Issue 22

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Volume 45

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Issue 22

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March 22, 2011

< where you get your news >

Photo by Holly Norris

We’ve got some great coverage of the above performance for you this week on page 12. Because as long Arthur is around, this news is your news.

Volume 45 | Issue 22 | March 22, 2011 Masthead by Jackson Creek Press .LVYNL :[YLL[ ‹ :\P[L 7L[LYIVYV\NO 65 ‹ 2 / 7 [LS! ‹ MH_! LKP[VYZ'[YLU[HY[O\Y JH ^^^ [YLU[HY[O\Y JH

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FEATURE @V\ ^PU ZVTL `V\ SVZL ZVTL! TCSA election results

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Arthur interviews Sheldon on Round 2 of TCSA Presidency

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Submission guidelines

A r t i c l e s Articles should be submitted via email to editors@trentarthur.ca, in the body of the message, or as an *.rtf, *.doc, or *.txt attachment. The body should be approximately 800 words. Listings, announcements, or briefs should not exceed 100 words. Feature pieces can be up to 1500, but must be arranged in advance with the editors. I m a g e s Hard copies (photographs, original artwork, L[J ZOV\SK IL IYV\NO[ PU[V [OL VMĂ„JL George Street, Suite 104) to be scanned. If Z\ITP[[PUN Ă„SLZ LSLJ[YVUPJHSS` WSLHZL ZH]L HZ [PM ^P[O H KWP VM UV SLZZ [OHU WP_LSZ L e t t e r s Limit letters to the editors to 250 words. Letters longer than 250 words may be published but Arthur reserves the right to edit for length and clarity (but not content). Conributers are encouraged to attend the Story Meeting on Friday at 5pm, or to contact the editors if considering submitting to an upcoming issue.

truth and reconciliation (6) nuclear doom (7) letters & opinion (10) [OL ^LKKPUN ZPUNLY T\ZPJHS JV LKP[VYZÂť JOPLĂ…` T\ZPJ WPJRZ events! (back cover)

Are  you  Editor  Material? Staff Collective Amanda Lickers Amanda Miller Ben Laurie Brea Hutchinson Brett Throop Caileigh Morrison Caitlin Currie Chris Chang-Yen Phillips Chris Chapman Colleen Baggaley Elisha May Rubacha Elizabeth Thipphawong Emily Blondin-Doan Heather MacDonald Holly Norris

Iris Hodgson James Kerr James Onusko Jes Sachse Joel Young John Rose Jonathan Alphonsus Julia Fenn Kama Maureemootoo Kate MacNeill Kevin Elson Ki Alleyne Mary Dirmeitis Mason McColl Matt Rappolt

If you have submitted to the Arthur three times or more (during Volume [OHU `V\ HYL VMĂ„JPHSS` :[HMM *VSSLJ[P]L HUK JHU IL ]V[LK PU HZ ,KP[VY VY *V ,KP[VY MVY =VS\TL ,SLJ[PVUZ HYL K\YPUN [OL ^LLR VM 0ZZ\L ZV you still have time to join the Staff Collective. For information on editorial platforms and deadlines, email editors@trentarthur.ca

Meaghan Kelly Michael Duguay Miranda Rigby Natalie Guttormson Nick Ferrio Philip Benmore Sam Alexander Sara Ostrowska Scott Wannan Tyler Prozeniuk Tyson Shennet Victoria Dickson Zach Ruiter

* if you are completely missing from these lists and have contributed or you have submitted more than we have stated please contact: editors@trentarthur.ca

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Adam Greer Agata Durkalec Amanda Benoit Andrea Knechtel Andrea Lanfranco Andy Cragg Ashlea Hegedus-Viola Beth Hendry Brendan Main Britney Stewart Caitlin Jones Cara Moynes Carling Beninger Catherine Monaghan Chanel Christophe Chris Tendam

Daniel Adasynski Daniel Siksay Dave Tough David Newberry Dorothy Howard Doug Nesbitt Emily Nield Gemma Edwin Geraldo Frazer Gilbert Enenajor Hanah McFarlane Helena Romano Jennifer Knight Jennifer Lawrence Jessica Evans John-Paul Nyereka

Double contributors Adam Butz Chris Last Dahn Mirabelli Esther Vincent James Smith Karolyn Givogue Nathan Sachse Sarita Worravitudomsuk Evan Brockest Tyler Gal

Single contributors

Jonathan Robinson Julian Tennent-Riddell Julie Stresman Kate St. Amand Kate Taylor Kathryn Langley Kelsey Powell Kemi Akapo Kim Wilson Liat Mandel Mallory Leger Mary Jane MacDonald Matthew Laing-Gibbard Michael Bartlett Montana Meyer Nathan Kelly

Olufunmike Banks Devonish Paul Longhurst Rachelle Sauve Rebecca Malloy Sasha Christensen Scott Baker Scott Wannan Shannon Culkeen Susan Chow Tara-Lyn Prindiville Thomas Young Victor Lau Yolanda Ajak

Elections on March 30 at 6pm at Sadlier House

Volume 45 | Issue 22 | March 22, 2011

editorial

When the levy broke By Meaghan Kelly A scattered collection of Arthur contributors sat around a friendly living room this past Friday night, tired after talking to hundreds of students (sometimes each), and anxious to hear the results of the TCSA election campaign. We were both curious about who would form the next student union (to see results and an interview with reelected president Sheldon Willerton, turn to the feature), and, naturally, whether our much-needed and overdue levy campaign had succeeded. Nine hours after the poll closed, I texted faster than I knew I could text to try to get any information I could. When my phone eventually rang, the caller didn’t sound excited. Another caller was on the other line, sounding sullen. I threw the phone to whoever would take it, and he didn’t sound excited either. “Oh… okay. Well, uh, thanks for calling.” The room let out an exasperated sigh. Not the news we had wanted, needed, to hear. “I wouldn’t want to write that editorial,” remarked one of the disappointed voices in the room. Then the whisky came out and we started talking about how to handle this. Outrage, indifference, polite acceptance? Mostly we agreed that the discussion we have as a board, as editors, as writers has to shift. Rather than using the “if we get the levy” qualifier in our daydreams and budget plans, we have to say, “well, we didn’t... so, guys, what’s next?” It’s true, this is not the editorial I wanted to write. It’d be so much nicer to write a celebratory ‘Good! We can have staff next year’ piece. Instead, it’s tempting to wax vitriolic and write a woeful Dear John letter to Trent undergrads, but it wouldn’t be terribly productive, and not entirely apt. The question wasn’t- should Arthur exist? It was asking for a few more dollars per student. To run a newspaper and hire students. Which costs money. There is a false impression that we already have lots of money, and maybe this is a positive reflection on the paper. It looks well-run, there are staff, we have a focus on design, photography, type; it’s pretty, it’s weekly, it exists. Why would we need more money? Or perhaps voters could have felt like the quality of the paper wasn’t high enough and voted no - ultimately affecting the quality of the paper. But I do not see this as a scathing review of the paper. Arthur will exist, it could just

look very different. The hard thing about this loss is how much work we put into the TCSA elections in general. In some ways, we essentially fulfill the function of the student union: to tell students what the heck is going on and when. This was especially hard in these past elections, when the election dates kept changing, the speeches were advertised last minute and essentially only through us. We reminded the TCSA that they should advertise their elections. Copies of Arthur were open near the voting booth. When we campaigned, we opened up the feature so that after our excitable speeches, students could look into other groups. Levy groups wrote articles, bought advertising space, and sent us their campaign write-ups. And while I am incredibly happy and relieved that so many other student groups received their levy increases, it makes the loss more frustrating. Arthur’s role is so necessary, to provide a forum for students. Sometimes we’re critical about what’s going on in the university, other times we just lay out the information. This is when the elections are. Vote, damn it. The strange thing about TCSA elections is that in Arthur running a levy campaign, we can only turn to full-time undergraduate students to ask for a little extra cash, when so many people are invested in the paper- part-time and graduate students, alumni, professors, university staff, and community members. There could be donations set up, subscriptions, other levies, perhaps. There are methods. It’s just unfortunate that we will now have to spend our time looking up alternate modes of funding rather than focusing on the excitement and absurdity that is the life of a student at Trent, the completely frustrating mess that is dealing with the Administration, and- this is actually amazing- participating in print media that is a forum for communication and community. We are the vehicle through which so many people get their news in Peterborough. How alumni stay in touch with the school. How full-time students plan find out about issues. We lost by 108 students this year. In 2007, when Arthur ran a levy campaign, we lost by 304 votes. Voter turnout was 7.8 per cent higher this year than 2007, at 23.8 per cent, in elections that usually hover slightly above the 15 per cent of TCSA members needed to ratify the results. In the midst of being totally bummed out by election results, I

shouted out “Hey! We only lost by a hundred votes!” Arthur remains controversial; we’re not Trent News Feed, and we’re going to have opinions when our academic departments get hacked apart and our professors won’t get re-hired because they aren’t part-time contract faculty. The frustration will be palpable and transparent when our departments are at risk, when the whole damn reason we came to this school in the first place falls from under us. Something Jes and I tried to do this year was lose a bit of the cynicism (that I was, admittedly, tempted to bring back full-force for a very sad editorial) and the sarcasm, lay issues out, let you get outraged on your own because it is pretty terrifying what is going on with our school (and to re-iterate, editorials will never unbiased news pieces). We are open submission, so tones and perspectives vary. For example, some of our writers are absolutely dedicated to Introductory Seminar Week (ISW). Others think it’s infantilizing. But so many students care about it and we try to reflect that in our coverage, no matter whether we had a terrifying first week of running away from chanters, or we were still beaming from the excitement of it all halfway through November. But hey! At least there is the silver lining of being indexed to the Consumer Price Index (CPI). And since I am a silver-lining kind of editor, I think the next little while will serve as an overdue and priceless opportunity to evaluate our terms of production, budget, and staff model. I have faith that Arthur is going to be fine. But it is going to change considerably, and the direction it will take is up to the new editors and board, and the feedback of the staff collective and future contributors. What do we want our paper to be in the midst of our economic turmoil? What will change? Less staff? Will we print less often? How do we continue to report on what matters to Trent students? How do we continue to provide what is in so many ways a service to Trent and Peterborough? How do we keep doing our job? Arthur will change, and perhaps those changes will affect the quality or quantity of the paper. But, we’re pretty smart cookies, and we have a lot of support from smart cookies like you (you’re reading this, right? That’s something). We will figure it out. And the more students and community members that are apart of that, the better.

-HP[O HUK )LNVYYHO )H[THU By Brendan Main I hate St. Patrick’s Day. There’s something about it that sets my teeth on edge. At the briefest flash of green, I see red. At the merest burr of a fake brogue, my bile rises. “Tap a the mairnin’ ta ya!” Somehow, it’s always the top of the morning, even well into the day. Let me say that 2:00 in the afternoon is the top of jack squat. Part of it is the inconsistency of it all. Take the man himself: Patron Saint of Ireland, as well as engineers and paralegals, though those last two don’t come up all that often. He’s best known for his Irishness, his comparison of the Christian trinity to the shamrock, and his longtime association with the colour green. But, actually, no, he was likely from Wales, no, that came later… and, most damningly, no, it was blue. How keen are you for a holiday replete with blue beers and shirts that say “Kiss me I’m Welsh?” And then there is that bit of blarney about “driving all the snakes out of Ireland with a stick” thing. And not just the faulty logic of it – by the same token, you could boast that he rid Ireland of tarantulas, wallabies, and archaeopteryx. It’s more the baffling notion that this would be a good thing. I remember, as a kid, learning of this and protesting, “but what about the ecosystem?” Even at that tender age, David Suzuki had taught me that the displacement of any species has serious repercussions. Dick move, St. Patrick. Here’s the stupid thing. I’m mostly Irish myself, with a proper Irish name to boot. My namesake is St. Brendan, patron of travelers, sailors and whales, though that last one doesn’t come up all that often. But it’s a sham sort of Irishness – I’ve never needed to be anything but Canadian, and there’s no part of me that yearns for the Old Sod. And there’s no day in the year that I feel less Irish than on St. Paddy’s, when the yawning span of time and distance from

there to here seems vast and inhospitable. If I am a traveler of a sort, I’m one without a way back home. One year on March 17, I was out, downtown, with a friend of mine. He has a namesake, too: St. Stephen, patron of coffinmakers, deacons and headaches, though that last one doesn’t come up all that often. And if I am incidentally Irish, Steve is unmistakably so. In all the “Irish for a day” hoo-ha, he sees this twisted parody of who he is and where he’s from. And so we get an idea – our entire walk home,

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At the merest burr of a fake brogue, my bile rises. “Tap a the mairnin’ ta ya!” Somehow, it’s always the top of the morning, even well into the day. Let me say that 2:00 in the afternoon is the top of jack squat.” we wouldn’t wish a single person a “Happy St. Patrick’s Day,” because you know what, screw ‘em. We darted around a gaggle of girls and wished them a Merry Christmas. We saw an old guy leaning on a fence, and we wished him a Happy Easter. It’s around here we started getting fancy. Have a patriotic Canada Day! Have a Spooktacular Halloween! As we’re nearing home, we came across a bunch of guys and wished them a “Happy Hanukkah.” And one of them, a guy wearing a white baseball cap with a shamrock-covered stovepipe on top of it, decided that that wasn’t kosher. He stopped dead in his tracks and shouted “Man, fuck Hanukkah!” I was ready to let Hanukkah take one for the team. But

Steve thought it over for a second, and decided differently. He thrust his chin out, and said “Whaddaya mean, fuck Hanukkah? Fuck you.” Understand that I’m not a fighter. I’m not much of a lover either. I’m what’s known as a bleeder. In those moments, I was the Patron Saint of Actually These Guys Are Pretty Big and Maybe We Can Pretend It Was All a Joke. I remember being seized by two thoughts. 1. We were inches away from throwing down to avenge the besmirched honour of The Festival of Lights. 2. What sort of a jerk wears a hat on top of a hat, anyway? But just as quick as it started, it dispersed – there were a few rough shoves as we elbowed past, but nobody took the first swing. We moved on, and they drifted drunkenly down the street, looking for their next target. The day was saved for Hanukkah, and the cadre of bros thugged ever onward, fueled by the raw belligerence that they thought came with being Irish for a day. It’s things like that that gut the day for me, that sour those green beers and plastic hats into something stupid and coarse and crude. So I lay low these days, and grump silently. But not forever –some St. Patrick’s Day, I’ll figure that enough is enough. I have it on good authority that my namesake is also the Patron Saint of Being Just Plain Done with Bullshit (it just doesn’t come up a lot). Someday, I’ll pull a stunt that will put St. Patrick to shame. Forget snakes, because what did snakes ever do to anybody? Someday I’ll find me a great big stick, and a great big pan to bang it on. And I’ll chase all the greenhatted assholes out of town. Happy Hanukkah, everyone.

Volume 45 | Issue 22 | March 22, 2011

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local

Professor James Struthers on baby boomers and the Public Pension System By Brett Throop Arthur: What is the good news story about aging in Canada? James Struthers: Well, there are actually two good news stories. The first is that Canadians, both male and female, on average are living longer and enjoying a longer span of good health after retirement. A man at 65 can now anticipate, on average, 18.1 more years of life, a gain of 2 years compared to a decade ago. A woman the same age will enjoy 21.3 more years, which is a gain of 1.3 years compared to 10 years ago. The second good news story is that far fewer Canadians aged 65 and older are living below the poverty line compared to forty years ago, and compared to almost all other nations. In 1971, 37% of Canadians aged 65 and over were living on less than half the Canadian median income adjusted for family size, which is how Statistics Canada defines low income, or a poverty line. Today, less than 6% fall into this category. That’s the second lowest poverty rate for seniors among the world’s 26 wealthiest nations. Only the Netherlands has a lower rate at 2%. The American poverty rate for seniors of 65 and over, by way of comparison, is four times higher than ours. So, that’s a great success story, and one that often doesn’t get noticed. Arthur: We’re hearing a lot of doom and gloom about Canada’s aging population, including that baby boomers are about to cause a pension crisis. Why aren’t you buying it? Struthers: Canada’s public pension system is actually very robust, and as I’ve already mentioned, very effective in combating poverty among those 65 and over. Even when

the last of the baby boom retirement wave peaks in 2030, Canada’s Chief Actuary estimates that spending on Old Age Security and the Guaranteed Income Supplement will rise to only 3.1% of GDP compared to 2.2% at present and by 2050 it will be back down to 2.7%. Due to increases in the contribution rates and investment practices made a decade ago, the Canada and Quebec pension plans are also very solvent over the next 75 years. So, no worries there. The real problems are on the private pension side. Only 38% of employed Canadians have a workplace pension. In the private sector, it is less than 25% and only 31% of tax filers are making contributions to RRSPs. So, the problem isn’t that baby boomers are going to cause a pension crisis. The problem is that a majority of Canadians now working won’t be able to count on an adequate retirement income. They won’t be living in dire poverty after 65, it’s true, but they also won’t be enjoying incomes sufficient to replace half of their maximum pre-retirement income, unless pension coverage is expanded significantly. And since private pension plan coverage has actually been declining over the last thirty years, only the expanding public pension benefits will fill the gap. Arthur: Who wants Canadians to believe our growing number of seniors will cause a pension crisis and why? Struthers: Proponents of what has been called ‘apocalyptic demography’ use images of a looming pension crisis or boomer health care crisis as arguments for downsizing the role of the state and increasing privatization of retirement savings and health services. In other words, they want to create a sense of fiscal panic to win support for downsizing what we should expect from government programs and policies. Yet it’s clear that it is the private

pension and RRSP system which has been failing to live up to promises and expectations made since the 1980s. Taken together, they are not meeting the retirement income needs of Canadians at present, and with the growth of contingent and part-time work, they are less likely to do so in the future. The American example also shows clearly how much more expensive and inefficient private delivery of health care services really is to an economy. Arthur: What changes do you see needing to be made to the Canada Pension Plan? Struthers: We should build on success. The maturation of the Canada and Quebec pension plans (CPP/QPP) over the past thirty years, together with indexing of Old Age Security and significant increases to the Guaranteed Income Supplement, have played a major role in reducing poverty among Canadians over 65. We are world leaders in this regard. The next step is doubling the benefit rate of the CPP/QPP from its current 25% of the average industrial wage to 50% in order to fill the pension gap left by declining private pension plan coverage. This will require higher contribution rates, to be sure, but the increased income security in retirement for all Canadians will be more than worth it. The CPP and QPP form the largest and most administratively efficient pools of pension capital in Canada. They have a proven track record and will do the best job in meeting the income security needs of the next generation of Canadian retirees. Struthers is a professor in Trent’s Canadian Studies Department and an active researcher on social policy in Canada. He is currently working on a multinational research initiative looking at how to enhance long term residential care.

Food(can)Grow in an Urban world By Ben Laurie For the first time in history, there are more people living in cities than ‘on the land’ or in rural areas where a landbased food system may be possible. We live in an urban world. So what are the opportunities to grow and harvest food in urban places? Urban food is food close to home, an imperative piece of what we describe as social, political, cultural or ecological sustainability. I spoke with Paula Anderson, a Peterborough-based leader of sustainable systems. Arthur: In your experience, who grows food gardens in Peterborough? Paula Anderson: All sorts, and for all sorts of reasons. You’d be surprised at the diversity of people. The older people who garden came off farm and into town. This is who they are, and they must continue being who they are. A lot of young folks are interested in getting into it, and the folks with young children who think about what their children are eating. The other people are the ones who need to eat and save money. Arthur: What are popular things that people grow in Peterborough? Paula: Tomatoes, zucchini, beans, potatoes, peppers, herbs, carrots! It’s best to grow the plants that have a real difference between the store and the garden. Arthur: From the perspective of the food system, what would be best for people to grow in town? Paula: From a jar of sprouts, window sill, yard or community garden - from a food systems view – grow your winter crops. These are the difficult to find [ecologically grown] in the winter. There is plenty to eat locally during the growing season. I would have two sections in the garden, one for eating in-season and the other would be for storage crops (if you have the garden space). …things that you use all the time and are perishable should be closer to where you are. It’s all about smart decisions using energy and time. It makes sense to truck grain because it is harvested once a year. Vegetables on the

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other hand… We need to eat everyday, so we should allow it in our neighborhoods! People talk about permaculture, which is all about principles. How do we do this in our community, not just our own homestead? Arthur: Where are the best-underutilized urban gardening spaces? Paula: A totally under cultivated space is front yards. There are some amazingly beautiful food gardens in Peterborough, and full – you don’t need a ton of space to produce a lot of food. Then there is access to community gardens, but there is a waiting list. So there’s a movement to share backyards because some houses have large yards with sunshine and no time or are unable [to garden]. [Sharing backyards] is already happening in Peterborough. Arthur: Is the Peterborough Community Garden Network (PCGN) involved in sharing backyards? Paula: It is on our to do list to set up a backyard sharing website. Then there’s public spaces – Churches, parks, businesses, roof tops… - then there is peri-urban spaces just outside of town. This concept of redefining urban is new. For generations people had chickens and huge gardens. These things are integral. It’s a new thing, since the ‘50s and ‘60s, to have communities separate these things out. It’s recently that we’re beginning to reintegrate [where we live with what we eat]. Arthur: Do you see the PCGN as a critical piece of urban Peterborough agriculture? Paula: Partly. It is a system that is like a web, with many people. PCGN partly fills that role of helping to create space. We’ve [collectively] got things to learn, so it’s nice to be able to work together. Just because food can be bought and sold, doesn’t mean that food is just nutrition, food is so integrated into the fabric of a healthy community. All components are lost when food is just bought and sold. The PCGN can be found on the internet linked through http://greenup.on.ca

Volume 45 | Issue 22 | March 22, 2011

Urban agriculture, at various levels, isn’t always easy. On a personal note, friends who operate a full-time market garden near Nanaimo B.C., where my parents live, have been facing opposition through preexisting bylaws limiting commercial use of private residential property. Vancouver island imports almost 95% of the food consumed on the island, yet there are municipal bylaws that challenge creative responses to the precariousness of the dominant food system. Dirk and Nicole of Compassion farms grow food on a medium-sized semi rural lot and their use of land has been challenged by municipal law. They are using the challenge to their farm enterprise as an opportunity to set precedence for municipalities and cities across Canada to change the legal frameworks that may prohibit the potential of urban spaces to become active in meaningful food production. If you are interested, please do some basic online research about the experience of Compassion farm of Lantzville, B.C., and research the bylaws in the places that you live. Let’s change the bylaws concerning growing food for sale, keeping chickens, bees, goats, what have you, in the places that we live to support close to home food! Today, the most radical action may be the planting of a seed and tending to a plant. My hope is that these words germinate and motivate the decisions you will make in your life, again and again!

National

Truth and Reconcilliation

Facing Canada’s residential school legacy By Carling Beninger Frost Centre of Canadian Studies and Indigenous Studies MA Student Do you know what the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada is? From March, 1-3, I attended the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Canada’s Research Centre Forum in Vancouver. Of the 500 registered, 160 were residential school survivors. Over the course of three days, I heard from delegates from all over the world – New Zealand, USA, Senegal, Rwanda, South Africa, Sudan, Germany, Serbia, Spain, Guatemala, Chile, Peru, Australia, Bangladesh, East Timor, and Canada. They spoke of their histories of genocide and human rights violations, commenting on how they had developed research centres, protected and stored archives, and developed healing centres and museums to uncover and preserve the truth of their history, and provide healing and reconciliation for the victims and survivors. Several key components of what could be included in the research centre emerged: incorporating technology, educational interactive facilities, museum components, archive storage, and healing places. Other discussions concerned memorialization, establishing a code of ethics, and whether to have a decentralized or centralized centre. From the conference, the TRC hopes to outline what a national research centre within Canada will look like. Are you informed about the residential school legacy in Canada? Over the years, I have asked people if they had learned about the residential school legacy in high school. The majority of them said no. Growing up in British Columbia, I did not either. I learned about it when I was selected, at 16, to attend an anti-racism and diversity workshop. The TRC event made it clear that in order to move forward towards healing, it is necessary for all Canadians to understand the legacy of the residential school system. To understand our history is to ensure “never again.” This sentiment of “never again” was echoed throughout the conference, in many languages, from people of different countries. As a teaching assistant for History 1500: Ten Days that Shook the World, last term, we had to cover a two-week module of lectures and articles that portrayed the history of residential schools in a “positive” way, sending a message that it “wasn’t that bad.” This confused several TAs and students. I corresponded with the course coordinators about the module being taught, and I was told that most of the students already knew the basic history of residential schools, and that this module was being taught with a different aim. However, when I asked my students, the majority of them told me that they did not know the history. Though it is suggested, in some literature, that there were positive experiences in the schools, it is also

known that this was seldom the case and that sexual, physical, and emotional abuse was indeed widespread in those schools. The residential school system was a product of the Church’s and government’s assimilative motives, aimed at eliminating Indigenous culture and spirituality. Eventually, after many complaints from students, other TAs and myself, the coordinators apologized and the guest lecturer issued an explanation to the class for the lecture series. A reading list of residential school history books and articles were made available to students. As part of the retraction, four TAs, including myself, were asked to fill in the gaps of the residential school story to the students in the class. The request to do so came in an impromptu manner, one day, in class, leaving us with no time to prepare, and I moreover felt that we did not have the qualifications to do so. The irony is that Trent is renowned for its Indigenous Studies Department and research. One of the most informative books about the residential school legacy, A National Crime, was written by Dr. John Milloy, a Canadian Studies Professor at Trent. So how did such a situation come about in the History 1500 course? In my opinion, it occurred due to the lack of preparation and oversight on the part of the course instructors. It is obvious that the coordinators did not effectively review the module material to ensure that it presented the history of the residential schools, not in part, but as a whole. They were also clearly uninformed about the paucity of students’ understanding of the history of residential schools. I provide this example in the hope that something like this will “never again” occur at Trent. This also serves to highlight that Canada has a long way to go to reform its educational curriculum in order to fully inform Canadians of the residential school legacy. I hope this will urge people to take the time to understand the importance of this history – you might want to think that it all happened “a hundred years ago,” but the effects of the residential schools are still very real and are still felt today. “For the Child Taken, For the Parent Left Behind” The TRC will continue to hold statement-gathering forums across the country to hear and record survivor stories, in order to “help Canadians understand what the schools were like, what happened inside them and how the experience affected people for generations to come. Those that lived, attended and worked at the schools will finally be given a voice through the statement gathering process.” As Freddy Mutanguha, Executive Director of the Kigali Memorial Centre in Rwanda, stated, “the scars of genocide run deep, support the survivors.” For more information on the TRC visit www.trc.ca

Climate Change (CMA) (CMA) and Access to Clean Water

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The provinces say they have the right to determine the use of their natural resources, but according to Argentina’s legal system, the ultimate say over mining regulation lies at the federal level. The debate over mining and environmental protection could be a hot topic for Argentina’s upcoming elections in October of this year.”

By Natalie Guttormsson The threat of climate change is rapidly increasing globally and the headlines about massive environmental degradation are seemingly never-ending. Fresh water supplies are becoming major concerns to many regions around the world. Argentina is a country that recently took measures to safeguard their freshwater reserves. On September 30, 2010, Argentina passed a precedent-setting bill to protect glaciers from mine projects by banning mining and oil drilling along the glacial region that covers the 5,000 kilometre Argentina-Chilean border. The bill passed in the senate by a narrow vote with 35 in favour, 33 against, and 1 abstention. Two years prior, President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner vetoed a similar bill due to economic concerns, but this time, she allowed it to pass. This bill is a precedent-setter that ranks crucial water supplies over economic benefits from industrial projects such as mining. Not everyone is happy about the vote. The three provinces situated near the glaciers with mining projects in their jurisdictions, La Rioja, Jujuy, and San Juan, have passed their own laws that are more flexible and only restrict mining if the locally commissioned environmental impact assessments forecast adverse effects on the environment.

The provinces say they have the right to determine the use of their natural resources, but according to Argentina’s legal system, the ultimate say over mining regulation lies at the federal level. The debate over mining and environmental protection could be a hot topic for Argentina’s upcoming elections in October of this year. Canadian company Barrick Gold, with its far-reaching tentacles, has a development in Argentina. The Pascua Lama project will be a massive open-pit mine that straddles the Argentina-Chilean border and according to satellite imagery, is situated within the glacial area even though the company claims it does not. The project is in the exploration and construction phase and will not begin production until 2013. The question for Barrick is: what will the mine’s future look like with this new law put in place? The company claims that the new law will not affect their permits because they were negotiated before the law was passed, but Barrick has decided it had better not wait to find out and has taken legal action to gain assurance from the government that this is so. However, according to Reuters, it is possible that the new law could inhibit the Pascua Lama mine or significantly raise costs associated with environmental protection standards, making it impossible for Barrick to afford the project. If this happens, it

is conceivable that Barrick would launch a compensation lawsuit against the Argentinean government on the grounds that their permits were granted before the recent vote. Last year, the United Nations general assembly adopted a resolution recognizing access to clean water and sanitation to be a human right. No nation voted against the resolution, 122 nations voted in favour, and 41 abstained, Canada being 1 of the 41. The Canadian representative stated his abstention was based on the grounds that the scope of the right to clean water was undefined and lacking in international agreement, therefore premature. However, both the representatives of Chile and Argentina, the two nations sharing the glaciers that would be impacted by the Pascua Lama project, voted in favour of the resolution. The delegate from Chile said that “under[standing] that the resolution was not an attempt to prejudge the way in which states handled their own water and sanitation legislation” and that it was essential to reaching the Millennium Development Goals. The delegate from Argentina stated that the main international human rights treaties were highly respected and upheld in Argentina and that his country recognized “that it was the main responsibility of states to ensure that people had access to safe drinking water and sanitation.” Perhaps

Canada should look to Chile and Argentina as examples to follow for the future. We do not need gold to survive but we do need water. We need to value water more in our lives and make sure it becomes a priority over economic gain or the cost will be our survival.

Volume 45 | Issue 22 | March 22, 2011

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national

Harper governments denies obligation to protect sex workers

By Brea Hutchinson On March 9, the federal government released their planned defence of the current sex work laws that are being constitutionally challenged by a group of sex-workers and their allies. The government plans to argue that it has no obligation to protect sex workers because they choose to undertake a dangerous profession. Last September, Ontario Superior Court Justice Himel struck down three key components of the current laws regulating sex work because they violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In her ruling, she stated that the laws forced sex-workers to choose between liberty and security. This ruling is presently being challenged at the Supreme Court and the hearings have been scheduled for five days in midJune. The planned defence has produced strong and negative reactions from numerous groups, including the B.C. Civil Liberties, the Canadian Civil Liberties, and Maggie’s, a sexworker advocacy group based in Toronto. The groups are concerned about having the government choosing who is protected by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and

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they have been awarded intervener status for the upcoming hearings. The legal brief submitted by the government—the legal brief being one of the first stages in a court hearing where both parties lay out their planned arguments—states that parliament “is not obligated to minimize hindrances and maximize safety for those that do so contrary to the law.” Further in the 117-page legal brief, the government lawyers relied on traditional stereotypes of sex workers by stating that “people no longer feel safe in their neighbourhood, children are exposed to johns, pimps, and prostitutes, and the public display of sex for sale. Communities are also confronted with harmful activities which often accompany prostitution such as drugs, gangs, and violence. These laws are designed to create barriers and stigmas to prostitution.” Moreover, the legal brief refers to sex workers as predominantly low-skilled, uneducated and lacking in self-esteem. On the whole, the document fails to consider whether these stereotypes of sex-workers are true and neither does it consider how further criminalization may not be of any help to this marginalized community. “The argument that sex work is dangerous can be true,

Volume 45 | Issue 22 | March 22, 2011

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The argument that sex work is dangerous can be true, but that doesn’t negate the fact that the government’s laws are purposely making it more dangerous... The laws currently in place, until the ruling from the Supreme Court, do not allow us to protect ourselves, and if we were to try to protect ourselves, we would run into problems with the police. We can’t win.” but that doesn’t negate the fact that the government’s laws are purposely making it more dangerous” explained Nadia, a Toronto-based sex worker. “The laws currently in place, until the ruling from the Supreme Court, do not allow us to protect ourselves, and if we were to try to protect ourselves, we would run into problems with the police. We can’t win,” Nadia continued. She finished off by arguing that “the legal brief attacks sex-workers wrongly as opposed to addressing the issues they face. Yes, some workers can be affiliated with drugs, gangs and violence, but so can the wealthy. Also, by creating such stigma around workers, any chance of regulating negative impacts goes out the window.” A professional dominatrix from Ottawa, who utilizes resources from Prostitutes of Ottawa Work Education Resist (POWER), and who works under the name Mistress Dawn said “to say [the government] is not obligated to protect our Charter [of] Rights and Freedoms because we work in dangerous situations is a slippery slope. Do they have to protect used-car salesmen, which have the highest rate of murders of any employment category in Canada? Yes they do, and if they were to make laws which made being used-cars salesmen unnecessarily dangerous, they would be here fighting too for more just laws” she continued. POWER has also submitted a legal brief to the court stating that they “intend to challenge laws that interfere with sex workers ability to make fundamental choices in respect of their bodies and their employment, the latter being an essential component of a person’s identity...” Mistress Dawn sees this as the government clawing back on their responsibilities; she believes the current position of the government is indefensible, and, regardless of the outcome this June, the laws will change in her mind: “on one hand the government is saying ‘we don’t approve of this, so we are going to make it dangerous’ and now they are saying since it is so dangerous we don’t take any responsibility for people who engage in these acts.” Seven groups have been given status as an intervener, a position which groups or individuals can take to provide context and information to the court although they belong to neither party. The B.C. and Canadian Civil Liberties Associations, POWER, and the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network have been granted such status. These groups intend to challenge the constitutionality of the current laws. Maggie’s was the only group denied such a status, but they were encouraged to join one of the four other groups. Three groups will be granted intervener status with the intent to support the government’s position, and these will be released in the near future.

Canada sends warplanes to enforce no-fly zone over Libya By Chris Chang-Yen Phillips Canada’s Armed Forces have sent six CF-18 Hornet fighter jets to help enforce the UN Security Council’s uncharacteristically strong resolution to impose a “no-fly zone” over Libya. Led by Britain and France, Canada joins a coalition of Middle Eastern and Western forces that have barraged forces loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi to cease a brutal war against rebels in the country. But the Canadian government’s response comes after years of corporate ties with Libyan oil interests, and has not been matched in supporting other Middle Eastern uprisings currently underway. The US gave its support for the resolution and the military operation after several Arab states, including the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabi and Qatar gave at least rhetorical backing. Before the resolution, Colonel Gaddafi’s troops had retaken the critical cities of Zawiyah and Ras Lanuf, and begun attacks on the eastern city of Benghazi, the central rebel stronghold since the uprising in Libya began on February 15. Gaddafi’s pledge to fight without mercy was followed by an almost immediate unilateral declaration of ceasefire after the UN resolution passed, though ground attacks have continued. The resolution demands a ceasefire, and authorizes the international community to enforce a no-fly zone over the country and use all means necessary short of a foreign occupation to protect civilians there. In announcing his decision, Prime Minister Stephen Harper called the situation in Libya “intolerable,” and opposition leaders confirmed they had given their support to Canada’s addition to the military force, which also includes

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140 military support personnel for the planes. “One either believes in freedom, or one just says one believes in freedom,” Harper told reporters. “The Libyan people have shown by their sacrifice that they believe in it. Assisting them is a moral obligation upon those of us who profess this great ideal.” His comments stand in contrast to the government’s mute response to state violence against protesters in nearby Yemen and Bahrain. Soldiers in both countries have opened fire on protesters to enforce state of emergency declarations, and Saudi Arabian and UAE troops have both entered Bahrain to support the military. And while Gaddafi and Harper traded sharp words in 2009 over the Libyan leader’s welcome of the man convicted in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, Canadian corporate ties to the oil sector in Libya are strong. As recently as 2008, oil giant Petro-Canada, now owned by SunCor, signed six oil exploration and profit-sharing agreements with the Libyan National Oil Corporation, committing to an estimated $7 billion in spending there. In 2009, Calgary-based oil producer Verenex Energy agreed to be sold to the state-run Libyan Investment Authority for an estimated $314 million.

local

The deployment of Canada’s CF-18 Hornets will likely breathe new life into not only the government’s plans to acquire a new generation of fighter jets, but also the CF-18s themselves, which Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau once glowingly described as “much quieter than a Mercedes.” The government has had trouble selling opposition leaders and the public on contracts to purchase a fleet of new F-35 Lightning warplanes, which it estimated at a total cost of $15 billion over 20 years. Parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page has estimated the 65 fighters would in fact cost $22.6 billion including maintenance costs over that period. Liberal opposition leader Michael Ignatieff has also questioned the lack of an open bidding process and Canadian manufacturing requirements in the agreement, saying his party would cancel their purchase and hold an open competition to replace the CF-18s. The fleet has previously been involved in enforcing a nofly zone over Iraq during the first Gulf War, and in NATO bombings in Kosovo in 1999 to end attacks on Albanian civilians by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. With Canadian armed forces still on the ground in Afghanistan, Harper has been reluctant to commit to ground troops in Libya, as has the U.S. Operating warplanes is an expensive operation though, and it remains to be seen how successful the intervention will be, as civilian deaths from air strikes have begun to rise and Gaddafi has reportedly begun distributing arms to civilians and continued ground attacks in Benghazi and elsewhere.

Prisoners of the nuclear grid “ By Zach Ruiter

Nuclear technology is invisible when the language used to defend it makes its necessity assumed. The systematic features will work without check, with safety going unquestioned. And while backup safety systems are never supposed to be used, history and current events tell a different story. Here in Peterborough, GE Hitachi CEO Peter Mason was quoted in the Peterborough Examiner asking, “Why would I want to sit and lie to you?” Firstly, he wasn’t sitting, rather he was standing in the Prince of Wales School gymnasium, clutching a fuel rod in front of projected images of daisies growing out of nuclear stacks. Mason spoke to residents defending the plan to enrich uranium, just metres away from a children’s playground - part of GE-H’s contracting for some of $35 billion dollars in government handouts for the expansion of the Darlington Nuclear Station. GE-H had plans to process the enriched uranium in downtown Peterborough and downtown Toronto near Davenport and Landsdowne streets. Earlier this year, activists from Peterborough were able to prevent enriched uranium processing in both cities, however, presently there is reason to suspect the assembling of atomic weaponry. In an article in The Dominion called “Enriched Hypocrisy, Before Criticizing Iran’s Nuke Program, Canada Should Look Within,” Trent student Matthew Davidson notes that two days following the announcement of successful uranium enrichment at Natanz nuclear facility south of Tehran, General Electric (GE) was awarded permission to enrich uranium in Peterborough, Ontario—an activity which the provincial government had invested $15 million the previous November. Stephen Harper stated, “Canada will continue to work with our allies to find strong and viable solutions, including sanctions, to hold Iran to account.” GE-H Nuclear CEO Peter Mason echoed Harper’s sentiment to Tehran at Prince of Wales School by suggesting that Peterborough citizens would not like to lose the 400

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jobs provided by the nuclear facility. Canada has an extensive and longstanding record of involvement in supplying uranium to the Nuclear Arms Race. Peter Van Wyck’s recent book “Highway of the Atom” tells a story about how Canadian uranium mined at Great Bear Lake provided the uranium for the bombs that fell over Hiroshima and Nagasaki Japan, in August 1945. The story of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is now a part of a larger nuclear history. Van Wyck writes that “history itself reaches forward to organize the present.” His book was published in 2010 and the present context it refers to returns attention to Japan, at the site of Fukushima. The Fukushima-Daiichi plant had been supplied and built by General Electric in 1971. Six days after the earthquake in Japan, the Peterborough Examiner ran a story titled “GE employees home safe from Japan” and included an with interview Dan Ayotte, a local and relative of the former Mayor of Peterborough, Paul Ayotte. Dan Ayotte is a current GE nuclear employee who had been situated in Japan since early January, working at the Fukushima plant. Only hours after the quake hit and many Japanese were struggling to survive, The Examiner reports “GE had arranged for a 12-vehicle convoy for employees that took them to Tokyo.” According to Wikileaks, Japan was informed in 2008 that the General Electric-manufactured nuclear reactors at Fukushima were not able to withstand anything beyond a 7.0 magnitude quake. Kei Sugaoka, a former engineer at the plant, has recently alleged that in 1989, he was ordered to remove segments of footage showing cracks in steam pipes from a video being submitted to regulators. Upon notifying his superiors, he stated that his job was resultantly threatened, and he was later quoted as saying that in the nuclear industry “everything is a secret.” A search for GE-H in Wikileaks will also reveal that GE-H was not only contracting with the Ontario and Canadian governments but also with Iran. Cable ID

09THEHAGUE444 reveals a request made by the national government of the Netherlands to the United States to “informally ensure U.S. firms, such as General Electric (GE), refrain from supplying turbine blades to Iran.” The blades are sold for the purpose of energy production and conceivably, nuclear power. The Netherlands hoped to block the sale “on the grounds the energy could be diverted to military or nuclear programs.” The purchase in question, was made from GE-H to an Iranian “conglomerate that supplies the civilian power sector there, but also has ties to the military.” Too, there is “[particular concern] the German company Siemens will continue to export blades to Iran.” Peter Mason (and Peterborough’s General Electric-Hitachi) is now implicated along with Dalton McGuinty, Stephen Harper, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in escalating nuclear arms proliferation, in profiting from the dangerous supply of nuclear energy. Darlington sits directly on a fault line newly discovered by Joe Wallach, who has named it the Niagara-Pickering Linear Zone. “It goes beneath both the Niagara Peninsula and Pickering. It extends northward at least to Minden, on the Canadian Shield and southwestward into Ohio”. According to Wallach, beside the Niagara-Pickering, the Georgian Bay Linear Zone extends along the consistently straight coast line of Georgian Bay, projecting into western New York state, intersecting the Clarendon-Linden fault. At this intersection in 1929, an earthquake of a magnitude of 5.7-5.8 occurred (the Attica earthquake). In Lake Ontario, there is a triple intersection connecting the Georgian Bay Linear Zone, the Niagara-Pickering and the St. Lawrence fault zone, which extends westward through the Dundas Valley. In addition to the many reactors situated above these faults, highly enriched and radioactive nuclear waste has been stored underground and also at the nuclear plants themselves.

Volume 45 | Issue 22 | March 22, 2011

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housing. That is what we need and that is what this university needs. [...] I don’t think we have made a stance yet on 8 a.m. classes. We have discussed it a little bit but it is definitely on the radar for next year, especially if the administration is thinking about expanding. [...] But further, with all these academic cuts, we are going to see far fewer courses being offered here at Trent and we need to look at whether that will make our space issues worse. With fewer classes we will have bigger classes and a question that needs to be asked is ‘do we have the space for bigger classes?’ We need to look at all of these factors and work with other people in the university to put forward constructive solutions.

Willerton: There was a plan to write a letter to the administration from the perspective of students. Students were hardly mentioned in the first draft and it seems, in terms of the integrated plan, that our sole purpose at Trent is to be retained and housed. The TCSA has also supported the letter written by the Canadian Studies department and some of our board members have read the current draft of the plan and are following the situation closely. Arthur: An issue that has unquestionably domiThe integrated plan still does not present a nated much of this year is the 3 day ISW and I clear path for the university. If you were to pick want to talk for a second about the Senate meet- it up, you would still have no idea what Trent is ing on March 8 that saw the motion to begin trying to be or where it needs to be in five or ten classes earlier pass by only one vote. As TCSA years. [...] As a student or a faculty member we president, you were present but not able to vote should be able to look at that plan and make dein that decision; will the TCSA lobby for its pres- cisions with the intent to moving toward an inident to get the right to vote on Senate next year? stitutional goal, but it seems as though right now Trent doesn’t have an institutional goal. This Willerton: That is actually something that we integrated plan looks like an in-house adminiswill be doing in the next couple weeks. There is trative document; it does not address where we a committee looking at restructuring the Senate, want to be and that is the question that we need and part of that means taking off two student to be asking. seats that were previously held by Traill College. [...] We are continuously sending out proposals Arthur: One severe critique of the plan is that the so that we will not lose those two seats. Wheth- authors listed are almost exclusively administraer that means the TCSA President should get a tors. How important is it for student leaders to, if vote, or an international student, we are explor- not officially author it, at least get student opining different options. [...] ion through to the administration?

Photo by Holly Norris

Arthur: First of all, congratulations on your reelection. Having just finished a successful campaign this past week, what kind of things have you heard from students, about what they would like from their student union? What type of services do students want the TCSA to offer in the future? Willerton: From what I’ve heard, students are not so much talking about services that the TCSA should provide, most of it has to do with them saying that ‘the TCSA should fight for us; fight for a better library; fight for lower fees.’ [...] However, services are one of our top priorities and we have health services and hopefully soon we will have transportation services. [...] The more services we have the more relevance we have to Trent students, and the more clout it gives us with the university. It is time for us to grow.

Arthur: The integrated plan has become a heated and controversial topic on campus, with different student and faculty groups speaking out against it. How has the TCSA responded to the plan so far and what do you plan on doing in the next year?

Arthur: This touches on an issue that was discussed at length in our interview with President Franklin earlier this year: how can we get more student representation on boards and committees?

time for team building, as well as a time to get ready for the year ahead. [...] It is a time when you are in the office with the other executives for 35 [hours] a week, getting to know each other and getting to work with each other. This is crucial so that by the time the Fall rolls around and there are new issues coming in every day, you have already worked together as a team and are stronger. The summer also represents a good opportunity for us to keep asking the university for things. [It is a good time] to keep pushing for them to give us financial information because they too are not very busy at that time. This is the primary thing that we will be doing this summer because I would like to get all the [transit] contracts signed and finished by summer’s end, so that come next May, the TCSA can be in control of the Trent Express.

strategy on how to make our concerns heard.

Arthur: In regards to the results of the TCSA referendum questions, from your standpoint, they are overwhelmingly positive. What do you take from these results? Are they an affirmation that the TCSA’s current mandate has the support of the student body?

Arthur: Have you spoken to the administration about what they will be looking for in food service? Would they entertain the notion of a student-run cafeteria?

Arthur: An issue mentioned frequently during the election campaign was the notion of accessibility. When students are confronted by a problem, whether it is about fees or scholarships, they tend to go to the Office of Student Affairs. What can the TCSA do to become more accessible to students in those situations? Willerton: The transportation question passing is a good sign for us. The concert levy did not pass Willerton: [...] There are a lot of different people but we did a terrible job of communicating that telling students to come to them if they have a issue to the students. It was actually a surprise problem, so what it comes down to is that we need that it came as close as it did. 60% of students reto focus really hard on those students coming into main opposed to the idea of a private residence the university and explaining to them what the on campus, which is about 10% less than in the TCSA is and what we do. That way, when they’ve last referendum. [...] Still, overwhelmingly stumoved on to their upper years those students will dents are opposed to this idea. remember that they can come to us. [...] [It] is usually the colleges and cabinets that focus on the Arthur: Construction is due to start on the prifirst-year students and their experience, but that vate residence this summer, but students haven’t is absolutely something that the TCSA needs to heard an update from the administration for work on. months. What steps will the TCSA take to oppose the project and have you received any upArthur: The summer is obviously a very impor- date from the administration? tant time for the new TCSA administration. What will you be doing in the coming months to Willerton: The project still has to go before city prepare for the year ahead? council. I’m not sure when that will be, I assume over the summer or early fall, but we will be there Willerton: Summer is definitely an important and we will be working hard to come up with a

Arthur: Another key issue on the horizon is the Aramark food contract which is due to expire at the end of next year. What can students expect from the TCSA on that issue? Will we see you advocating for a student-run cafeteria? Willerton: We are going to push for whatever option offers healthy, environmentally sustainable food. [...] If there is a committee that will hear from these companies then we will push to have a student on it, ideally from the TCSA. That way, student concerns can be at the forefront of discussion. [...] There are other schools that do in-house running of services; so we need to look at them and look at what’s best for students, not only for their wallet, but also for their health.

Willerton: I think that they are considering being self-operated as well, but there is a lot of work to do in terms of what that would look like. [...] There are all kinds of possibilities and the next six months will be about figuring out what’s good for Trent, what’s good for the colleges, and how we can have a variety of options available on campus. We need to have a student at the discussion table and right now I think the university is open to all options. Arthur: With the introduction of 8 a.m. classes, the earlier September start date, as well as potential Saturday morning classes, next year will be quite different for students in terms of class scheduling. What impact do you think these changes will have on students and what will the TCSA do to lobby against or oppose them? Willerton: This is a space issue. We need another college. [..] A private residence does not address any of our concerns. We need a new college with lecture space, office space, seminar rooms, and

Willerton: A lot of it comes out of lobbying, it also comes down to the fact that if we don’t want to lose seats, then we have to use them. Depending on the committee, students do not always have the best attendance record, so when the time comes to defend those seats or ask for more, the university looks at our absenteeism and they can use that against us.

Willerton: Senate is a good example of how we can put forward student opinion as it has been there that President Franklin has opened the door to criticism. But at the end of the day the integrated plan is his document. It is what he and his group think they should be doing right now. That is why it is important for us to voice our opinions at any avenue possible and when we have opportunities like the town halls it is very important that as many students show up to voice concern as possible. These decisions will directly affect us as students and we need to show that we are more to this university than units to be housed and retained. Over the summer, there will be a get-

to-know-you session which is a good opportunity to keep lobbying. Also, this issue is being brought up in many of the committees that our representatives sit on and we need to be using every opportunity that we get to reinforce the point that we are here for more than what they think we are. Arthur: Talking about the future and the direction that the university is moving, what sorts of things do you see in the future for TCSA? What role do you think it will play in the university in five years or so? Willerton: In five years I can see there being a TCSA-heavy ‘Welcome Back’ week for all students during the week after ISW. I can see us owning and operating some kind of food outlet [...] and I see the TCSA on the road to doing more on the service side. Transportation is one thing, but what’s next? [...] We are not for profit, we are not here to make money, we are here to provides services, to advocate for students, and to run events. [...] In five years I see the TCSA holding bigger events, being more in tune with advocacy, and running more services. We are going to have to do that slowly but I think we are already on the move. Arthur: I want to end on the notion of communication and connecting with students as this is an issue that was brought up by both students and TCSA representatives alike. Can we expect to see better communication between the TCSA and the student body next year, whether that be in Arthur, or Absynthe, on Trent Radio, or in your own newsletter? Willerton: All of those. We will likely have a publicity position, a student job, who will inform the student body not only on what’s going on in the TCSA, but also in the university. The lack of updates on our website was the first thing that most students picked up on and we definitely dropped the ball on that. [...] There was a huge success behind the opinion polls during the referendums this year and we could do more of those, not only at the end of the year, but also during the middle as well. Communication is something that we need to work on, and it is definitely one of our biggest priorities.

Election results (approved by TCSA Sunday, March 20) Trent Radio Levy Yes: 643 No: 569

Vegetable Garden Levy Yes: 770 No: 402

TUMS Levy* Yes: 596 No: 597

Root Cellar Levy Yes: 734 No: 451

Arthur Newspaper Levy Yes: 546 No: 654

OPIRG Levy Yes: 597 No: 584

TCSA Concert Levy

Are you in favour of a private residence on Trent University Property? Yes: 502 No: 775

Are you in favour of the Transportation fee being administered by the TCSA? Yes: 882 No: 388

Are you in favour of future classes beginning the Thursday of ISW? Yes: 221 No: 1056

Are you in favour of cutting pan-college funding? Yes: 205 No: 1017

CPI All Groups

Yes: 511 No: 688 *re-count scheduled for Wednesday, March 23

Yes: 636 No: 630

TCSA Government President Sheldon: 819 Jonathan: 430 VP of Students’ Issues Brea: 742 Liban: 535 VP of Finance and Corporate Secretary Gemma: 269 Wendy: 343 Aladdin: 621 VP for Membership Services Adam: 613 Dani: 671 Anti-Racism Commissioner: Suha, Yes: 472 Suha, No: 71

OPINION (U PUZPNO[ PU[V -HTPS` 7V]LY[`

A comment from ‘Breaking the Silence’ organizers By Andrea Knechtel, Helena Romano and Jessica Evans

years, or the closure of the communal garden on George Street last November?

Our names are Andrea, Jessica and Helena. We decided create the panel and discussion “ Breaking the Silence:: Making Youth and Children PovertyPublic.” Brea Hutchinson wrote about this event for Arthur last week (“Community groups and students gather to discuss family poverty in Peterborough” Vol. 45 Iss. 21), and we were motivated to write after discovering the many statistics and information highlighting the importance of child poverty in Peterborough, highlighting the higher rate of child poverty in Peterborough, and the many programs running to address it. There are many institutions working towards ending child and youth poverty in Peterborough and despite all these efforts that have been done by government and organized civil society, for the last 20 years things have not changed that much. How often do we hear why can’t poor people just ‘get a life’, or ‘get a job’, and that people receiving Ontario Works are ‘welfare bums’. Why can’t ‘poor people’ just get a job? Why can’t they take advantage of shelters? Why are ‘these people’ so lazy? Many of the policies that are supposedly addressing poverty are instead fighting against poor people and not addressing the causes of poverty; which, in turn, blames the poor for being poor. What better example of this than the bench removal from downtown in recent

Defining and describing poverty is a difficult thing, but identifying the causes and the consequences is a bit easier. However, to address the causes and not the consequences is a very different thing. It is different because it does not depend on ‘ordinary people,’ reforms must be done to governmental policies and that should be done by the congress... that takes a bit more time. Understanding is the first step to addressing this situation, and to have a better understanding we need to know what is going on. One of our guests was a worker from the Peterborough Family Resource Centre who ran a program for young mothers. A single mom and a young mom added to the collaboration of 13 participants who held a discussion about the perceptions of poverty, gendered poverty, and general life experiences. The discussion felt forced at the very beginning, until the group was questioned if poverty was experienced differently according to gender, when the group became quite engaged. Passion is the word we have to describe one of the mom’s attitude. “I wake up every day at 6 a.m. to take my daughter to childcare, then I go to school, and still some people call me a welfare bum. Just because I am using the services from Ontario Works....I would kill for my children, do you think I wont lie to [Ontario Works] to continue the support that I have?”

Our goal is to raise awareness of the structural barriers that influence Peterborough’s poverty situation among children and youth. We wanted to demystify the ideology that poverty is self-inflicted and individual, we approached this issue from a feminist perspective. Poverty is not an individual issue, but why is it that individuals living in poverty are blamed for ‘their’ situation? Behind every individual living in poverty in Canada is an economic system that that fights poverty while failing to address its causes, making it more difficult to climb out of poverty, driving more people to live in poverty, and then criminalizing those individuals for living in poverty: this is an economic system that cuts jobs; denies the right to adequate, livable and secure employment, to affordable childcare, adequate and affordable healthcare. It denies the right to safe, affordable food the right to safe, affordable housing, the right to dignity and independence; and deals with ‘these people’ through the criminalization and surveillance of ‘their lives’ and by creating a dominant belief that poverty is a personal issue in the first place. We want to thank our guests for taking the time and energy to participate in our discussion, your knowledge has made this a success; also thanks to Beckie Evans and Robin Steed for helping us to organize this, your help is invaluable.

+LHY :[\KLU[Z! Help! Malaria Kills. A group of fourth year nursing students are participating in a ‘Spread the Net’ campaign which focuses on increasing awareness and fundraising towards preventing the spread of malaria through infectious bug bites within African communities. It only takes $10 to provide a bed net that can protect one child or more for up to 5 years. Please support us by attending our ‘Spread the Net’ event taking place at Splice Restaurant and Lounge on Friday, March 25th at 8pm to 2am. There are many prizes to be given away, including gift certificates at highlyvalued restaurants, and the possibility of a guest appearance. Flyers will be distributed among campus throughout the next few weeks for more details. We truly appreciate all the support. It only takes one person to make an enormous change in the life of another. Thank you! Krista Nicole Tollis Trent University, BScN Student, Peterborough, ON

hark! a vagrant -­ comics by kate beaton

Poe & Verne

Chopin & Liszt

If anyone has any questions about this campaign/event, please contact: kristatollis@trentu.ca

10

harkavagrant.com

Volume 45 | Issue 22 | March 22, 2011

Jean-Paul de Roover woos Peterborough By Natalie Guttormsson To say that Jean-Paul de Roover’s music is original and unlike anything you’ve ever heard would be true, but it would be a cliché. He performs solo with his guitar, his voice, an MPC 500 drum sampler and a sweet recording/ playback system, all balanced on a frame of two staggered towers made from the red tubes of the German children’s toy “Quadro.” Jean-Paul has also been described as “a live-looping, sound architect.” Before each song starts, Jean-Paul lays the groundwork by recording layers of vocals, guitars, beats and percussion parts. He then loops these short sound bites to create full melodies and harmonies while he performs. It is an arrangement created live, on-stage, right in front of the audience. He does not use auto-tune nor does he bring pre-recorded material with him. I have never seen another artist use this creative method of music making like JeanPaul does. On Jean-Paul’s previous album his songs are layered with his voice and guitar, like the live performances, but the album has the benefit of full drums and other instruments. The album, “Windows and Doors,” is beyond genre. Songs float between rock, pop, alternative, indie and classical. When asked about the inspiration for his song writing he

said: “I used to rely mostly on personal experiences, but I’ve now started working on actual Song-writing, using stories from others, or fictional characters that I’ve created.” His new EP, “Pitch Pipes,” features a cappella versions of three songs from the “Windows and Doors” album. The songs are very close to his live performances but include several additional layers of fun vocals and beats made with his voice. The EP showcases JeanPaul’s ability to continually explore different musical styles and combine them with his own, layering techniques. Jean-Paul de Roover hails from Thunder Bay, Ontario. After playing with a few different bands in previous years, he set out to create music and perform on his own in 2007. Going solo has been a good move for someone so passionate about creating and sharing music. I asked JeanPaul what his motivation for making music and pursuing such ambitious tours was, and he answered: “Music is a part of my blood. I’ve been singing little ditties and jingles that appeared in my head since I was a kid, so it only

makes sense that I still do that now! As for the effort that goes into everything, I love what I do, because I get to do what I love: music.” Jean-Paul is currently touring Eastern Canada, Quebec, and Ontario until mid-March and in April will pick up his tour again starting in BC and on to Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. Tour dates and his music are available from his website jeanpaulderoover.com and on iTunes.

Trent Film Society Presents: L’intrus By Tyler Prozeniuk “The intruder [l’intrus] enters by force, through surprise or ruse, in any case without the right and without having first been admitted,” writes Jean-Luc Nancy, in an essay inspired by his own heart transplant, the entrance of an ‘intrus’ into his own body. Claire Denis boldy strikes out on the project of responding to this meditation in the form of a film that sprawls over continents. The narrative follows an old man searching for a new heart, but is ultimately subsumed by the drift of the images. This is meditative cinema, following our last two presentations in that theme, Kiarostami’s The Wind Will Carry Us, and Weerasethakul’s Syndromes and a Century. However, Denis’ film is much more restless and contradictory. It demands constant attention, lest the often fast-paced and freely associative montage introduce a level of meaning that passes by the viewer. However, Denis has been quoted as saying that her films “are not highly intellectual” and that L’intrus “is like a boat lost in the ocean drifting”. In other words, the fact that it is a response to a philosophical work does not make this a work of logical structure that demands close analysis. As I asserted last week, in a hopeless attempt to describe a meditative film that works through visual and temporal means, a description of a film cannot do it justice – it must be seen, and Trent Film Society tries to carve out a space in which films can been seen as they are meant to be seen. L’intrus will be screened at the Cannery on Wednesday, March 30 at 8 p.m.

Volume 45 | Issue 22 | March 22, 2011

11

ARTS

Dancing at the edge of water: Anishinaabe Maanjiwidin IX

“

The  students  had  experience  with  a  range  of  styles  of  dance,  from  hip-­hop  to  modern,  and  used  these  H[SHULHQFHV WR FUHDWH LPDJHV RI ELUGV GHHU DQG Ę?VK of  drilling  and  driving,  of  birth  and  rebirth.â€? By Iris A. Hodgson “Lake Ontario is precious to me, because that’s where I was born, on Manitoulin Island.â€? I’m watching a 2008 interview with Josephine Mandamin on YouTube. Mandamin is a leader of the Mother Earth Water Walk, an initiative that aims to call attention to the declining state of the world’s water. Between 2003 and 2009, Mandamin and other First Nations women and men walked the perimeter of the Great Lakes. “We didn’t even touch the water in lake Ontario,â€? she said, remembering the green slime and GHDG Ă€VK VKH VDZ DV VKH ZDONHG My interest in these water walks was piqued because they are the inspiration behind the Indigenous contemporary dance piece, “Walking the Edge of Water,â€? which was performed at Nozhem First People’s Performance Space last Thursday and Friday nights. Mandamin had asked choreographer Rulan Tangen to bring awareness to the importance of water, both “inside of our bodies as well as the waters of the earth.â€? She brought this request to students enrolled in the Indigenous Performance Studies courses at Trent, who danced in the piece. In the introduction to the performance, Tangen said that she most wanted to see each student bring their own personal perspective to the dances, and you could tell from the performance that she had succeeded. The press release for the show stated that it would be presented in “Cree,

Spanish, Zulu, English, Anishinaabemowin, French, and Blackfoot.â€? But rather than being forcefully multicultural LQ WRQH WKHVH LQĂ XHQFHV VHHPHG SHUVRQDO DQG LQWLPDWH The students had experience with a range of styles of dance, from hip-hop to modern, and used these experiHQFHV WR FUHDWH LPDJHV RI ELUGV GHHU DQG Ă€VK RI GULOOLQJ and driving, of birth and rebirth. 'UHVVHG LQ IXQN\ VKUHGGHG PHWDOOLF RXWĂ€WV ZLWK stylized face paint, the impression they gave was at once ancient and au courant. For the most part, the performances were sincere, though sometimes a bit too pointed for my liking; “I won’t. Be here. For-ever,â€? went one chant. Most of all, I was jealous of the opportunity to dance for a class credit. Especially this late in the term, who doesn’t want to get up from their books and move around a little? The second half of the programme was Trent instructor Daystar/Rosalie Jones’s “No Home but the Heart: An Assembly of Memories.â€? It too included a cast of Trent students and community members. The dance theatre style of the performance included storytelling and dramatic reenactments, as well as modern dance, to tell the story of Jones’s family lineage. Beginning in 1837 with her greatgrandmother’s survival of a tragic smallpox epidemic, and travelling toward the present day, “No Home but the Heartâ€? is both family album and history lesson. “It was really our grandparents,â€? Jones recalls, â€?who lived through the changes from the older ways of life toward being on

An evening of Indigenous dance, music, and storytelling at Nozhem: First Peoples Performance Space Photographs taken by Holly Norris

12

Volume 45 | Issue 22 | March 22, 2011

the reserves.â€? These scenes of survival document the changing climates of racism and colonialism in North America. In “Balancing Dance,â€? a woman is harassed because of her mixed First Nations and Welsh heritage, with the implication that she is not enough of one or the other. In “A Case of Mistaken Identity,â€? a chorus of dancers surround one woman and ask her, “What are you? You’re so exotic.â€? All of their guesses about her ethnicity suggest that she is from somewhere else, as if only white people could be “from here.â€? On such a hectic St. Patrick’s night, Nozhem was a secluded den of creative activity, and a sanctuary away from a rowdy green-beer soaked evening that I just wasn’t feelLQJ LQ WKH Ă€UVW SODFH 7KRVH RI XV ZKR VNLSSHG WKH EDU WKLQJ altogether to opt for an evening of contemporary Indigenous dance were glad that we did. Looking around me on the East Bank bus, as I made my way home, I felt like I’d returned from a secret part of Trent that was so far from the booze-fuelled Trent experience my green-clad peers were having. But don’t neglect Nozhem, or the Indigenous Performance Studies program. Dance through your classes!

the wedding singer musical: so much fun!

“

[a] modern Romeo and Juliet story with a sexy, funny, ‘80s twist… with a happy ending.” By Chris Chapman

If you haven’t already seen the numerous posters plastered across the city, or witnessed one of the “flash mobs” in the past weeks, as the cast took over campus cafeterias singing songs such as “Somebody to Love” by Queen, you may not know that this year’s Anne Shirley Theatre Company (ASTC) musical will be the beloved, The Wedding Singer. I had the pleasure of watching a dress rehearsal this weekend. The show as a whole is a lovably cheesy comedy with infectious music and an outrageously talented cast and band. The Wedding Singer Musical is a comedy based on the popular 1998 Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore

movie. It’s about Robbie Hart, a “wannabe rockstar” who makes a living as a wedding singer. After a newly- broken heart, Robbie starts making all the weddings he performs at hilariously miserable. With the support of his entertaining band members and coworkers, Robbie pulls himself together and entangles himself into a friendship turned love story with his coworker, Julia. Only it’s not that simple: Julia herself is emotionally torn, due to her engagement with a rich businessman, Glen. Directors Jessica Lynch and Kevin Ross quoted the play as a “modern Romeo and Juliet story with a sexy, funny, ‘80s twist… with a happy ending.” To be clear, I hate Shakespeare, so expect something far more entertaining, a play with great acting, quality vocals, an awesome band, intense choreography and an awkward-

ly inappropriate granny. The show’s stars, Isaac Bell and Jessica Bommarito, really pull their weight, bringing their characters to life with awesome stage chemistry. The show will be playing at the Wenjack Theatre in Otonabee College at Trent University this weekend: Friday at 8:00 p.m., Saturday at 2:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m., and Sunday at 2:00 p.m. Tickets will be sold at the door and are $12 for general or $10 with a student card. The show is entirely student run and all the money from ticket sales goes directly to fund next year’s ASTC production. Be sure to check it out to see the amazing talent here at Trent, even people who aren’t fans of musical theatre will find this show entertaining, take it from me.

co-editor nerd-out break

mk

so sometimes we are in the office for 24 hours straight- and, really, it becomes more possible than you think, and you stop being afraid of the sadleir house ghosts. but it does mean we end up listening to SO much music and we’d like to take some time to share it.

i’m currently sighing heavily & pining over the four sold-out godspeed you!black emperor shows, looking at tickets on e-bay, and feeling like the mtl postrockers would abhor the act of me buying their tickets from some asshole opportunist who gouges prices on the internet (they don’t really like the internet)- but at least mogwai playing the day after will help satiate a bit of my post-rock cravings. in the office i’ve be listening to lotsa music that is prefixed by post- (rock, hardcore, punk) and prepping for stepping back into the 90s to see lo-fi indie rock originators sebadoh. yet there’s a good dose of the new and the nostalgic to keep me going through these long, dark hours, so here’s my most-played this week: teen daze- let’s fall asleep together mogwai- san pedro shotgun jimmie- bar’s closed fuck montreal- anchor suuns- pvc drive like jehu- caress attack in black- you’re such an only child fugazi- reclamation portugal! the man- 1989 sebadoh- license to confuse bright eyes- shell games & uh, a shit ton of shostakovich OFFICE SONGS WE AGREE ON: weezer- pink triangle everything, everything- what’s my name ludaaaa (stand up- vodka & milk remix) chip tha ripper- feel good wax mannequin - the price dan mangan- basket phoenix- lisztomania (alex metric) foster the people- pumped up kicks sarah harmer- coffee stains foxes in fiction gobble gobble the burning hell lonely island (yup)

js sigh. i’m the tacky one who’ll not only admit to rocking out to everything from pop music to mo-town (don’t hate) but make mk listen to it seep loudly from my headphones. that said, i have been to some epic shows this year (including robyn at the sound academy, where the disability section was the vip. srsly). so here are my office hawt beatz: moody blues- i know you’re out there somewhere lovers- barnacle slim twig- brothl hunting annie lennox- kepp young and beautiful paul simon- everything put together falls apart kindness killers- strangers robyn- call your girlfriend pointer sisters- jump yeah yeah yeahs- modern romance snowblink- ambergris snails- the format SO MUCH SLEATER-KINNEY I JUST CAN’T PICK. eee! mashupz & dubstep: the hood internet- rude baptism (rihanna & crystal castles) mashup germany- replay kids (chiddy bang & mgmt vs. iyaz) kid cudi- pursuit of happiness (mgmt & ratatat) whitenoise- i want you (drake & jackson 5) kanye- all of the lights (dutchstep mix) rihanna- who’s that chick (dj geometrix) metric- help i’m alive (the twelves remix)

Volume 45 | Issue 22 | March 22, 2011

13

sports

CORPORATE SPONSORS USE LEVERAGE TO INFLUENCE HEAD SHOT RULES IN THE NHL By Tyler Gal

The brutal hit on Montreal Canadiens’ Max Pacioretty by Boston Bruins’ Zdeno Chara into the stanchion that was supporting the glass near the Canadien’s bench on March 9 has without a doubt sparked intense debate between the National Hockey League, corporate sponsors and spectators over head-shots and concussions, and what the NHL plans do about them. Pacioretty suffered a fractured 4th vertabrae and was the twenty-fourth player to receive a severe concussion. The combination of this particular hit and the increasing number of reported concussions has raised concerns amongst the NHL’s corporate sponsors, but only Air Canada has threatened to pull their sponsorship if the NHL does not actively address this issue. Although I am not convinced that it was a publicity stunt, no one can deny that Air Canada did receive a lot of free press, and that their brand may have even been strengthened. First, Air Canada’s threat to pull their sponsorship reached news stations across North America, raising awareness of head-shots, but also serving as great advertising for the company. Secondly, the threat suggests that Air Canada is safety-conscious; from this, potential customers might infer that they will take extra precautions for the safety of their passengers, which is a form of quality customer service. Lastly, this demonstrates that the company has integrity, and in today’s competitive market, this is a valuable marketing tool that almost all companies utilize, but rarely seize the opportunity to prove. Air Canada did what they thought was best for their company, and no other corporation has publicly challenged their actions. However, other corporate sponsors such as PepsiCo, Via Rail, Bell Canada Enterprises (BCE Inc.), the Bank of Nova Scotia, Scotiabank and even Canada’s beloved coffee franchise Tim Hortons, did not react as strongly as Air Canada did. This suggests that these companies are confident that their affiliation with the NHL will not compromise the integrity of their brand, especially when other leagues such as the National Football League (NFL) also has a high (player) concussion rate. And why shouldn’t they be? In the 2009-10 season, the NHL ratified and implemented Rule 48, and formally called it an “illegal check to the head.” An illegal check to the head is defined as “a lateral or blind side hit to an opponent where the head is targeted

and/or the principal point of contact is not permitted.” Before last year, no similar rule existed. During that time, the NHL did not find it difficult to acquire corporate sponsors, nor did those sponsors experience a drop in sales for the sole reason of being affiliated with an organization that was consistently accused of not taking player safety seriously. What must also be taken into consideration is that due to the rough nature of the sport, hockey has generated a culture that excludes players who are “weak.” “Enforcers” such as Bob Probert and Marty McSorely were renowned for their toughness, and they set a standard of “toughness” that players needed to meet if they did not want to be considered a “weakling” by teammates, coaches and viewers. As a result, this perception put players in the position where they would hide their concussion symptoms. However, this is beginning to change in the NHL. Concussions are not going unreported as much as they used to, and they are therefore being taken much more seriously by players and coaches than before Rule 48. At the annual general managers meeting in Boca Raton, Florida throughout the week of March 14, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman presented a five-point plan to limit concussions. The five-point plan will focus on: Player equipment: reducing the size of equipment without reducing its purpose which is to protect players. Sharpening protocol for evaluating concussions: a player who is suspected of having a concussion will be removed from the bench for assessment, and be examined not by the team trainer, but by a neutral doctor. Enforcement of the rules: distributing harsher punishments for both first-time and repeat offenders. This rule will also evaluate how a coach and a team will be held accountable if a team has several “repeat offenders”. Alterations to the “rink environment”: a safety engineering firm will be hired to evaluate all 30 arenas to determine where more safety measures can be made. A “blue-ribbon” committee: Former NHL stars Brendan Shanahan, Rob Blake, Steve Yzerman and Joe Nieuwendyk will examine all safety-related issues on behalf of the players. The development of the five-point concussion plan emphasizes that the NHL is not as barbaric a league as they’ve been portrayed, and that company brands are represented by a responsible organization.

Max Pacioretty Compared to the National Football League (NFL) for example, on average, 125 concussions are diagnosed each regular season and the league is not (even in the slightest amount) experiencing a shortage of corporate sponsors, even though players use their heads as “battering rams.” Although hockey and football are entirely different sports, concussions are not a part of either game. They are a sideeffect that has emerged out of the physical contact that occurs. Regardless, fans do not care about head injuries enough to boycott products or services that corporate sponsor’s offer. The truth is that some fans are more concerned with seeking revenge on the perpetrators who hurt their favourite player than opposing the league’s corporate sponsors. Once again, corporations are off the hook because Max Pacioretty’s injury will have a greater negative effect on Zdeno Chara’s reputation than on any of the companies that sponsor the NHL.

STATE OPENS FIRE ON YEMENI PROTESTERS, DEATH TOLL CLIMBS By jes sachse January 27, 2011 - The Arabic nation of Yemen saw the first major anti-government demonstration, one of several uprisings inspired by the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia. Situated in the capital of Sanaa, 16,000 protestors were calling for the resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, and a regime of 33 years. Since that time, protests have continued, as Saleh announced that he did not intend to run for re-election in 2013, nor would he hand power to his son, Ahmed Ali, just days after demonstrations began. Despite these promises, calls for the president’s resignation culminated into February 3’s “day of rage.” While international attention later became distracted by the inception of an uprising in Libya in opposition to the Gaddafi regime, the crowds gathered in Sanaa and across the country continued to grow, as reports of fatalities surfaced. On March 7, security forces opened fire on detainees revolting in prisons in solidarity with those protesting on the side of anti-government in Yemen. On March 18, almost two months since the start of the uprising in Yemen, and in contradiction with Ali Abdullah Saleh’s calls for security forces to protect protestors on all sides of the demonstration, armed loyalists to the president opened fire on peaceful protestors during a sit-in at Sanaa University, killing 52 and injuring many more. Intended to quash the continued protests, Friday’s massacre (as it has been named) has since elicited support from within the regime, and compassion for those protesting in opposition. General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, high official and military commander of the northern region of Yemen, declared his support on Monday, March 21, of the peaceful revolution against the rule of Saleh, following the deployment of his own army to sit-in camps nearby the university. “According to what I’m feeling, and according to the feelings of my partner commanders and soldiers … I announce our support and our peaceful backing to the youth revolution,” Ali Mohsen told the Guardian.

14

Mohsen hasn’t been the only military or diplomatic figure to defect. Following Moshen’s statements, and subsequent pledge to incite a slew of other defections, several region’s governors, editors of government newspapers, businessmen and senior members of Saleh’s government made known their allegiance to the protestors- and in many cases, resigned from their positions. Seven Yemeni ambassadors - to Japan, Czech Republic, China, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Syria all announced that they were stepping down. However, this has not decreased military presence in Sanaa, causing an uncertainty for future government, with some fearing the movement toward a transitional military government in Yemen, given the control that Saleh and his sons still have over the republican guard and the air force. Equally, not all representatives of the current regime are declaring solidarity with the protests. Mohammed Nasser

Volume 45 | Issue 22 | March 22, 2011

int’L

Ahmed, the defence minister of the country announced publicly that the army would defend the president against any “coup against democracy.” This statement, delivered just 12 hours after promises were made to protect antigovernment protestors in the capital. Pro-government forces were responsible for armed raids of the offices of al-Jazeera, where broadcasting equipment was seized. With many of the defecting figures now joining the anti-government youth revolution in the streets, in solidarity with peaceful protest, tension remains as demands for Saleh’s resignation proliferate. “We will not allow under any circumstances an attempt at a coup against democracy and constitutional legitimacy, or violation of the security of the nation and citizens,” the defence minister asserts.

Listings Stitch and Bitch! Every Monday at Sadleir House Senior Common Rm (201). Bring your knitting, crochet, or needlepoint. Beginners welcome! 6:30-9pm.

Marc for more info: nikobilz@gmail.com

4(:0( 65, to Kick Off KWIC Youth Spring Conference, Finding Your Voice: Art & Activism 101, April 15th at The Mar*H[Ă„ZO >PSSPL 7YLZLU[Z ket Hall. Registration in advance at www.kwic. ;OL )\JRSL )\Z[LYZ Every Wednesday 9pm. info or via Facebook. InHot Western Swing and formative and inspiring Hillbilly Jazz @ Ossia Pub keynote and participatory (231 Hunter St). Debut workshops for youth 14CD “Cartoon and West- 25 years. More info at Kawartha World Issues ernâ€? available. Centre: 705-748-1680. 1Haa +\V, pianist Biff Hannon and vocalist 1)*:( (.4 ,3,*Donna Collison at Curry ;065: Village, 306 George St. Wednesday, March 30 on Saturday March 26 2011. 12 p.m. - Blackburn Hall, Room 114.2 from 6 to 9 pm

offers you the opportunity to discuss a paper you are currently working on with an experienced instructor who can provide support at all stages of the writing process - from picking a topic to revising your draft - by offering guidance and suggestions for improvement. Call 748-1720 to make a 45 minute appointment or come by Mondays for KYVW PU Ă„YZ[ JVTL Ă„YZ[ served, 30 minute sessions). You can also submit essays or questions online by going to www. trentu.ca/academicskills/ service_online.php.

Peterborough New Horizons Bands present an evening of light hearted tunes to welcome Spring. You will enjoy excerpts from Les Mis, favourite classics and Dave Brubeck jazz performed by our four concert bands. Friday March 25, 7:30 p.m. Thomas A. Stewart Secondary School. TickL[Z! " MVY at the door or call 705 874 5311

.PHU[ )VVR :HSL with Bake Sale and CafÊ. Saturday, April 2, 2011,10:00 am - 2:00 pm. St. Andrew’s United Church. 441 Rubidge Street at ;YHUZP[PVU ;V^U 7L- Brock. Also collectible [LYIVYV\NO WYLZLU[Z! books, CD’s, DVD’s and /V^ [V 4HZ[LY *OHUNL (MYPJ]PSSL WYVK\J[PVUZ The Marketing of Mad- videos. Wheelchair AcPU *OHUNPUN ;PTLZ! WYLZLU[Z! A Night of Mu- ness DVD Host and Q & cess at Kirk Street Door. Thursday March 24, sic, Poetry and Dance. A Linda Devine, Founder - Wellness Expo @ Library ^W ^VTLU WYV7-8:30pm Sadleir House. April 9. Featuring: A creative workshop to The Resolutionaries Ma- Auditorium on March 24 K\J[PVUZ PZ KLSPNO[LK discuss various skills to rimba Band, Yardsteppa th 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm. [V HUUV\UJL [OH[ ;OL help us face changes in and Culture Mix Reggae Come to this DVD show- )VVR VM :WLSSZ ( 3V]L our life and see them as Band, Balam Santos, AK ing. Be prepared to be :[VY` will be coming opportunities for spiritual 47 Band, Komi Olami- shocked as to how Mod- back to Peterborough, growth. Change can be fahan. Advance tickets ern Psychiatry operates Saturday April 2nd. FolKPMÄJ\S[ VY LHZ`" I\[ OV^ $10. Tickets available @ HUK KLÄULZ UL^ KY\N lowed by a celebratory we handle it determines Only cafe (216 Hunter St), treatable human condi- reception with refreshour future. A simple shift Benevolent Stranger (212 tions. Learn how new ments provided by local of focus can allow us to hunter st) and Have you drugs are repackaged food and drink specialists take control of old habits seen Video (321 Aylmer ...follow the money! This The Olde Stone Brewing event is by donation. Re- Company, Hot Belly Maand beliefs. Come learn st). freshments will be served mas and Brio Gusto. Venand share your understanding. No charge. All ;OL *Y\UJO PZ VU Feel- and Silent Auction items ue: St. John’s Anglican welcome. Find our group ing a little bit like a pa- will be available. Church, 99 Brock Street, at meetup.com (The Pe- per-writing, one-person Peterborough, Ontario 0U]P[LK [V Saturday, April 2nd 2011 terborough Spiritual Ad- assembly line? An Aca- @V\YL ventures Group) or email demic Skills appointment :WYPUN[PTL :LYLUHKL! $15/ pay what you can

for students/unwaged. Advanced tickets at: Titles Bookstore, YWCA, KWiC, Environmental Sciences Building, East Bank, Trent University, Rm B101, WEC. Contact: Jennifer Cayley 2.women. productions@gmail.com. 613-256-0353.

Child Become a Competent Eater with Staff of the PRHC Family and Youth *SPUPJ PU Ă„LSKZ VM U\[YPtion, psychology & social work. Thursday, April 7th from 7 to 9 p.m. Peterborough Public Library, 345 Aylmer St. N. The workshop will be of interest to parents and care ,]LU[ H[ [OL :WPSS Tues- providers of children ages day Mar. 22nd: Falling 4 and over. Workshop From Airplanes with The Free. No registration reAutumn Portrait. quired. For more information call 705-742-3803 or :LJVUK :WYPUN /LHS[O` 1-800-386-6561. -HTPSPLZ >VYRZOVW! All about Eating in 4 to 12 Year Olds: Helping your

Send event information to listings@ trentarthur. ca. For ad rates, email advertising@ trentarthur.ca

Volume 45 | Issue 22 | March 22, 2011

15

EVENTs Wed. March 23

Fri. March 25

Peterborough Student Co-op Annual General Meeting in Hobbs Library @ Sadleir House, 7 to 10 pm.

ASTC Presents: The Wedding Singer! Tickets will be available outside the Wenjack from March 14-25 or email astc03@live.ca to reserve your seats. Ticket Prices: $10 for students, $12 for general

Tom Jackson Celebrity Pool Tournament for Kids Help Phone, 2 to 4 pm, LEC Junior Common Room

Israeli Apartheid Week Cultural Night : The Recipe & Poetry Slam 10 pm at Sapphire Room (137 Hunter St West).

Thurs. March 24

SHOW DATES: March 25 8:00; March 26 2:00 & 8:00; March 27 2:00

Sat. March 26

Submissions for Trent Queer Collective’s representational supplement Queerlines are due today by 3 pm! Submit artwork, stories, photos and more to trentqueercolllective@gmail.com.

Typewriter, Tin Vespers & The Kindness Killers @ The Planet (freshly painted at 374 Water St.). Holy cow! That sounds special. $5/PWYC, all ages, and licensed.

Israeli Apartheid Week: One session, two spealers:

Sadleir House/ Peter Robinson Community & Student Association Annual General Meeting in Hobbs Library, 2 to 4 pm.

Egypt’s Revolution and the Middle East, presented by Gavin Fridell

Leadership Conference: Step Up! Make an Impact Fri, Mar 25, 9 to 4 pm. Sat, Mar 26, 9 to 4 pm. Our guest speaker Dr. Samantah Nutt will be addressing the Trent community in the Peter Gzowski College lecture hall room 114 on Friday March 25 at 6pm.

An Introduction to the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions Campaign, presented by Suha Jarrar 2:30 pm – 4:30 pm CCN M2

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