve learned that Joe is not good to his girlfriends, and there’s not much hope that this relationship will be any different. He’s been carrying on a double lie with her, both pretending to be her buddy Josephine and a Cary

Grant-esque millionaire with a frigidity problem. We also know that Sugar has bad taste in men, and this seems to prove it. At the end of the film the two couples drive off in a boat. One has a future, the other doesn’t – but who would have guessed that the couple that just might make it is the one comprised of two men?

This scenario is not exactly representative of the ethos of the American 1950s, a time of fairly extreme sexual conservatism. In order to understand the “anything goes” attitude of Some Like it Hot, we need to see the role of sex in the film for what it is: commerce. If we can attribute a laissezfaire attitude to any aspect of late fifties society, it would be the realm of the politico-financial. Capitalism becomes more than a political system – it becomes a way of life, something uniquely American that, when threatened – by communism, specifically – must be tauted and propagated.

In Some Like It Hot, it’s okay to dress like a woman, as long as you’re doing it for the almighty dollar. Joe and Gerry take the job with the allgirl’s band because they’re broke, and they stay because of the paycheque.

Why would a man marry another man? “Security,” Gerry answers, with-

out hesitation. At the start of the film we watch Joe seduce a girlfriend in order to get $20 from her, something she is extra angry about because their last date cost her money too.

Sugar has a problem, because her wealth-attraction gauge is broken; instead of falling in love with the rich, she falls in love with the poor.

But sexual attraction never falls outside of the context of money. Marilyn Monroe’s kisses have a pecuniary value too, which she and Joe tally up at the end of the night. Sex and desire are so linked with monetary gain that the fluidity of gender identity is nothing more than a keen business sense.

In the end, it’s hard to imagine what this film would have to say about actual transvestites – whether it would sympathize as much with men who are not forced, by circumstance, to don a wig and a dress. What Some Like It Hot does prove is that as long as an action is motivated by fiscal security, anything goes. If sex is money, this film describes capitalism at its best.

Watch the Culture section for more installments of Screen Scrutiny, a Cultural Studies-inspired analysis of classic American films.

Campus eye

Departures and Arrivals, the first TNC production of the year, captures charming and unexpected facets of human experience as seen in an international airport.

The play is comprised of 20 short vignettes featuring over 70 characters, played by six tireless students.

The play runs from today until October 25, and October 29 to November 1 at the TNC Theatre (3485 McTavish). Shows start at 8 p.m. and admission is $6 for students.

– Leah Pires

Shu Jiang / The McGill Daily

Compendium!

The McGill Daily, Thursday, October 23, 2008

Lies, Half-truths, & A chode

19

My East Van education Rupert Common

The McGill Daily

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hen people know you’re from Vancouver, they say one of two things: “Oh, cool, do you ever go to Whistler?” or, “Holy shit, have you been to East Hastings? I hear that place is seriously fucked.”

I have been to both Whistler and East Hastings, and I must say, the two places have certainly earned their reputation. Where Whistler is gorgeous and blah blah blah, Hastings is very fucked. My sister is a social worker for a local “life skills centre.”

The skills we are talking about here are not card tricks or “pop shove-its,” instead, the best skill to have is not being addicted to drugs.

Due to rent being extremely cheap, and my sister having a spare room, I lived in an East Vancouver apartment this summer. It wasn’t in the same neighbourhood as Hastings, but it was lower class. I say “lower class” because I most certainly grew up within the money-stuffed upper-crust of society and attended a private school for my entire education. My high school’s campus had well-mowed green fields and an overweight security guard that kept any unfamiliar dog walkers from perpetrating the hedged barrier. This was much different from my sister’s pad on Fraser and Broadway, which had a lot of spousal abuse. I know

the neighbourhood is poor because I saw rats on the street, the subway was 24-hour, and there were four Laundromats within two blocks of each other.

If my bed in Montreal is a single, then my bed in Vancouver was a complex fraction. It was barely as wide as my body and I was taller than it was long. But it wasn’t wider than it was tall, because that would make it a chode. In keeping with the East Van look, I made sure to bleed on my mattress. I did this via a savage bicycle accident that involved my entire shoulder and arm being road-rashed.

The scab was like bark and I couldn’t sleep on it for over two weeks. Every morning I would look down to see pieces of my flesh attached to the mattress and pillow case. I never washed my sheets once and ended up throwing them in a smelly alleyway when I checked out.

One evening I was assaulted by four drunk men. They asked if I had a smoke, I said, “No.” They asked where I lived, I said, “Around.” There was a pause. Then I said, “This neighbourhood is chill.” Their leader responded, “Not so chill when you bump into me and my friends.” I was in the midst of saying; “I don’t want any trouble,” when I took a drunken haymaker to the jaw. I managed to fend them off and run away. The worst part was I still had stuff drying in the Laundromat, so I had to go home and get on a disguise. This consisted of a hat, a book, and my sister.

The return of The Daily’s moustache contest!

As winter sets in, it’s time to put away the razor and embrace natural insulation.

Send your photos of your moustache to compendium@mcgilldaily.com by November 27.

Figure A: What you might look like now, before having learned of the contest.

It’s time to say goodbye to your formerly fresh-faced self, and take a trip to Facialhairville!

Figure B: Looks like somebody’s got a head start! Well done, Stephen, well done!

A little patchy on the cheeks though... no matter, this contest focuses more on the upper lip.

Ben Peck / The McGill Daily

The Black Bird, in its natural habitat, unleashing a torrent of bomb-like manure onto unsuspecting Earthlings.

Getting shit on by a bird A Daily editor’s experience with excrement gives him the perspective he was missing in this game we call life

Ben Peck

The McGill Daily

Y

esterday a bird shat on me.

I was walking along, minding my own business, munching on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich when splat, I was hit.

I actually caught a glimpse of the perpetrator moments before the fecal load had been dropped. Like a deer in headlights, my eyes glazed over as the brown clump bore down on me, a karmic meteor collecting all my debts to society in one fell swoop.

At first, I was angry with this sudden surplus of shit in my life, but the positive features of the situation quickly began to present themselves.

Well at least the worst possible thing about today has already happened, I thought; and my slick raincoat would

also make the cleanup process much smoother. “You’ve got mud on your face, you big disgrace,” bubbled through my mind, but much to my relief, my face had been spared.

As I turned into the nearest possible building with public restrooms, I was shocked that no one I passed called me out on having shit smeared across my torso. No double takes, no, “Yo, bro, that brown shit across your jacket...wouldn’t happen to be shit, would it?” Had this occurred, I would have calmly replied, “Yes, this substance sliding down my chest is the excrement of another creature. It is the collective waste of another entity, and I am now covered in it.”

Wiping someone else’s shit off of yourself is an incredibly humbling experience. It really puts things into perspective. I came to the conclusion that you can be literally anywhere on

this planet, and something could shit on you. And it will never ever help you wipe it off.

This was not the first time I have had a bird shit on me either. My first and only other experience was in the eighth grade, during a class trip to Washington D.C. While I attribute less malice to the likely-newdeceased seagull perched above my bench than the aforementioned bird who had essentially strafed me, this earlier experience was much more pregnant with meaning. As I peoplewatched the various homeless scattered about the park from my cozy bench in front of the capital building, bird shit dripping down my pant leg, I reflected upon the significance of being shit on in the presence of one’s own government.

And yes, I did finish my sandwich.

Eventually.

McGill THE

Your voice since 1911

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