vol98iss8

Volume 98, Issue 8

September 25, 2008

McGill THE

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News

The McGill Daily, Thursday, September 25, 2008

3

HOT SEAT

A throughfare for bikes unsafe: Nicell J im Nicell, Associate VicePrincipal (University Services), observed Car-Free Day on Monday holed up in his office, catching up on work. Responsible for the physical development of the University and with a background in environmental and civil engineering, Nicell could be the one to turn McGill’s campus into a car-free zone.

He seemed primed to help cut back McGill’s carbon diet as students expected him to by embracing alternative transportation systems and green initiatives. While Nicell sees McGill’s future as free of vehicles, with the exception of security and delivery, he is strictly opposed to creating a bike route connecting the Milton and Maisonneuve paths, though the McGill cycling population is expected to triple over the next two decades. The Daily tracked down Nicell this week to seek an explanation.

McGill Daily: How do you think that McGill can improve the sustainability of the campus infrastructure through coordinating pedestrians, cyclists, and vehicles?

Jim Nicell: The thing that we’re struggling with is how to accommodate the shift away from independent car transport over to alternative forms – bikes as well as other means, and then give people the services that they need for them.

But to [continue to] meet the safety needs of the University is a phenomenal issue. The fact is, if you stand outside Dawson Hall at a busy time of day and you watch what’s happening below – deliveries, and students being released from classes, and then the bikes, it’s much better now because we have a security guard, but the bikes create a confluence of people that is phenomenally dangerous. Long-term, we don’t want to have these cars and trucks – it’ll take a long period of transition. But in the

meantime we’ve got to ensure the safety of our people.

MD: You told The Gazette this spring that McGill wouldn’t be building a bike path to connect the Milton and Maisonneuve bike paths, primarily because McGill didn’t want commuters to be moving through the campus.

JN: There’s an element of truth to that, in the sense that when the city of Montreal built the bike path to the Milton gates, they never talked to us.

And what ended up happening was, there’s this incredible flow of people to our gates. We counted on one day 3,000 bikes. Five hundred appeared to have stayed, but 2,500 others went through, and the majority went against the flow of traffic, creating innumerable reports of accidents or near-misses.

MD: Wouldn’t a bike path solve many of those safety issues?

JN: We have no authority over people coming through our campus to issue a ticket, to bring them in front of courts to deal with repeated behavior.... I think there are alternatives.

I know they’re not great, but we’re working with the city very closely to see if we can get a proper connection between the north-south corridor and the east-west-corridor of the de Maisonneuve path. One of the things we were looking at is the possibility of a bike path down University Street, or a number of the other streets.

McGill has more than enough right to set certain boundaries on the way its campus is used. Most of us wouldn’t let a bike path through our own personal properties; I’m not sure why McGill should let it happen either. Imagine we make ourselves wide-open to city bike traffic, and somebody gets hit by a bike. Imagine the headlines. People are going to say, ‘You built an unsafe system that allowed bikes to go through here, but [say] you didn’t take care of the

Stephen Davis / The McGill Daily

Pedestrian safety is of paramount concern to Jim Nicell, who says a bike lane on campus is dangerous. other people on your campus.’ We had a staff member killed at McGill University a number of years ago, not on McGill, but right across the street.

It was by a cyclist riding on a sidewalk. Do you think we’re going to allow that to happen at McGill?

MD: If there were to be a cycling accident at McGill, wouldn’t it be better for liability reasons to have a bike lane that would delineate where cyclists should be?

JN: Liability is not what’s driving me here. It’s the fact that somebody could get killed. We want to think of this campus and where we want to be 20, 50, 100 years from now. If we open up [bike] traffic through the campus, basically we’re turning on a tap that we can’t shut off. What we want to do is turn this University into a pedestrian-friendly, open, porous, almost a park-like atmosphere, which is what

would be achieved if we eliminated some of the parking and vehicle traffic on our campus. And I honestly don’t think that having what I think would become a [bike] highway in 10, 15 years – I don’t think it would be consistent with that vision, and I don’t think it would be safe.

MD: What is the grand scheme for the James Admin–Macdonald engineering campus area then?

JN: I can’t tell you what that whole layout is going to be, but I think it’s a great opportunity to rethink that whole area in a way that would enhance the safety of everybody....

The tunnel project will be completed sometime in August 2009, and the last stage is landscaping, and we have a number of landscape architects, transportation people, specialists that are looking at this whole area to come up with some interesting

concepts. We’re rethinking the way things are organized, the circulation patterns of the University, and to improve the green space.

MD: So are we going to be keeping those traffic guards there for all eternity?

JN: We can’t afford to. It’s costing a fortune. Last fall it cost about $5,000 to keep a security guard there. It’s not a sustainable solution, but there’s no way we’re going to have a dedicated bike path across campus for the public. We want to make sure McGill becomes a destination for people with bikes. We want to make sure this is a place people can come safely and bring their bikes and use it as a way of commuting to McGill. But we should not become a thoroughfare to the public.

– compiled by Kelly Ebbels

SSMU wants to snatch corporate employee training funds Henry Gass

News Writer

S

SMU has proposed to redirect poorly invested private funding required under Quebec’s one per cent training investment program to McGill coffers.

As stipulated by Emploi-Québec, multi-million dollar private companies must allocate one per cent of their profits toward employee training, but SSMU argued that since university education is essentially employee training, the private funding should be directed to universities

and other post-secondary institutions.

SSMU VP External Devin Alfaro, explained that the company’s required investment was often misplaced.

“Companies are obligated to invest money into worker training [and] any money that isn’t spent gets taxed,” he said. “What ends up happening is that companies end up not spending the money wisely [and] just wasting it.”

The administration’s response to this issue could be hard to anticipate, Alfaro explained, since McGill may worry that extra public alloca-

tion of resources may discourage direct funding from private companies.

“Companies may think they’ve already given [through the remodeled one percent plan],” said Alfaro, “so it may have a negative impact on the funding McGill gets directly.”

In 2007, McGill Principle Heather Monroe-Blum spearheaded a capital campaign, which aims to raise 750-million dollars through donations from corporations and private philanthropists. With substantial donations heavy-hitters like HydroQuebec – that gave $10-million to the

campaign – Blum is more than half way to reaching her goal.

Nonetheless, Morton Mendelson, Deputy Provost (Student Life & Learning) stressed that McGill is still in a precarious financial position.

“McGill is woefully underfunded,” he wrote in an email to The Daily, but then admitted that he knew “virtually nothing about the plan,” and could not yet officially comment on it.

SSMU has yet to notify the administration of its plan.

With McGill in dire need of additional funding, an increase through a new one percent plan could ben-

efit everyone on campus, and even, as Alfaro argued, the campus itself.

Alfaro hoped extra funding dollars collected through the one per cent campaign could be directed to improving buildings and classrooms, and decreasing undergraduate class sizes.

“Course sizes are getting ridiculous now. Lecture halls aren’t big enough,” Alfaro said, suggesting extra funding could be used to expand lecture halls, or provide multiple sections for some courses.

SSMU declared they will rally student support for this initiative in future months.

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News

The McGill Daily, Thursday, September 25, 2008

5

Canada heals Commission confronts memories haunting former Indian Residential School students

Kartiga Thiyagarajah News Writer

A

Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to be held over the weekend in Montreal will create a forum for victims of the Canadian residential school system for First Nations youth. The conference, entitled Breaking the Silence, will mediate discussion and reconciliation between the victims of residential schools and their assailants.

“It is a high aim, but not an idealistic one,” said Martin Blanchard, assistant director of the Centre de Recherche en Éthique de Montréal, and an organizer of the conference.

“We want to break the silence, bring together aboriginals and non-aboriginals. And that starts with a sincere apology.”

Throughout the 19th century, Catholic and Protestant churches attempted to assimilate 150,000 First Nation children into mainstream Canadian culture by teaching English, agriculture, and Christianity. A long list of allegations have been made against the 130 schools, including sexual abuse and crowded, unsanitary conditions where the children boarded. The last of these school, located in Saskatchewan, was closed in 1996.

Blanchard believes participants will achieve reconciliation by rehashing the history of these residential schools, and hopes the Commission could disindoctrinate the notion that victims should simply forgive and forget.

However, Kimberly Phillips, a spokesperson for the TRC, commended the Commission for tackling experiences from Indian residential schools that continue to haunt victims and Canada as a whole.

“This Commission is unique because it is the first court-ordered TRC to be established,” she said. “While legal issues will be addressed, we will also emphasize the experiences of former students.”

Blanchard pointed out that of First Nations people all over Canada were expressing strong interest in the event.

“It’s very difficult to reach out to

aboriginals. In previous conferences, there has been very little participation,” he said. “But when it comes to residential schools, they have a lot to say.”

Blanchard recalled the aboriginals’ lack of faith in the ability of government initiatives to better their lives. He believes that has changed with the TRC. “The aboriginal groups that I have spoken to tell me that this Commission has given them hope. It is also making the academic community aware of an issue that has long since been ignored,” he said.

The conference will feature four panel discussions, the first of which – Reconciliation: An International Perspective – will be chaired by Christa Scholtz, a McGill professor in the department of political science.

“The panel will explore the politics of apology, internationally speaking,” said Scholtz, referring to the formal apology of Prime Minister Stephen Harper on June 11 to the vicitims of residential schools. Harper’s statement follows the actions of Australia and New Zealand, countries which instituted similar policies toward aboriginal populations.

“It will attempt to distill the experiences of the aboriginals and the lessons learned into actual suggestions for the Canadian government and its treatment of aboriginals,” added Scholtz. “Any mechanism that brings together policy makers, academics, and aboriginals to discuss such an issue as residential schools is valuable.”

“

We want to break the silence, bring together aboriginals and nonaboriginals. And that starts with experience – Martin Blanchard Assistant Director of the Centre de Recherché en Ethique de Montréal

Other panels will discuss the ethical challenges of reconciliation, the role of the media, and the relationship between memory and truth, incorporating academics and experts from a wide range of disciplines.

Anyone affected by residential schools is encouraged to heal by sharing their personal experiences.

mcgilldaily.com

FINISH

START SAVING LIVES

Michelle Kwok for the McGill Daily

Drug cocktail wings its way to Rwanda Nikki Bozinhofff

The McGill Daily

C

anadian medicine to fight HIV/AIDS left for Rwanda yesterday, reviving criticism of the complex federal legislation that allows generic producers to export patented, life-saving drugs to developing countries.

Civil society organizations and generic manufacturers are lauding the delivery, but say that unless the legislation – called the Canada Access to Medicines Regime (CAMR) – is modified, this first shipment will also be the last.

Wednesday’s delivery of 7-million three-in-one antiretrovirals manufactured by generic pharmaceutical producer Apotex Inc. and expected to save the lives of 21,000 people is the first shipment of generic drugs to leave Canada in the four years since the legislation has been in place.

Apotex has been working since 2004 to produce inexpensive drugs for export to the developing world – a process they describe as long and unnecessarily bureaucratic.

“There is a reason no other company has tried to provide medicines under this regime,” said Jack Kay, Apotex’s president. “It is too complex and has to be repeated for every request that comes in from a country.”

Currently, generic manufactures must conduct what they say are typically lengthy and unfruitful negotiations with patent-holders to ask them for a voluntarily license to produce the drugs. Should patent-holding manufacturers not wish to grant a voluntary licence, as happened to Apotex, the generic manufacturer must then file for a compulsory

license with the government. This process must be repeated for each recipient country and for each quantity of drugs intended for export.

With generic manufacturers unwilling to repeat the process under the current Regime, Richard Elliott, Executive Director of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, was concerned that Canada’s regime would do little to alleviate the health problems facing the developing world.

“People are not getting medicines that they need...and it is clearly not because [of a lack of need]. It is because the process is unnecessarily time consuming and cumbersome,” he said. “[CAMR] has worked once....

Our concern is that it won’t get used again. It’s not good enough.”

Intended to facilitate the export of inexpensive generic drugs to treat diseases like HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis that affect the leastdeveloped countries, the CAMR was created to exempt generic pharmaceutical companies who produce these drugs for the least-developed countries from patent laws that grant long-term monopolies to the research-based pharmaceutical companies that develop the drugs.

Many groups have asked for a “one-license solution,” which would allow generic pharmaceutical companies to produce the licensed drug without having to reapply for a separate license for each shipment and country, paying a royalty based on the quantity produced. While Industry Canada reviewed the system, it concluded that more time was needed before a proper assessment of the Regime could occur.

Canadian Grandmothers for Africa: A National Advocacy Network demonstrated last night at Union Station in downtown Toronto to

show support for Apotex’s efforts, and to try to mobilize support for CAMR reform prior to the October federal election. “[This demonstration] is a call to action to fix this system and to fix it now,” said Carole Holmes, spokesperson for the Grandmothers. “If the political will was there, we know that it would have been fixed in weeks, not years.”

According to Elliott, the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network has submitted questions to all five federal parties, and responses will be made available to the public on the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network’s web site on Monday.

Elliott suspected that the government may try to trumpet Tuesday’s drug delivery as evidence that CAMR is functional.

“I would assume that now that the drugs are finally leaving that [the government] will reiterate their position.

I didn’t think it was convincing then, and I don’t think that it’s convincing now,” said Elliott.

Elliot seemed to be correct.

While Industry Canada will continue to monitor the effectiveness of the program, it has said that CAMR does seem to be working.

“This [Tuesday’s drug shipment] demonstrates that CAMR can help deliver generic drugs to help combat disease in the developing world,” Industry Canada’s senior media-relations advisor Annie Trepanier, wrote in an email to The Daily.

Holmes said that Canada has an obligation to fix CAMR so that it can live up to its commitment to provide access to essential medicines for developing countries.

“I think that for Grandmothers, who tend to keep their promises, this just doesn’t do it,” Trepanier said.

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News

The McGill Daily, Thursday, September 25, 2008

7

$25-billion ÷ 20 years Liberal postsecondary platform is “greatest investment in recent history,” student groups say Matthias Lalisse

The McGill Daily

S

tudent groups are buzzing in the wake of last Wednesday’s release of the Liberal party’s new postsecondary education platform, which over the next 20 years will put $25-billion in the hands of students facing rising debt and tuition.

Zach Churchill, National Director of the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (CASA), said the platform addressed backlogged student demands.

“This represents the greatest investment in recent history, and probably in the history of Canada,” he said. “It reflected a lot of the things that CASA has been pushing for the past few years.”

The Liberal platform promises 200,000 need-based bursaries of up to $3,500 per year, as well as 100,000 access grants of up to $4,000 per year allocated to traditionally underrepresented minority groups, such as Aboriginal Canadians. These programs would replace the Canada Student Grants (CSG), set to com-

mence for the 2009-2010 school year which will replace the expiring Canada Millenium Scholarship Foundation. The platform also adapts the targeted and need-based grants that were a large focus of the CSG. Nova Scotia MP Michael Savage, the Liberal critic on postsecondary education issues, said past grant systems have not been sufficient for many students looking to pursue postsecondary studies.

“We need to make sure that students who are not able to get to postsecondary education, students who can’t afford it, are represented in the system,” said Savage. “We need to make sure that we have a more robust system of need-based grants.”

The Liberals also promised annual $5,000 student loans available to all students regardless of income, lowered interest rates on student loans, and an extension of the interest-free grace period for loans. Savage noted that the current cutoff for financial assistance based on family income left students from middle-income brackets in a tricky situation where they remained ineligible for government assistance, yet also unable to fund their education themselves.

“Because of the high cost of postsecondary education, there are many families who aren’t poor by normal standards, but are still not able to afford a postsecondary education,” said Savage.

The platform also promises to scrap the non-refundable income tax credits for postsecondary education and directly grant students about $1,000 a year, distributed quarterly with the GST rebates. These tax credits often come under fire since they are only redeemable once the students’ salaries are high enough to be taxed, which few students achieve until after graduation.

In addition, the plan calls for increased support for university research through a number of federal grant programs to drive innovative research and development projects.

However, Alex Usher, the vicepresident of research and the Canadian director for the Educational Policy Institute, a higher-education research organization, said in a Macleans article that the $25-billion policy over a 20-year timeline was not focused and resembled a “grab bag” of ideas “plucked out headlines from a number of research reports.”

Katherine Giroux-Bougard, National Chairperson for the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS), also spoke against the general positive reaction.

“The only concern is that it doesn’t address rising tuition fees,” said Giroux-Bougard, explaining that rising costs outstripped the benefits of loans and grants.

Giroux-Bougard suggested that a federal transfer payment structure that funded provincial governments with grants earmarked specifically for postsecondary institutions could be more effective. “[We want] something very similar to what’s been done for health care,” she said.

But according to Churchill, the federal government cannot establish tuition frameworks, which are regulated at the provincial level, and should focus on student grants and loans.

“The role that the federal government can play is in alleviating the burden for students.”

Savage agreed, noting that equal access to grants would assist students in need.

“We can’t control tuition, but we can make sure that there is equality of access across this nation,” said Savage, adding that the pan-Canadian agreement pursued by CFS would be a desirable goal, but could not be expected in the foreseeable future.

But although generous, the Liberals’ focus on postsecondary education does not come as a surprise.

“

We can’t control tuition, but we can make sure that there is equality of access across this nation –Michael Savage Liberal postsecondary education critic

“We expect good things from all of the parties,” said Churchill. “We’re faced with the reality in this country that if we don’t invest in the education system now, there are going to be huge repercussions to the economy and the people.”

The Daily will have continuing coverage of each major party’s position on postsecondary education funding reform and improvement in upcoming issues.

Campus eye

Oxfam McGill members demonstrated in front of the Roddick gates Monday to represent mothers who die in childbirth due to a lack of adequate medical care.

Male and female students lodged balloons under their clothing and took turns popping their balloon every minute before falling to the ground. The skit lasted five minutes and was conceived to imitate the childbirth mortality rate for women in the developing world.

One woman every minute dies in childbirth around the world.

Shu Jiang for The McGill Daily

8

News

The McGill Daily, Thursday, September 25, 2008

Quebec schools get failing grade: former premier English schools faring better than French schools for graduation rates Giuseppe Valiante

CUP Quebec Bureau Chief

M

argaret Blair knows what’s wrong with the education system in Quebec because she’s in the thick of it. She’s the director of the Interact Alternative Learning Centre in Notre-Dame-deGrace, teaching students who don’t succeed in the mainstream system.

And when the former premier of Quebec delivered a scathing review of the state of the province’s public schools last week, she wasn’t surprised.

“It just made a lot of sense to me,” she said. “It’s always been obvious that there are structural problems that need to be addressed.”

Jacques Parizeau, the separatist premier of Quebec in the mid1990s, wrote an open letter to one of Montreal’s French dailies, calling the education system in this province “scandalous” and an “incredible waste that is threatening our future.”

His criticism focused on what he

considers to be the unacceptable gap in graduation rates between students in public and private schools, the English and French school boards, and boys and girls.

Statistics released by Quebec’s Department of Education at the beginning of the summer show that fewer than 60 per cent of all Quebec students who started high school in 2002 graduated on time.

Parizeau said the statistics showed 83 per cent of students in the private system who started high school in 2002 graduated on time compared with 53 per cent of students in the public system.

Of students who started high school in 2002, 58 per cent in the French system graduated on time compared with 69 in the English one.

And in Montreal’s French school board, only 36 per cent of boys who started classes in 2002 graduated on time, compared with 46 per cent of girls. In the English system, 67 per cent of boys graduated on time, compared with 71 per cent of girls.

However, because the statistics do not account for socio-economic differences between students in different groups, the correlation in completion rates does not necessarily mean there is a caustic relationship. For example, children who go to private schools mainly come from more affluent families who can afford such schools, and can also spend more money to help their children through school, by hiring private tutors, for example.

Blair said the problem starts before high school. According to her, there isn’t enough money and staff directed at elementary schools, and students aren’t learning the basics because it’s easier to get by when the same teacher takes on multiple courses.

But when a child who has been pampered and passed along ends up in high school, their lack of knowledge stands out. And since high school is centered on more independent study, these kids who have a lack of basic knowledge become frustrated and drop out.

Another problem Blair noted is the large number of bureaucrats at the Department of Education.

“They seem [to] disconnect themselves from the day-to-day teaching. They forget the classroom. It becomes so entrenched in policy they lose track of the child’s education,” she said.

David Birnbaum, executive director for Quebec English School Boards Association, said the entire public school system needs more money and teachers to handle diverse classrooms.

According to Birnbaum, teachers need more teaching aids and more resources to help kids outside the classroom.

“We would also like to see more corporate support,” he said.

Corporations in the community should adopt a school, invite students into research labs, and have their professionals offer workshops, he suggested, to supplement provincial dollars.

Parizeau wrote in his letter that the problem with low graduation

rates in the public school system is too serious to start blaming specific people. He said the province needs to first ask itself how it got to this point, and why.

Blair said she doesn’t know the answers to those questions, but stresses that more schools like hers should exist.

Her school has ten children ages six to 14. They all have varying learning disabilities, and the mainstream school system has not been able to meet their needs.

The problem is that as far as she knows, Interact is the only school of its kind in Montreal – and there are more than ten children who need special help beyond the classroom.

“There should be one [Interact Centre] in every community,” she said.

But Blair has been turned down every time she’s asked the government for money since her school started eight years ago. It’s also difficult to get teachers to come in and work for $22,000 a year, she said.

“I know I’m making a difference,” she said. “I just can’t stop now.”

OFF-Campus eye

Over 300 cyclists dropped dead in a tangled mess Monday – Montreal’s car-free day – as part of the third annual “Alive without my car!” die-in. Organized by the Montréal à Vélo collective, a Montreal organization that advocates for commuter cyclists interests, the theatrical event denounced the negative effects of car presence: accidents leading to death and injury, noise and air pollution, and the economic cost of car infrastructure.

According to figures published by the “Direction de santé publique’, road-related injuries have risen to 12, 000 each year in Montreal alone.

Dominic Popowich / The McGill Daily

The McGill Daily, Thursday, September 25, 2008

Photo Essay

9

Mongolia Irwin Adam Eydelnant

10 Features

Danger, gimme danger The Daily’s Erin Hale catches up with some of Montreal’s bike messengers – the ultimate urban daredevils

I

t’s midday, and I’m sitting with a group of bike messengers at the Beach – a hangout known by most passersby only as a cement bench near Place Ville Marie. At the moment I’m speaking to Papa, who, at 47, is one of the older messengers in the group. He’s standing a few feet away holding his bike and a joint, and telling me how he quit his job at a rubber factory to become a messenger.

“At this job, you’re outside; you have central control over what you are doing,” he says. “Me, I can smoke my joint a couple of times a day, and no one bothers me. I can smoke it all day long, that’s it. Couriers aren’t in boxes.”

Maybe I’m wrong to begin with this image: While it’s not surprising that Papa is so open about getting stoned on the job, not all messengers smoke. Like he said, bike couriers don’t fit into any definite mold. A huge variety of people take on the job, so I should mention that my experience is limited almost solely to the guys at the Beach: this article is really about them.

Couriering works something like this: individual couriers are contracted out by dispatch teams to deliver anything from cheques to blueprints. Since fax machines and the Internet have become the major mediums for document exchange, there has been concern that the bike courier could go extinct, but there are still some things, like signed documents, that need to be delivered by hand. For now, the community is alive and kicking.

Kole was the first messenger I met. I accosted him on the street one day, and later, over coffee, he hashed out the basic details of his job. He explained that there are three different kinds of messengers: those who approach it as a nine-to-five profession, those who only stick it out for the summer – the despised “butterflies” – and those who treat couriering as a lifestyle.

To me, the lines seem a bit blurry – the professionals and the lifestyle couriers fade into each other – but for Kole, who has couriered around Europe and North America, the distinctions are clear.

Later in the interview Kole vents about cou-

The McGill Daily, Thursday, September 25, 2008

11

Stephen Davis / The McGill Daily

riering in Montreal, claiming it’s the worst city he has worked in. According to him, couriers are treated with little respect here.

“On like six separate occasions, I had people ask me what a courier was. [People will ask] ‘Is it, like, a mailman?’” he tells me. Kole and another friend later conclude they are basically “squeegee mailmen.”

T

here is an interesting paradox in Montreal: messengers face a lot of hostility, and yet aspects of their lifestyle have been appropriated into popular culture – everything from fixed gear bikes to messenger bags. I even heard one go so far as to complain that a lot of hipsters were trying to dress like geeky messengers.

Most messengers insist that their job is far from glamorous. Couriers are paid commission of a per-delivery basis. An average messenger earns between $50 and $70 a day; those with a particular knack for running red lights and weaving in and out of traffic may rake in $100.

Though messengers sign contracts with dispatch companies, the companies are not legally or financially responsible for their employees.

The messengers are technically self-employed, and thus have no job security, disability insurance, or other benefits. They pay for any mechanical problems with their bikes, and for the consequences of their accidents. After a crash, one messenger tells me, “I radioed in to say I’d been hit, and they were like ‘Alright, take 15 minutes.’” Furthermore, Montreal messengers aren’t unionized, and their efforts to join the Postal Union have failed repeatedly.

Denied financial and physical security, people don’t become messengers for the job perks, but because they do not have the skills – a university degree, proficiency in French – to work elsewhere.

“I don’t have the choice of another job... here I only make $50 to $60 a day at most,” says Houman, a lone courier I met on the other side of Place Ville Marie. When I ask why he keeps going, he tells me what I would hear again and again: that if he has to work for a minimal wage,

he’ll at least do something he enjoys.

Kole feels the same way. “The money isn’t so good. But I don’t do it for the money. I do it because I like the job. I like the freedom, the exercise. We work eight hours a day non-stop.

Fuck the Olympics, these are the people we should be respecting,” he says. “You have five minutes here to grab a cigarette, five minutes there to grab a coffee. On average you have 32 jobs a day – [but it can get up to] 64 pickups over an eight-hour day. That’s one building every seven and a half minutes, including distance, the elevator, and the signature.”

C

ouriers take exceptional pride in their work, mainly because of the danger it involves.

Many messengers carry themselves with a certain bravado stemming from their consciousness of precisely how much work goes into the job. In Montreal, a courier-wannabe can only break into the inner circle by biking through an entire winter – a trial by fire, given Quebec’s climate.

But messengers are quick to recognize who genuinely deserves recognition and who does not. There is definite disdain for “hipsters” who dress like messengers without doing the work.

When Jesse, who has been a courier on-andoff for five years, sees kids on fixed gear bikes he yells, “Hey buddy! It’s a full time job!” The Beach guys, at least, try to keep these “possengers” away.

“For sure it’s one of the subcultures that exists for real – and its not just something you can sell,” says Naki, one of the guys at the Beach, of the messenger culture. “You don’t have to go to school for it, and you have a lot more fun than you’re supposed to.”

Although couriers are able to build reputations within their inner circles, many remain on the periphery of mainstream society, as observers or ghosts. Almost every messenger I spoke to has a tale of an important event they witnessed before the media arrived, though they seldom partook in it themselves. One messenger remembers hearing a co-worker over the radio say: “Hey guys, I’m down by Dawson, and

someone just walked in with a gun.”

Many messengers have trouble finding their own space in the city. The job is all about mobility, but there is still some downtime, and it is in these periods –between calls, for example – where messengers’ marginalization stands out.

The Beach is often an alternative to their bikes, but it’s hardly a haven. Even there, couriers get pushed around. Chris, a former messenger, says that for 20 years messengers have struggled to claim the space.

“We always kind of move around Place Ville Marie because of our smoking. We’ve gotten pushed further and further down the cement promenade lately. Then they put Starbucks in, and now they’re complaining about the weed smell,” he says.

I have to note that the Beach is definitely a boys’ club. There are very few women in the industry, which some couriers attribute to the job’s physical demands. While I expected to witness some misogyny, overall the guys I interviewed seemed extremely respectful of their female counterparts. When it came to ineracting with women outside of the industry, though, they acted a bit like teenage boys.

I

t took me some time to wrap my head around how couriers get on their bikes every morning, knowing how many risks – and how few rewards – they face throughout their workday.

Papa does not deny that the danger, though seductive, is a source of stress: “As much fun, and as easy as it seems to be a messenger, one of my friends died, another was in a coma for two weeks, and another is not walking. [The weight is] right on your back, but at the same time it’s the knowledge of all the difficulties the industry goes through every year that makes it interesting. Otherwise it wouldn’t be that enjoyable.”

It seems that because they work outside of the city’s norms, in some ways messengers make their own rules. Several told me they enjoy breaking laws all day long, running red lights or bypassing traffic. Some push their limits even farther, and take revenge on aggressive

drivers by kicking in their rear-view mirrors.

For some, the danger and excitement make the job. One messenger describes himself as a “terminal adrenaline junkie.”

“You want the danger to bother you – you know you need to take concern. But I think I like the danger,” says Sebastian, another messenger at the Beach. He is aware, however, that though this is part of the fun, his attraction to dangerous situations is not necessarily self-contained – others could pay the price for his recklessness. Messengers pose a danger to pedestrians and other cyclists, even if they try to be careful. With non-couriers adopting messengers’ clothing style, it’s not hard to imagine other bikers would also copy their well-practiced recklessness.

B

ike messengers are by no means class warriors, but there is a certain amount of classconsciousness among the Beach guys. Papa, Kole, and a few others are very aware of the middle class lives they chose to reject.

“I could’ve gone to school and been a lawyer or in middle management,” says Kole. “I’m 36 and have older friends with kids and houses, and once in a while I say, ‘you should’ve done that.’ But it’s not about making lots of money, but enjoying life – living.”

As a McGill student, I felt I had to cross a significant barrier – one that may still be there, in the messengers’ eyes – to make it in their crowd. They joke about people with disposable incomes, who ride with their specialty cycling gear. Though I suspect my bike, which I bought off the street, was stolen, I still felt as though the messengers placed me within that category. Still, it was the messengers’ rejection of a materialistic lifestyle and my own romantic notions of living outside of middle class norms that inspired me to write this piece in the first place. I am happy to say that the people I met managed to dispel a lot of my preconceived ideas. I admit, though, that I became a bit of a groupie. Like the Beach messengers themselves would put it – “it’s hard not to be seduced by the danger.”

12 Commentary

The McGill Daily, Thursday, September 25, 2008

Designing intelligent education

volume 98 number 08

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

The conversationalist

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production & design editors

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Stephen Davis le délit

Maysa Phares redaction@delitfrancais.com Contributors

Rosie Aiello, Nikki Bozinoff, Sophie Busby, Ian Becker, R. Dooley, Kelly Ebbels, delnant, Henry Gass, Miriam Gough, Olivia Hoffmeyer, Joe Howell (CUP), Shu Jiang, Michelle Kwok, Matthias Lalisse, Susannah Lee, Jaime MacLean, Sarah Mortimer, Duong Pham, Sasha Plotnikova, Dominic Popowich, Nicholas Van Beek, Jasmin Sander, Kartiga Thiyagarajah, Tessa Wallace

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

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All contents © 2008 Daily Publications Society. All rights reserved. The content of this newspaper is the responsibility of The McGill Daily and does not necessarily represent the views of McGill University. Products or companies advertised in this newspaper are not necessarily endorsed by Daily staff.

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ISSN 1192-4608.

Rosie Aiello

O

f course, people are entitled to their own beliefs, but those beliefs shouldn’t hurt anyone. While the Republicans have their charm, and the Conservatives have their fiscal strengths, I just can’t allow some of their members to keep on believing that teaching Intelligent Design in schools doesn’t hurt anyone. Recently, Ontario Progressive Conservative leader John Tory was heard saying such a thing – and in not such lovely rhetoric, either: “They teach evolution in the Ontario curriculum, but they also could teach the fact to the children that there are other theories that people have out there that are part of some Christian beliefs.” Encouraging the teaching of Intelligent Design in science classrooms in public schools implicitly casts doubt on a well-established theory, which harms the medical and scientific communities.

Some might argue that evolution does equal harm to the religious community, but evolution doesn’t preclude any belief in God. It’s a “false dichotomy” in the words of Brian Alters, Tomlinson Chair in Science Education and Director of the McGill University Evolution Education Research Centre. “I know a lot of evolutionary biologists that are extremely religious,” he says. Darwin wasn’t even an athiest. Aldous Huxley thought up the term “agnostic” to refer most specifically to him. Pope John Paul II himself sanctioned the marriage of evolution and religion in a 1996 address to the Pontifical Academy of Science saying, “There is no conflict between evolution and the doctrine of the faith regarding man and his vocation.”

And well, if I may hazard to be so personal, I will tell you that I believe in God myself, but I also believe in HIV/ AIDS and in Super Bugs. It’s going to be goddamn difficult to cure these things if we doubt the foundational principle of their solution: the theory of evolution. The difficulty in curing HIV/AIDS is that, once we think we have it figured out, the damn thing goes and evolves on us, leaving much suffering and horror in its path. Only through better understanding of the process of evolution will we figure out how to curb this twentieth century plague.

Then there are the Super Bugs.

Most would like to think of the hospital as a safe place to be, especially for patients like a grandmother whose immune system has been working

well for over 85 years. We want to feel that the hospital is somewhere to get well. But deep in the hospital drains lives strong and resistant bacteria that have evolved to withstand the whole range of antibiotic treatments that our good medical researchers have developed over the years. And so poor granny gets sick from those highly-evolved resistant bugs in the drains; she’s holding on by a thread, none of the classic antibiotics are working, and the only way we can cure her is through careful study of the process of bacterial mutation, natural selection, and evolution. Meanwhile, 42 per cent of Canadians aren’t convinced about the “theory” of evolution, according to a recent Angus Reid survey.

Well, I tell you, granny is sure convinced of evolution.

There may be a heap of good reasons for disagreeing with evolution – religious literalism, a belief in the “specialness” of the human species, narcissism – but none of those reasons can so much as approach the importance of what we could gain medically and scientifically from a general consensus of the truth of evolution.

The conversationalist will appear every other Thursday. That’s right folks, a bi-weekly dose of Rosie Aiello, known to some as Rosa, comin’ atcha from now through April. You can start your own conversations with her at theconver-

sationalist@mcgilldaily.com.

Until next time, get ready for more columns based on conversations with those who have earned PhDs. Conversation conversation.

Jasmin Sander for The McGill Daily

Commentary

The McGill Daily, Thursday, September 25, 2008

Save the world’s CEOs! Duong Pham

HYDE PARK

F

or the last three years, The Daily has opened my eyes to the plight of the forgotten and downtrodden. From the struggles of indie musicians trying to promote their shitty – um, unique – musical stylings to the gritty lives of the legions of Montreal cyclists whose commutes are so gruelling that they can’t be asked to learn how the traffic laws work. Well no more Daily.

Now it’s my turn to open your eyes to a small group of people currently being hurt by The Man (copyright 1984).

The largest financial meltdown in the world, and possibly the universe, has left literally hundreds of CEOs, CFOs, COOs, and VPs with nothing left to live for. Where will Johnson Fitzgerald Jr. IV Esquire get the money to pay for his third mansion in the Hamptons? How will he pay for his kid’s new car? A scant 12 months ago, Fitzgerald was a hard-working CEO who had grown up on the tough streets of the Upper East Side with nothing but upper class parents supporting him throughout his life.

He once owned four mansions

– four! – but now he’s in danger of losing one. Worse, his diet of cocaine binges, blue sturgeon caviar, and Petrus wine has been downgraded to more casual nose candy fun and regular caviar on Johnny Walker Blue, all to dull the pain. He even considered cancelling his daughter’s Centurion Card because he doesn’t think he can afford the $250,000 minimum annual spending requirement any longer.

Times like these call for heroes, and we need a hero now, more than ever. Heroes like U.S. Treasury Secretary (and former CEO of Goldman Sachs) Henry Paulson, who is literally putting his entire country’s finances at risk by asking the American taxpayer to pony up a $700-billion bailout package in order to save the asses of the unfortunate few. Truly, he is the man that John F. Kennedy was thinking of when he said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

Unfortunately, Paulson is only one man and $700-billion is only a 12 digit number. In past humanitarian crises – like the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami that almost took the life of hot supermodel Petra Nemcova – the international community has stepped up its efforts to help out those in

need. Well world, as global citizens this is one of those times but now, the United States richest 0.00001 per cent is Petra Nemcova and the tsunami is the sub-prime mortgage crisis.

With a simple call to your preferred country club and a minimum donation of $5,400 – less than the average Canadian tuition – you can help make sure that CEOs all over the world will be kept warm while facing those cool autumn nights on their luxury yachts floating somewhere in the middle of the Caribbean.

It is time for us to help out those who cannot help themselves and pull them out of their self-created gutters like they have helped us out of ours so many times in the past with trickle-down economics. Now, somewhere out there wanders a group of confused CEOs wandering the streets of New York City wondering, “How could this have happened?” and somewhere out there in the vast expanse of time and space, Winston Churchill is reminding us whenever the wind blows, “Never was so much owed by so many to so few.”

Duong Pham is a U3 Economics student. He’d like you, our valued readers, to know he’s being completely serious right now.

Letters: Love. From a frosh leader; to a U3 science student.

Letters Overall incompetence from a random frosh leader RE: “Doing justice to the new New Rez” | Commentary | Sept. 18 Oh hi. Allow me to introduce myself: I am the fabled Roland Lindala-Haumont that the four fine floor fellows of 515 Ste. Catherine felt necessary to single out as having no right to give an opinion on the state of McGill’s student residence system.

As you can see by my rudimentary writing skill, I am a poorly educated and utterly uninformed wretch.

My basis for having an opinion is simple. I was “rez-shafted” in my first year at McGill, being placed at Solin Hall on a temporary basis (having never been informed by the University of the consequences of drawing a shitty residence lottery number). Indeed, I was moved on short notice (a week before arriving at McGill) to Gardner Hall.

Not once did I denigrate their residence itself. In fact, the handful of froshies I had from 515 Ste. Catherine

loved their new digs and were all excited to live their first year at McGill there. My quote, although very brief, was directed toward the chronic overbooking that McGill Residences encounters year after year, despite agreements to have students live in Prez Rez and Dio. The point I was trying to make was simple: leasing four floors in 515 Ste. Catherine is a band-aid solution for the University’s overbooking woes.

McGill must invest in more permanent residences so that in the future there is no last-minute scrambling to find places to stay for first-year students who are willing to pay the big bucks and expect to have a fun and fulfilling Rez experience in return.

On a final note, I would like to thank the supercilious quartet emanating from the 515 MORE House for their stinging indignation and hyperbole, and I invite them in the future to perhaps consider that the thousands of other students who go to this University might have experiences that render their input valid as well. I apologize for expressing my opinion to a Daily reporter. Next time I promise I won’t speak out of turn.

Humbly Yours, A random frosh leader with no right to his opinions.

Roland Lindala-Haumont U2 Political Science and Canadian Studies

Right on, Karl! You’re the best!

RE: “Just a simple, friendly, quaint, suggestion” | Commentary | Sept. 18 I would like to thank Karl Tennessen, U3 Science, for reminding all of us students (especially first years) about CKUT-Radio and what a great radio station it is.

Not only is CKUT’s programming fine, but it offers an incredibly diverse range of local and world news, culture, and music. Don’t just take my word for it, listen to Karl and tune in to CKUT. By the way, Karl forgot to mention that you can listen by tuning your radio to 90.3 FM or online at ckut.ca.

Check it out!

Lee Fiorio U3 Geography More letters were received for this issue than could be printed.

They will appear in the next possible issue. Send your letters to letters@ mcgilldaily.com, and keep them to 300 words for style and brevity. The Daily does not print letters that are sexist, racist, homophobic, or otherwise hateful.

Please send potential Hyde Park submissions to commentary@mcgilldaily.com

13

Sasha Plotnikova / The McGill Daily

In 2006, SSMU Council ruled that Hema-Québec’s donor rules were incompatible with its anti-discrimination policies.

Without policy changes, blood drives threaten campus space R. Dooley

HYDE PARK

T

he blood drive debate has burned hot on our campus for the last couple years. Over much dispute, in November 2006 SSMU Council banned blood drives from the Shatner Building based on the belief that Health Canada’s policies for donor qualification were discriminatory.

In 2007, a referendum regarding the ban was brought to the Judicial Board. The ban was upheld and is still in existence to maintain a safer space in Shatner for those students who the blood donation qualifications discriminate against, notably, queer students.

The debate over blood drives in SSMU space is, for the moment, a closed case – that is, until Health Canada’s policies change. The question is, now that we created a safer space for students by banning blood drives within the confines of our Students’ Society, are we prepared to allow them to continue in other spaces on our campus?

This Monday through Thursday, Hema-Québec, the provincial drug agency, held blood drives in the Presbyterian College on University.

This still demonstrates a clear threat to the dignity of members of the McGill community.

Health Canada’s policies haven’t changed. They refuse to accept donations by men who have had sex with men since 1977, individuals who have had sex with men who have had sex with men since 1977, and by those who have accepted money or drugs for sex since 1977. These policies clearly alienate individuals’ sexual behaviours by placing an empha-

sis not on sexual practice and the safeness of the sex engaged in, but instead on sexual partnership. This displays a strong focus on excluding queer individuals and sex workers based on a discriminatory and stereotyped perception of their identities, not the quality of their blood.

These policies result in a hostile environment for those who fall under these categories at McGill, jeopardizing the safe space to which we should all be entitled.

In the advent of the Reclaim Your Campus campaign and other student led initiatives that aim to reinstate a respect for student life and opinion on campus, I believe an examination of the organizations that McGill allows within campus grounds is an inherent part of these movements.

After all, our campus should be a safe space for us all.

This is not an attack on blood donation itself, a criticism of the people who can donate blood, or even a criticism of the spirit of HemaQuébec’s presence on campus as a charitable organization. This is a criticism of McGill’s allowance of an organization harbouring unjust policies to occupy campus space and create an unfriendly environment for members of our community.

The presence of blood drives is, of course, not the only threat to a safe space on our campus. After further examination of who our University allows within our spaces, I’m sure we’ll find that visitors are not always accepted with respect in mind for the individual identities and needs of members of the McGill community.

This adds yet another list of lessons that we will have to teach our school.

R. Dooley is a U1 Psychology and Women’s Studies student. She can be reached at rdooley12@gmail.com.

Mind&Body

The McGill Daily, Thursday, September 25, 2008

14

Watch out Hogwarts, here comes McGill

Susannah Lee / The McGill Daily

Tessa Wallace

Mind&Body Writer

Y

ou can find them on lower field, practicing hard. They warmup, choose sides, and start a scrimmage. They could be any ol’ sports team, except the game they’re play comes straight out of the magical world. With broomsticks between their legs, and bludgers clutched in their hands, this group of sports-stars is bringing Quidditch to McGill.

Quidditch, a once fictional sport confined to the Harry Potter series, is difficult to explain. It is a mix of rugby, basketball, and dodgeball on broomsticks, with the main goal being to “seek out” a small golden ball, the snitch. Now that the rules have been adapted for non-magical, non-flying participants, McGill students are joining in.

If you think this is some elaborate

joke, you’re not the only one.

“Usually – when we tell them what we’re doing – people’s first reaction is ‘are you kidding me’ and the next reaction is ‘this must be a joke,’” said Karen Kumaki, U0, a founding member, and the Gringott’s Goblin of the club at McGill.

The novelty, and of course, the absurdity, of the game is enough to gather a group of spectators at each practice. They stop by to catch a glimpse, and a laugh, as the team plays.

“It looked a little ridiculous, we wanted a photo,” said Tony Kwan, a McGill student who had sat down to watch the game.

Other spectators wanted to get in on the action. “It looks challenging to [play with] a broom. I like it, I’m jealous,” said Jake Hoffman, an avid Harry Potter fan.

The club was started by six firstyear students just three weeks ago

and has yet to get official SSMU status. Still, 30 people attended the last practice, nearly 100 people are in the facebook group, and the local dollar store is sold out of broomsticks.

One member, Clara Thaisson, had a decorated broom and a lightning bolt scar drawn on her forehead. “I think it’s gonna be a magical time. I love Harry Potter, and I love sports, so why not combine the two,” she said, happy to explain why she joined the team.

The sport’s sudden increase in popularity means novice players are joining at every practice. As a result this new, complex game has to be constantly re-explained. There are five balls, six hula-hoops, and four different positions. The idea is to score by throwing one ball through the hulahoop, while avoiding the “bludgers,” dodgeball-style.

books means that it’s not hard to find those familiar with the ins and outs of Quidditch. In fact, most players have gotten so into the game that it’s already getting serious – dive tackle, injured

knee, broken broomstick serious.

“It’s really intense because the only official rules are to be creative.

When it comes to violence and physical contact, it’s whatever you think is appropriate in the game,” said Laing.

And, sure enough, the ground was littered with broken dollar-store brooms by the end of practice.

Away from lower field, the club executives – or warlocks, sorceresses, and goblins as they prefer to be called – are planning big for the new team.

“Hopefully we’ll go to the Quidditch world cup at Vermont in Middlebury and then we’ll [continue on] from there,” said Laing.

The tournament is scheduled at the end of October and the team already has more players signed up than they can afford to take. Clearly, this Muggle Quidditch team is well on their way to fulfilling their mission: “bring[ing] together sports enthusiasts and Harry Potter fans alike.”

option” on the menu, PETA has dropped the Canadian end of its “Kentucky Fried Cruelty” campaign, confirmed spokesperson and wedding organizer, Nicole Matthews.

She added that PETA is embracing its former foe in an effort to give the newly added vegan options more attention.

The popularity of vegetarianism in Canada seems to be on the rise – a 2003 report by the American Dietetic Association and Dieticians of Canada pegs Canada’s rate of vegetarianism at four per cent.

The report stated that, “interest in vegetarianism appears to be increasing, with many restaurants and college food services offering vegetarian meals routinely.”

In the U.S., where the vegetarianism rate is only 2.5 per cent of the population, KFCs have not followed Canada’s example, nor has PETA ended its campaign. Perhaps, in Canada, KFC’s meatless sandwich could prove to be more than just a PR stunt. The Canadian Colonel may have simply made a savvy business move.

To keep the game true to its Harry Potter roots, there is even a player clad in gold from head-to-toe serving as the snitch. It may seem confusing, but, according to another fouding member of the team, and Vice Warlock, Wren Laing, “Knowledge of the books definitely helps everyone play since it’s pretty similar [to the story].”

Despite the influx of newbies, the craze surrounding the Harry Potter

“

It’s really intense because the only official rule is to be creative – Wren Laing

Colonel Sanders hosts PETA wedding

Vegans tie the knot at KFC to promote new meatless sandwich in Toronto Joe Howell

CUP Ontario Bureau Chief

K

entucky Fried nuptials are not what most little girls dream about, but they’re what Alex Bury, animal rights acivist, got for her wedding to fellow activist Jack Norris outside a Toronto KFC. “[I’d] do it again in a second,” said Bury, Major Gifts Officer for the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).

The pair chose the unorthodox location to draw attention to PETA’s successful Canadian campaign to get a vegetarian sandwich on the KFC menu in most restaurants, as well as an agreement to start purchasing chicken from suppliers who slaughter their fowl humanely.

On September 11, the pair exchanged rings, danced to a string quartet’s rendition of Paul McCartney’s “Maybe I’m Amazed,” and shared vegan wedding cake with passersby, while the smell of fried bird wafted through the air.

And, of course, the wedding lunch was catered by KFC, featuring their new veggie sandwich.

“I’d pictured something a little more traditional, maybe Alaska, with all my friends and family around.

And gourmet food, not fast food,” said Bury.

But the pair, who have both worked on animal rights campaigns for years, saw it as somewhat fitting.

“Some couples get married during a marathon because they’re both runners,” reasoned Bury.

Due to the new, “cruelty-free

The McGill Daily, Thursday, September 25, 2008

How to impress your crush – er, we mean, study effectively Friends with food Sophie Busby & Olivia Hoffmeyer

What: “Study” Break Chocolate Chip Cookies How much it will cost : Stocking your baking cabinet for a long time (flour, sugar, vanilla, etc.): about $15 A big block of butter (450g, enough for two batches of cookies): $2.50 A bag of chocolate chips: $1.99 - $4 (varies depending on the sales at Provigo or jacked prices at the local dep) The look in that special someone’s eyes when they smell what you’ve got in the oven: priceless Why : Because let’s face it, we’re all cookie monsters at heart.

Midterms are around the corner and it’s time to start hosting study parties. We’re not quite ready to move into the library, but for those of you who are, cookies are a delightful and quiet snack to hide away in your bag – though we can’t technically endorse bringing in a batch. Shh. And what better study food than a classic: chocolate chip.

These cookies can be most effective when that certain cutie in your chemistry class comes over to compare notes if studying is not the only thing you have in mind (you know what we mean). Don’t underestimate the power of chocolate chip.

Cocolate chip cookies offer instant satisfaction, so head to the baking cabinet and within 30 minutes you should be back to the books, or whatever.

We included the price of butter and chocolate chips above. All the other ingredients you’ve now stocked up on should last well beyond finals.

“Study” break chocolate chip cookies • • • • • • • • •

1 C butter (if you use unsalted butter then put an extra ½ tsp of salt) ¾ C sugar ¾ C brown sugar (packed) 2 eggs 1 tsp vanilla ½ tsp of salt 1 tsp baking soda 2 C flour ½ - 1 bag of chocolate chips (depending on where you like your chocolate – in the cookies or in your mouth) Preheat oven to 350˚ Fahrenheit (175˚ Celsius). Soften butter in the microwave so you can stir it – do not melt! Add both types of sugar. Mix together until creamy. Mix in eggs. Add vanilla, salt, and baking powder. Stir.

Add the flour, and mix. Finally, stir in the chocolate chips.

Plop the dough in little blobs on the cookie tray. The size can be anywhere from a small spoonful to a big one. Make little cookies when feeding large groups, such as The Daily editorial board. Make big cookies when feeding yourself and that special someone. But not too big – you don’t want to feel sick in case our recipe leads to some more physical activity (yes they’re that good). Cook them in the oven for 9 - eleven minutes, better to take them out a little undercooked than overcooked, unless you’re one of those people who likes crunchy cookies. When undercooked they‘re chewy when they cool.

Brown sugar: Packing is important. It’s not enough to fill the measuring cup, stuff that sugar in. It should come out of the measuring cup shaped like a perfect, sugary sandcastle.

Baking soda v. baking powder – a fight to the death: Most don’t know the difference between baking soda and baking power, but it’s basically just that baking powder has both baking soda and other stuff in it. You can use either in this recipe, but soda makes more sense for cookies.

You can also leave your open baking soda carton in the fridge to absorb all those not-so-appealing smells – and don’t worry your cookies will still taste delicious if you use this stuff later. If you’re not making cookies for a large group at the moment, we highly recommend freezing the leftovers. Undercooked, frozen cookies can be kept in small baggies for emergencies.

Variations – if you’re in the squeeze for ingredients:

If you don’t have vanilla, you can substitute ½ tsp of cinnamon. They both taste delicious, but cinnamon can come off as more creative, and it makes the baking cookies smell even better! Make sure not to use both vanilla and cinnamon though, it tastes kind of funky – almost as bad as burning a role of pre-made cookie dough in the oven.

You can also make the cookies with 1 C oats and 1 ½ C flour. These make the cookies extra chewy, and the oaty texture makes them more interesting.

Another fun twist on the classic is adding ¾ C peanut butter to the butter and sugar mixture. If you’re feeling extra nutty (bad pun intended), add ½ C crushed walnuts alongside the chocolate chips. But please remember, these are chocolate chip cookies; the chocolate is a must.

Friends with Food will be dishing out dating advice and recipes – but mostly recipes – every other Thursday, starting today. Look for more recipes on the brand spankin’ new Friends with food blog at mcgilldaily.com

Mind & Body

15

BLOG

for the Daily

web@mcgilldaily.com for more information LEADERSHIP TRAINING PROGRAM

Leadership Skills Development Workshops If you are a student involved in campus activities as an executive, organizer or event planner, you qualify for the Leadership Training Program’s FREE Skills and Development Workshops.

Develop and build your leadership skills. Attend a minimum of five workshops throughout 2008-09 academic year and receive a certificate of completion.

This October, check out...

• Budgeting, Sponsorship & Fundraising Earning and Managing the Big Bucks Thursday, October 2, 5:30 pm-7:30 pm

Wondering where you can go to get funding on campus? Off campus? Find out where the big bucks are and how to get them before other people do!

• A to Zs of Running a Student Organization Wednesday, October 8, 5:30 - 7:30 pm

Are you new to a position of leadership or involved in a club or service? Learn the basics from the Pros and make your McGill organizing ride a lot smoother!

Registration for Workshops:

In person, one week in advance, on a first-come, first-served basis, in the First-Year Office.

For more info, drop by the First-Year Office in the Brown

Building, Suite 2100, or call 514-398-6913

Culture

The McGill Daily, Thursday, September 25, 2008

16

Everything A story by Sarah Mortimer

S

he was aware that death strode inches from her pedals, as she was aware of the fact that her eyes matched the colour of the light that now pulled her away from her thoughts and towards the next cement stretch.

It was a hard-edged truth that death inevitably came, and riding so close to it each day, she hardly gave it more attention than the greens and reds that brought her on these days from one location to the next.

Yellow fading into grey. This was how it was and this was how it would remain until after the patterns had turned black in her mind and her body had been burned black into the asphalt.

She drew her head to her chest and tried to re-summon the wind into her lungs that had escaped with the yellow markers behind her.

Sweat spilled from her forehead and vanished on her tires like snowflakes sinking into skin.

Yellow faded into grey.

She had taken this route for years. She followed its curves with cautious devotion. She stayed within the lines and she stopped when she was told.

The stores and people that patterned the sidewalks were nameless. She knew them like she knew what France was like without ever having crossed the Canadian border. She knew them like a tourist knew anything. She was passing through. She was headed somewhere else.

Their narratives hung suspended, running parallel to hers and never merging. They became scenery to her and in these scenes, a tree was a tree, a man was a tree, a child was a tree, and yellow faded into grey.

She had taken this route for years to a desk where everything happened. She had taken it to a desk that was decorated with pictures of people who she knew slightly better than the men and the trees on her route.

Beside the pencil sharpener on her desk was a photo of her brother, Jeremy. Jeremy was a birch, or rather, he had become one after the miles she had travelled, all these days refigured into years.

She had once known Jeremy like she had known the cat that filled the frame next to him, before it ran away and got hit by one of the cars that raced beside her. The cat had slept at the end of her bed every night for three years until its death and now she did not remember its name.

Her mind was speeding and her memory was grey. She did not remember its name.

“Who’s that in the photo?” she imagined someone asking.

“The cat?”

“No, the man.”

“Oh...that’s my brother, Jeremy,” she would answer. “We used to be really close...”

She wanted to remember him. Fragments of Jeremy came back to her – his unruly hair, his dirty hands – a certain closeness that she now

knew only in pieces. The pieces of a scattered puzzle, the pieces of her past.

The speed of her thoughts picked up. “When we were kids...when we were kids, we used to build forts and eat cheese and crackers under blankets.... We’d hide the crumbs under the cushions and my mom would complain because we were attracting mice.” She paused for a second before deciding, “But we liked mice.”

That conversation had never occurred outside of her own mind. In the place where everything was supposed to be happening, certain details remained always dormant.

Sirens cried, and Jane’s thoughts halted with her bicycle at a place where they had never stopped before.

The siren belonged to an ambulance that pulled up violently behind her. From its doors burst two men in blue scrubs hovering over a woman on a stretcher. She thought that the woman looked like a cloud being eclipsed by the sky. Her wheels locked, and her eyes locked on the scene before her.

“Breathe,” said one of the blue men.

“Everything is going to be okay”.

The woman’s eyes were half open and she was wearing an oxygen mask. Her head hung at her chest, and she was struggling to catch the breath that had escaped with the years behind her. The men didn’t waste time carrying the woman to the hospital nearby. Jane guessed that you don’t waste time when everything might not be okay.

As the woman on the stretcher was drawn away, her eyes met with Jane’s in a stare that felt longer than all the bike rides Jane had taken in her lifetime. In her eyes, she saw the woman asking the only question Jane had ever wished to be asked. “Who is that man in your photo?”

The woman and the blue men got closer and closer to the hospital doors, and again began to look like trees. She turned around and saw a man, not a tree. She stopped wasting time.

“How much will you give me for this bike?” she asked him.

“I dunno,” he said, his eyes were focused on the ground.

She ignored it. “Give me $2.75.”

The man asked Jane if there was a bomb attached to her bike.

“No,” said Jane.

She gave the man the bike and put his money into the change slot of a bus that was headed to her office. She got off early at a department store where she bought a sheet from a clerk named Lucy. Then she strolled into her office where nothing actually happened, and draped the sheet across her cubicle – and Jeremy.

“What are you doing?” asked her editor.

“Eating cheese and crackers,” Jane replied.

“I see that,” her editor said, irritated, “But what’s with the sheet?”

She pointed to the picture. “Have you ever met my brother Jeremy?”

Ben Peck / The McGill Daily

Culture

The McGill Daily, Thursday, September 25, 2008

Gone in 60 Seconds

17

The M60 Film Festival: legitimizing short media, one minute at a time Ian Becker

Culture Writer

I

f you’re like me, you spend three to five hours each night sitting in front of your MacBook. It may or may not be 3 a.m., and you may or may not be pants-shitting drunk.

You aren’t doing research, or typing essays. Instead, you’re watching babies do gymnastics or videos of people breaking their limbs in surprising and often hilarious ways.

You are drooling a lot, and the abundance of peanut butter on your clothes is, at the moment, awesomely exhilarating.

You are on YouTube, of course, and your morals, beliefs, and shapely physique are slowly drifting out of your dorm room window. Why do we subject ourselves to this lifestyle?

Why am I so hopelessly addicted to these videos? Am I observing artistic expression or honing my skills at some new type of voyeurism?

Wouldn’t it be better to just... die already?

Then again, maybe there are shreds of legitimacy in the way I live my life. Perhaps I am a smaller douche bag than I think.

To clarify these questions, and possibly raise my self esteem a wee bit, I spoke to Sylvan Lanken, one of the five organizers of M60, a film festival dedicated to minute-long films taking place today.

For Lanken, the YouTube phenomenon was a source of inspiration. “The idea that people now have shorter attention spans is not true,” he explains. “The ability to cram more into a minute is easier now than it has ever been. Older films feel

slow because now things happen at a quicker and more human pace.”

In fact, Lanken says that the 60-second time limit will provide a broader range of films. “You’ll see film makers doing very different things with their minute.”

And this seems to be true. There is graphic design student Janice Wong’s submission about her day off of work, only the second film she has ever done, ambiguously titled Janice’s Day Off. Then there are films like In a Mt. Royal Minute by Anna Berlyn.

Berlyn uses her minute to capture a sunrise on the top of Mount Royal.

“I spent a good two or three hours looking to capture the minute I wanted to get,” she says.

And although one would expect this type of work ethic from an experienced filmmaker, Berlyn is also an amateur, one of many who jumped

at the chance to participate in a film festival that accepted submissions from anyone, the inexperienced and professional alike. “Making the film was an excuse to learn about myself,” she notes.

The only criteria for an M60 submission was that it arrived on time and was free of illegal material.

Because of this, the film festival will be screening a wide array of submissions from a very diverse group of filmmakers.

By accepting work from anyone and collecting no application fees, M60 seems to escape the pretension that privately organized artistic festivals often fall victim to. After all, creativity is the only real prerequisite for artistic expression, and the structure of M60 facilitates this nicely.

But what differentiates the festival from YouTube and other “broadcast

yourself” domains? What element does M60 have that online video seriously lacks? I’m not sure if I know the answer, but this juxtaposition lends itself well to the ongoing debate over whether or not “new short media” counts as a legitimate form of art.

Regardless of your take on whether or not the YouTube short-film phenomena benefits and broadens the media community, or detracts from it substantially by catering only to young, feeble-minded, often-stoned college students, you will definitely want to go and check out M60. So for God’s sake, get up, clean off those peanut butter stains (lick them off), and head to La Sala Rossa.

M60 happens today at La Sala Rossa (4646 St. Laurent). The showing starts at 8:30 p.m. and admission is $7.

“This director has balls, and I’ve seen them” Vadim Glowna runs rampant in House of the Sleeping Beauties

Nicholas Van Beek Culture Writer

S

ometimes I just can’t resist pulling out a completely embarrassing German accent. “Jahh” of course, or “Es ist zu gross/zu klein!” or even the pop song reference, “Komm, gib mir deine hand.”

Needless to say, it was with a little bit of a German language fetish that I came across Vadim Glowna’s new, moody-looking adaptation of Yasunari Kawabata’s novella The House of Sleeping Beauties. This German film guru’s acting roots date back to 1964’s TV movie Henry Hero, followed by 1971’s big-screen The Dead From the Thames. His directorial debut Desperado City won him the Camera d’Or for the best first film at Cannes in 1981.

I went into House of the Sleeping Beauties with high expectations, and was immediately confronted with cinematography, close-up shots of the pale, wrinkly protagonist Edmund, and a highly stylized 1950s murder mystery soundtrack. An enlightening monologue on death and the futility of life, shot in the stairwell of an empty subway station, dominates the film until Kogi, Edmund’s best friend in the whole world, is introduced.

Kogi is a scarf-sporting, whitebearded, tortured intellectual wannabe-cum-German Sean Connery

who happens to keep a giant, galloping Pegasus statue heroically placed on the balcony of his stormy highrise condo. When he tells Edmund to sleep next to naked sedated women in a tucked away, secret bordello on the advice that he “gave up on women as women a long time ago,” I knew, if nothing else, that this was going to be controversial.

Glowna gets right to the point, and quickly has Edmund awkwardly walking into the mysterious bordello to find a suspicious Madame who seems to be hiding something behind her strategically-placed mole. Predictably, the protagonist gets into bed with a sedated girl, but rather unpredictably, he starts shooting off lines like “You smell of milk,” after – the audience cringes – his dangling jowl curls up just enough to allow his wrinkled lips a taste of her nipple.

Even more unpredictably, he finds that the girl reminds him of his mother, and keeps going. Now this is pretty much how the plot continues; variations include the Cruella De Vil-esque Madame offering him two girls instead of one, and something about a body bag being hauled out of the house, but by this point, who cares?

If Edmund isn’t being chauffeured around in the rain in his sleek, black Mercedes to the sound of a gloomy, blatant Massive Attack knockoff, he’s contemplating his mortality in front of a reflective high-rise window, overlooking the city, smoking while shooting off self-indulgent lines like “Death comes to us only once”.

He’s constantly taking off his black trench coat and lighting ciga-

Courtesy of First Run Features

Glowna haunts your dreams while his mistresses sleep. rettes. Certainly, one of the film’s focal points is how Edmund wears and removes what seems to be an elaborate wardrobe of suspenders, dress shirts, and undershirts.

For me, the film really came together in the closing credits.

All the nipple sucking, all the contemplative filler spoken over shots

of nude young girls, the heavy, self-important character development, was concluded by: “Edmund played by Vadim Glowna.” Wow. He directed, wrote the screenplay, and starred in his own movie. He just hired a bordello of beautiful women to sleep as he laps his tongue all over their bodies. Man, this guy has

balls, and I’ve seen them.

There is very little substance to this film, but who cares? Vadim gets to parade around town like a melting hotshot, molesting whoever he casts in supporting roles, and even showing us his very erect wundercock in a rape scene that continues to haunt my personal life. Genius.

18 Culture

The McGill Daily, Thursday, September 25, 2008

McGill hearts fine arts Fledgling council fosters student creativity

Miriam Gough

Culture Writer

A

re you one of an increasing number of students that frequently bemoans the lack of fine arts at McGill? Do you feel stifled in the rigorous and cutthroat world of academia? Do you feel creative energy pulsing through your veins, but don’t know how to put this energy to use at McGill? You’re not alone.

In fact, the Arts Undergraduate Society has allocated a percentage of funding specifically to the fine arts at McGill – hence, the Fine Arts Council.

Whether you want to create a journal, a play, a film, a photo exhibit, or anything else that can be deemed fine arts, there is finally someone, or rather 12 people, who want to help make the arts more accessible to students. The Fine Arts Council is the ultimate patron of the arts.

Now in its second year of existence, the council has sponsored many projects including the Fridge Door Gallery, a student-run and student-curated gallery showcasing artwork created by students. It is also funds STEPS magazine and The Veg, literary journals that give students the opportunity to publish their

Sasha Plotnikova / The McGill Daily

writing. Another group that benefits from the generosity of the Fine Arts Council is the Arts Undergraduate Theatre Society (AUTS), who have put on Little Shop of Horrors and Urinetown with sell-out success.

This year the AUTS will be producing the musical Hair.

Last year’s Nuit Blanche aimed to celebrate all artistic endeavors by McGill students. The event included

al and you could see your most ambitious art projects come to fruition.

Applications for new or one-off endeavors are particularly sought after. Your career as an artist needn’t end in high school, and you no longer need to transfer to Concordia to be part of a fine arts community.

throughout the coming year, though they may be a little smaller in scope.

Even after bankrolling STEPS, The Veg, Fridge Door, AUTS, and Nuit Blanche the council still has money designated exclusively for fine arts activities at McGill. Want to get your hands on said money? It’s easier than you think. The Fine Arts Council encourages anyone with a novel idea to come to them with a grant propos-

E-mail finearts.aus@gmail.com for more details.

“super indie fan,” says an Out of isn’t too bothered by it; they plan to Sound representative. “Most people continue with their business and stick don’t seem to care about individual- to the “true spirit of Canadian indie ity, but rather buy into a collective culture.” That means developing with concept that is being force-fed like an industry that is always changing crispy chicken from McDonald’s.” and continuing to innovate.

Instead of reproducing a product that is identical to Digital DIY is a rebuttal to the others around the world, insincere world of digital media Out of Sound is looking for individual thought and stresses the sincerity of their aspirations.

We all know the perThe DIY concept is also not ils of being unique – it’s great until everyone else is unique in exactly the new to the indie community, as a same way. The efforts of the small representative from Out of Sound indie label today could easily be the acknowledges. “We have always been crispy chicken from McDonald’s of printing [cover art] and burning and taping and recording music,” he says. tomorrow.

Larger indie labels have already In the age of music downloads, a digiused similar ideas; perhaps coinci- tal spin on the tradition of releasing dentally, Outside Music sold posters DIY albums is a natural step. Out of for their artist Sebastian Grainger the Sound strives to keep up with the same way that they hawk hand-silk- new technology of the Internet while screened posters for lesser-known staying true to the beloved producgroup Hot Kid. If the project con- tion practices of independent artists.

Out of Sound Records’s next digitinues to be successful, we can only guess that major labels will soon be tal DIY release is called Cassette, a emulating these DIY trends. Out of compilation of unreleased songs by Sound is aware of this dilemma, but 24 different artists released in asso-

ciation with zunior.com. The DIY feature of this compilation is that the music is on an actual tape, which comes with an digital access code to download music online. Cassette features Canadian artists like Shotgun Jimmie, Sunparlour Players, Jim Bryson, and Andre Ethier. The tour to promote Cassette includes a Montreal date on Sunday, September 28 at The Pound, with Tacoma Hellfarm Tragedy, Innes Wilson & His Opposition, among others.

Cassette plays on the nostalgia of children of the eighties and early nineties who saw tapes as a new medium for music and then watched them become obsolete as CDs, and then iPods, took the lead. That we think of tapes as ancient technology is a testament to the level at which the digital world has permeated our music experience to the point where we forget how young it is. The heyday of the tape format was little more than ten years ago, but when we consider it now it seems like a relic from a different world – we’re already pulling out old cassettes and reminiscing about our youth the same way that our parents did with their records.

student bands, ArtAttack in the cafeteria, cookie decorating, dancing, fashion, CKUT, the Bike Collective, singing, and even finger-painting.

Later this year, Nuit Blanche and the pandemonium that ensues will return, once again brought to you by the friendly members of the Fine Arts Council. Based on the enthusiastic student response to Nuit Blanche, the council plans on hosting more events

Do it yourself!

Canadian record label Out of Sound draws on the glory days of the indie aesthetic Jaime MacLean Culture Writer

T

he last time that you bought music, was it online or in person? Did you click through iTunes, or walk into a local record store, smile at the clerk behind the desk, and sort through the plastic CD cases? Did you check out the Top Songs list or groove to whatever was playing on the speakers? Did you scroll through titles on your computer screen or observe creative cover art?

If you’re yearning for something more than the cold click-and-drag of digital playlists, Out of Sound Records wants to give you something more tangible. The Guelph, Ontariobased independent music label launched a project last March that plays with the world of digital down-

loading, while its heart stays in the realm of old-school technology. The project is called Digital DIY, and it’s a way to merge unique “do-it-yourself” merchandise with the convenience of digital downloads. At artists’ concerts fans can buy handmade products that come with a digital download code that gives them access to music from Canadian independent music download site zunior.com.

Out of Sound has sold handmade silk-screened posters, CDs packaged in hand-sewn bags, glow-in-the-dark record compilations, and colouring books, just to name a few. It’s all part of improving the fans’ experience, they say. Upcoming Digital DIY offerings could be anything: cartoons, comic books, wallpaper, posters, or pictures.

According to the label, Digital DIY is “a rebuttal to the insincere and corporate world of digital media.” Part of its aim is to give indie music fans a chance to connect with artists in a more personal way than a major label can offer; it’s also a reaction to “digital only” releases, available exclusively through the Internet.

This project is designed for the

“

Compendium!

The McGill Daily, Thursday, September 25, 2008

Lies, Half-truths, & Loneliness

19

Local undergraduate disappointed with lack of pepperoni on boxed pizza Also unsure as to why inside of stove was pink, how event photographed

Harriet Rocco / The McGill Daily

Just three steps to a delicious pizza? More like three steps to a mound of cheesy, crusty sadness.

Harriet Rocco

The McGill Daily

“T

his does not look like it does on the box,” said U3 Physics student O’Ria McRean after he checked on his premade Italian delicacy of various animal and vegetable contents.

McRean then put on an oven mitt,

compared the pizza to the picture, and felt a sense of loss just before dinner.

“This time was supposed to be different,” he said.

Hurt, McRean recalled his trip to the local major supermarket chain and wondered how it was possible that such a harmless, farmer-friendly entity could produce the lie that was heating before him.

“What am I supposed to do?”

McRean asked.

“Tell me, goddamnit, tell me!” he then demanded of no one.

His words echoed through his large, open-concept kitchen. The cat jumped and downstairs neighbours laughed.

“For once,” he said, “I can believe it’s not delivery.”

Indeed.

Ben Peck / The McGill Daily

Corpus Christi

CARTOONS CARMOONS MOONLANDING ING DIRECT ORANGE Compendium is not meant for wordplay.

Send cartoons to Compendium@ mcgilldaily.com Dan Hawkins / The McGill Daily