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Pulling an all nighter vs. running a marathon

by Shannon Kimball on

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 This past Sunday, I joined 35,000 other runners and toed the line in the Chicago marathon. I also had four midterms scheduled in the six days surrounding the race, making for one exhausting week. Surprisingly, I’ve learned that running 26.2 miles and staying up all night follow a similar process, both mentally and physically.

Preparation

Marathon: Hydration, carbohydrates, and a touch of caffeine are the keys to propelling yourself by foot over 26.2 miles. Runners must drink their weight in water, and eat at least three pounds of whole wheat pasta the day before the race. This ultimately leads to an excessive number of trips to port-a-potties on race day.

All-nighter: Drink at least one cup of coffee per hour, and follow it up with some water (Redpath gets hot). Any experienced student also knows the importance of planning snacks for the late-night munchies.

Adrenaline at the start

Marathon, Mile 1: Tens of thousands of spectators hoot and holler in the first 1,600 metres of the marathon, making for an exciting start to the race. Loud cheering, painted signs, and the surge of adrenaline that comes with the start provide the runners with the confidence that they can run another 25.2 miles.

All-nighter, 9 p.m.: Midterm- and essay-plagued students file into Redpath, optimistic about the night ahead. Their papers may be due in 15 hours, but that’s plenty of time to write 12,000 words. If all goes well, they may even be home for a quick nap by 5 a.m.

The first half

Marathon, Mile 13: The first 13.1 miles go by in a flash, without so much as a break in the runners’ strides. They’ve covered this distance dozens of times in the past four months of training. As runners get into their zones, water stations seem superfluous. But with 13.1 more miles to go, fear looms ahead.

All-nighter, 1 a.m.: The first half of the textbook was a joke—just a review of high school material. While it’s tempting to once again review the material you already knew, the real work lies untouched. But before that, it’s time for a coffee break.

Back and forth

Marathon, Miles 14-20: Lactic acids starts to build in the quadriceps, glutes, and arms, and runners’ once-fluid form begins to decline. The next six miles are a combination of surges, relaxed running, and a bit of painful hobbling.   

All nighter, 3 a.m.: Fingers ache from typing, and eyelids droop as late-night studiers slow their pace. The once fast-paced studying is a medley of coffee breaks, Facebook stalking, and the occasional topic sentence or chapter summary.

The wall

Marathon, Mile 21: The notorious wall hits. Depleted of endorphins and glycogen reserves, the body can’t use fat for energy, and must now slowly eat away at muscle fibres. This results in a whole-body ache. Regret sets in as athletes desperately try to put one foot in front of the other. Many slow to a walk on the sidelines, and only a few of them return to finish. Despite the roaring crowds and thousands of other suffering runners, everyone is completely and totally alone.

All-nighter, 5 a.m.: Reading groups, a friend’s notes, or a stolen paper outline don’t matter anymore. You have only a few hours to go and no amount of coffee will help you get that A. Anger—toward professors, toward yourself, but most of all, toward that kid sniffling next to you—is the only emotion you have left. Others just can’t take it, and head to the stacks for a nervous breakdown.

Unreasonable optimism

Marathon, Mile 24: After running for 24 miles, 2.2 is child’s play. Pained grunts turn into ecstatic cheers in the final surge.  

All-nighter, 6 a.m.: The sun is rising, and you haven’t accomplished half of what you set out to do, but an overwhelming feeling of calm and acceptance abounds with the start of new day, allowing for one last push.

Science & Technology, Student Life

The greatest inventions of all time

by Iain Macdonald on

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freepatentsonline.com

Sliced bread is awesome. But, if it’s truly one of the greatest inventions of all time, why do people still own bread knives? Here are some other suggestions for the top innovative inventions of all time. While these inventors may not have won  Nobel Prizes, they certainly deserve some recognition.

5.    The Printing Press

 The early printing presses were mechanical devices that could be loaded with letters to be printed onto a page. This made the production of books and other printed media significantly easier. Before the days of laserjet printers, the printing press was responsible for the spread of knowledge. Long ago, books were significantly more expensive, as each book had to be handwritten by a scribe. The invention of the printing press by Johanes Gutenberg in the 1400s was one of the most significant events for the lower and middle classes in history. The printing press gave the lower classes increased access to books, which at the time meant increased knowledge, which has made possible each of the following inventions on this list.

4.    The Internet

CERN’s TCP/IP connection, and the youngest invention on this list has definitely made a name for itself. If the Internet was shut off, the effects would be disastrous. In the 21st century, the Internet has become our primary tool for communication. If the whole network of communication went down, we wouldn’t have access to email, telephones, television, radio, and more. Without the Internet, suppliers would not be able to coordinate with consumers. Food and other merchandise would stop being delivered. Even electricity is often managed by the Internet, so it would be hit-and-miss without it. Without significant government action, millions of people could die due to starvation, weather effects, and other disasters. It goes to show that the internet provides a bit more than Facebook.

3.    The Transistor

Electrical devices are everywhere, and so are transistors. From cell phones to microwaves to stoplights, every electrical device you come into contact with is likely made primarily of transistors. A transistor is a little electrical switch, invented by a team at Bell Labs in the 1940s. In modern computers, there are billions of these little switches. The number of devices using transistors is staggering. Cars, planes, and nearly every computer made makes use of transistors by the million.

2.    Vaccinations

Since the mid-1800s when it became popular, the process of vaccination has saved hundreds of millions of lives. The idea is quite simple: the immune system develops antibodies which render harmful agents in a human blood useless. However, when a person is infected with a terrible disease like smallpox or polio, the number of microbes in the blood becomes so large, so quickly, that the immune system cannot respond in an adequate amount of time. A vaccination is just a small dosage of living or dead microbes causing the illness, which can be killed by the immune system. Then, when the person contracts the illness later in life, the immune system “remembers” the microbes and is much quicker to mount a response, saving the person’s life. While the mechanisms for its action were unknown to Jenner and Pasteur hundreds of years ago, they noticed that it was effective in preventing illness.

1.    The Internal Combustion Engine

No invention has been more influential than the internal combustion engine. Try to imagine life without it: we would not have cars, planes, trains, boats, and a number of other things which depend on these forms of transportation. Everything that was manufactured and transported any more than a few miles could not easily make the journey without the internal combustion engine. This invention, conceived by Carnot, first manufactured by Otto, has transformed our lives in unimaginable ways.

Features

There’s more than one way to save a feral cat…

by Laura Tindal on

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brittanica.com

Allie, now a 10-month-old tabby, was found as a kitten living with a group of squirrels. A Montreal family started feeding her but knew that when they moved, she would be out of luck, so they brought her to Eleven Eleven Animal Rescue where she was socialized and adopted to a loving home.

The Montreal rescue group—which takes in mostly feral kittens and pets that are about to be euthanized—has found families for more than 100 animals since Caroline Ross founded the organization. This number may sound impressive to some, but Ross knows that this is barely a scratch on the surface.

“The number of cats we saved in the past year is less than the number of cats euthanized just last week at the pound that we work with,” she says. “We rescued about 60 cats last year and in one day they had to euthanize 40 cats.”

These euthanasia rates are not unusual in Montreal, which struggles with an alarmingly high number of homeless cats. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals shelter in Montreal takes in approximately 10,500 cats a year—with 150-250 cats living at the shelter on any given day—and euthanizes 50 per cent of the those admitted. There are hundreds of thousands of feral and abandoned cats roaming the city’s streets, and most  cities in Quebec have done little to address the problem.

A large part of the problem comes from high rates of animal abandonment in the province. Some attribute this to a lingering agricultural mentality towards animals, in which pets are seen as disposable, while others blame the no pet clauses common in Quebec leases. Quebec’s annual moving day on July 1st has become a day dreaded by animal rescue workers; it is the peak of the moving season during which half of all abandoned animals in Quebec are left behind. This phenomenon is not seen in any other province.

“No-pet clauses are forbidden in Ontario leases, so you don’t have an issue of people moving and not being able to move with their animals,” explains Alanna Devine, director of animal welfare at the Montreal SPCA. “It’s also partly about attitude. Unfortunately, in Quebec, there are still a lot of people who don’t realize that owning an animal is a lifelong commitment to that animal and not just a convenience thing.”

These abandoned pets add to the growing number of cats animal rescue groups are trying to help. Taking cats into rescues and putting them up for adoption is often seen as the best way to help these cats, but lack of adopters make this unsustainable.

“Even if all cats were healthy at all times and were 100 per cent adoptable, it’s not about space—we’d be stacking cats on top of cats on top of cats—it’s about supply and demand,” says Devine. “There are too many cats and not enough homes.”

Smaller rescues, such as Eleven Eleven—which does not operate a shelter—rely completely on foster homes to house cats for adoption. However, the lack of foster parents limits the number of pets the group can save from euthanization. At the height of summer the group had 25 kittens in foster homes, but in one week received 80 emails asking the group to find homes for their cats, all of which had to be turned down.

“Even with all the effort we’re doing to save them, there’s still such a huge overpopulation,” says Ross. “The town that we work with, they’ve got the cage space for 20 cats and they get about 60 to 100 cats a week during the summer. So any cat that’s going to the pound is just going to get euthanized.”

Most of Montreal’s cats are not in shelters: they’re on the street. The feral cat population in Montreal is continuing to increase. When unneutered cats are unleashed on the streets—either abandoned or just let outdoors—they breed with homeless cats, creating an epidemic of street-born feral cats.  On average, a breeding pair of feral cats will spawn 100 offspring within their short lives. Unlike strays, feral cats have lived on the streets their whole lives and are not used to humans. After four months of age it can be incredibly difficult to domesticate feral cats.  

Until recently, the common way to deal with these cats was to trap them and take them to city shelters to be euthanized. But in recent decades, groups have been turning to Trap-Neuter-and-Release programs to slow the exponential growth of the feral cat population. One of the first TNR programs in North America was implemented by Stanford University in 1989 to deal with the more than 1,500 homeless cats living on their campus, and today the number is down to 200. Not only is the program touted as more humane for the cats, it has more support from citizens, and is supposed to combat the “vacuum effect” that removal programs ignore. Cats are highly territorial, but when feral cats are removed, new ones move in for food sources and the remaining cats breed at high levels until this environment can no longer support the population—this is the “vacuum effect.” One area has only enough food or space for shelter for a certain number of cats, and population of breeding cats will always be at this number, either by breeding or by cats moving in. But if cats are sterilized and returned, the population will stabilize and decrease as the cats stop reproducing while still protecting their territory from other strays.

However, TNR  requires hard work and patience. Citizen involvement is required in locating and trapping cats. In order to stabilize a population within cat colonies, at least 70 per cent of the colony has to be sterilized, and this can take more than a year depending on the size of the population. From there it will take years for the colony to decrease.

But organizations around Montreal are taking up the challenge. The SPCA runs TNR programs in Verdun and Lachine—two municipalities that were in dire need of help over a year ago—while Steri-Animal does TNR throughout the Montreal area. In the past seven years Steri-Animal has successfully stabilized cat populations in at least 30 colonies. They currently sterilize around 140 feral cats a year as part of their TNR programs.

“Just last week there was a colony of 12 cats and we sterilized all 12,” says Linda Heimann, co-founder and director of operations for Steri-Animal. “Now that the cats are fixed the neighbours are no longer complaining because the cats are no longer wandering into their yards or peeing on their barbeques.”

Mike Cohen, city councillor for Côte St-Luc, noticed the problem of feral cats in his municipality and realized that someone needed to take action. After research and a public meeting on the issue in August, Cohen has now obtained council support for funding a TNR program in Côte Saint-Luc. Once the program’s budget has been determined, Cohen’s next step will be to enlist citizens willing to roll up their sleeves to help find and trap the cats.

“There’s no way in a million years that we could come up with the funding to track down every cat, but if there’s 10,000—and that’s the number that the vet’s given us—we’re going to try to trap as many as we can and as many as we can afford to pay for.”

This may sound expensive, but those in support of TNR point to its lower cost compared to euthanasia.

“Our average cost is $200 per animal that we take into [the SPCA],” says Devine. “Some animals spend five months here, some animals spend five days, some spend five minutes—it’s really dependent upon an average figure. So if you look at that versus how much it costs to sterilize a cat, then yes it’s less expensive.”

In the long run, Devine says, TNR programs reduce the number of animals coming in, thereby decreasing costs over time.

But is this just soft-hearted idealism? Some argue that TNR is nicer for the people dealing with homeless cats than it is for the cats. Feral cats have more difficult and shorter lives than domesticated cats. On average, a house ca
t that is not allowed outside will live two to three years longer than those allowed outdoors, due to the inherent dangers outside. A feral cat has an average lifespan of only two years if it lives by itself, and five years in a colony, compared to 15-22 years for an indoor cat. Although spaying a female cat takes away the burden of delivering two litters a year, and neutered males are less likely to fight and spread injury and disease, even cared-for TNR cats face potentially painful ends.

“A lot of them are killed by cars,” says David Bird, professor of wildlife biology at McGill University. “You’ve got predators like coyotes that are coming into towns now more and more, and other predators like dogs and foxes. And on top of that you have to worry about nasty people out there who do not like cats running loose.”

Bird, a former cat owner, argues that TNR is not a practical solution for decreasing the homeless cat population, and is instead the easy way out of a difficult situation.

“I find catching and euthanizing cats distasteful too … But what’s more humane? You put them out there and have them eke out an existence, eating a lot of birds and living at the mercy of predators, bad weather, disease, all kinds of stuff,” he says. Ultimately, Bird feels putting them to sleep is more humane.

There is further controversy over whether TNR actually prevents the vacuum effect. Some studies have shown that cats around the feeding stations are not overly territorial, allowing feral cats from all around to converge at feeding areas. This may also lead to people dumping their unwanted cats at feeding locations, knowing that they’ll have food and be less likely to be euthanized than at a shelter. Yet the majority of studies in the United States and Europe, where TNR projects have been in place for much longer, have shown the program to be a success.

“For cats who have been abandoned, life on the streets can be very hard, but feral cats cannot be adopted. Who are we to say a cat has to be euthanized because it doesn’t have a home? The cats are healthier after we spay them; they don’t get sick [as much], they don’t fight,” says Heimann.

But in the end, TNR advocates and opponents both want the same thing: for the number of homeless cats to decrease. And as Devine says, “The options are: you can trap and kill, you can do nothing, or you can do TNR. The first two have been done in Montreal for years and years and the problem isn’t going away, so I think we need to look at a different alternative.”

TNR programs cannot work if people are letting unfixed animals roam around, or if they’re throwing their unwanted cats out on the street. One way to help limit this kind of irresponsibility is through low-cost spay/neuter initiatives. In 2008, Steri-Animal joined with the SPCA to start Operation Feline, a low-cost spay/neuter clinic to help decrease the number of unfixed cats and increase the amount of people able to afford these basic clinic services. Unfortunately, because of Quebec Veterinary Medicine Association (AMVQ) laws which prohibit veterinary clinics from being owned by non-veterinarians, the program had to rely on the donated time and goodwill of vets throughout Montreal. Due to a lack of voluntary vets willing to donate one day a year, Operation Feline was forced to close, but Steri-Animal still runs low-cost sterilization services through the four vets they work with.

“I sort of expected that there would be a lot more vets willing to contribute, but that’s not the case,” says Heimann. “[Low-cost spay/neuter programs] are dependent on the goodwill of the vets in the city, and there just aren’t that many who are interested in participating.”

As different municipalities start to look at the cat overpopulation on their streets, thought needs to be given not just to TNR, but to fundamental changes in the laws that affect pet owners in Montreal.  

“We’re fighting an unwinnable battle unless we change our strategy. We need to address the root causes,” Devine says, “I think it comes down to education, access to affordable spay/neuter surgeries, municipal legislation that outlaws having no-pet clauses in our leases, and stricter legislation to really promote responsible pet ownership, such as initiatives to make spay/neuter mandatory for people who aren’t responsible with their pet.”

 

As a student, one of the biggest ways you can help Montreal cats is by fostering. When you foster, you agree to provide a home for a cat or kitten and care for it until it gets adopted. Rescues pay for food, vet bills, etc., so while the cat is in your care, you get all of the benefits of having a pet, without the cost or 15-year commitment. And you’re saving a life.

 Montreal SPCA:

 Foster animals are often those that are too young to be adopted or ones needing minor medical treatment (e.g. ear drops) or behavioural work before being put up for adoption. Call (514) 735-2711 x2237 or go to spcamontreal.com/aidez3.php?lg=en for more information.

Eleven Eleven

Animal Rescue:

Specializing in feral kittens, foster animals are often young cats who are in need of basic socialization. Dogs and cats about to be euthanized for unnecessary reasons also need foster homes, but they can’t be saved if there are no homes available. Go to elevenelevenanimalrescue.org/Fostering.html.

Steri-Animal:

Kittens less than 12 weeks old that are caught in the TNR program are placed in foster homes to be socialized and re-homed. Helps keep the homeless cat population down and cats out of shelters. Fill out a form at steri-animal.org/ENFosterForm.html.

Animal Rescue Network:

This cat rescue needs foster homes for cats with special needs, such as special diets (food is provided), pregnant cats, senior cats, or cats with FIV (a feline auto-immune disease not contagious to people). Email [email protected] or go to animalrescuenetwork.org/info/display?PageID=989 to find out more.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

Toronto’s Cuff the Duke show off stripped-down style

by Manisha Aggarwal-Schifellite on

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cufftheduke.ca

Sometimes it pays to have good friends. Or, if you’re Toronto’s Cuff the Duke, good friends who are also Canadian rock legends. Last year, Blue Rodeo’s Greg Keelor approached the band and invited them to record some songs with him.

“He came to us and said, ‘Let’s just record for fun,'” says singer-guitarist Wayne Petti. “We did it in the summer and then came back to him and said we wanted to record an album.”

Keelor was on board, and Cuff the Duke recorded part of Way Down Here, the band’s fourth studio release, in August 2008 and the rest in the winter of 2009.

“We recorded at Greg’s farm in Middle of Nowhere, Ontario, in the middle of January,” Petti says. “There was a big fireplace in his house, and we would stand around the fire in the morning and play songs before recording them.”

The album took just 11 days to record and mix, something Petti says that the band had never done in such a short time.

“We would just play songs, then pick one and record it,” he says. “In that way, the recording process was very spontaneous, which we all really loved doing.”

The relationship between Keelor, Petti, and the rest of Cuff the Duke has since grown into a full-fledged musical collaboration. Following the completion of Way Down Here, Keelor invited Petti to sing on Blue Rodeo’s most recent album The Things We Left Behind, and join the band on their 2010 tour, which he describes as a “surreal” experience.

“They’re playing arena shows, so at the beginning it was kind of intimidating,” says Petti. “But I got used to it. They all took me under their wing, and we hit it off really well.”

The rest of Cuff the Duke joined the tour in mid-2010, and Petti will continue to tour with Blue Rodeo in November, in between dates with Cuff the Duke on the East Coast leg of their tour schedule with fellow Canadian musician Christina Martin.

Originally from Oshawa, Ontario, the band is a fixture of Toronto’s well-established independent musical community and no stranger to the road, having crossed the country more than 15 times. Even though they’re gaining recognition outside the local Toronto scene, it’s easy to forget how long they’ve been around. To illustrate this, Petti points to the band’s first release, 2002’s Life Stories for Minimum Wage.

“Our first album was released on the same day as [Broken Social Scene’s second release] You Forgot It In People, so we got to be really wrapped up in that scene,” he says. “It was an exciting time to be a musician, and they really blew it open for a while on an international scale.”

Cuff the Duke’s music has changed and evolved over the years, and Way Down Here is another clear shift in attitude for the band, something that has translated into a different performance style on tour.

“We tried to keep the live shows spontaneous, like our recording process,” Petti says. “This tour is stripped-down, with a more acoustic sound. It’s very bare-boned.”

So far, the acoustic style of performing has been a hit with audiences across the West Coast, and Petti looks forward to bringing the new sound to the east. Following the East Coast leg, the band will head back into the studio with Keelor to record another album that Petti says will sound different than previous releases. Petti will also be recording and producing a solo album incorporating lo-fi production.

Despite Cuff the Duke’s growth in popularity inside and outside of Canada (Way Down Here was released on a U.S. label in April 2010), Petti says the band is staying grounded.

“We try not to over-analyze our lives and work,” he says. “If you start getting into that world and thinking about how successful or not successful you are, you’re going to get bummed out. We just stay in the moment and remind ourselves that there are so many bands out there that are just starting out and would love to be doing what we’re doing.”

Cuff the Duke and Christina Martin will play Le Divan Orange on October 17.

Arts & Entertainment

Between the Lines

by TVMcGill and the McGill Tribune on

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  • Credits: Theo Meyer, Meg Cramer, Ellie Marshall, with thanks to the Tribune editorial board
  • Duration: 5:00
  • Posted: 10.8.10

This week’s episode of Between the Lines, we hit the streets to take in the sounds and sights of Pop Montreal and find out what students think about the food services boycott.

Student Life

The Hidden Difficulties of an 8:30 Class

by Ricky Kreitner on

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There seems to have occurred in the past week a strange increase in the percentage of my daily conversations revolving around the subject of where on campus is the best place to make poop. Off the top of my head, I can think of at least four conversations of that sort, not all of which involved the same interlocutors. Sophisticate though I admittedly am, I must admit to the charge of having initiated at least one of those conversations.

See, for the first time in my two-plus years at McGill, I have a class starting at 8:30 AM. Because I’m a smart-ass, and currently obligated by the responsibilities of two part-time jobs, in late August I constructed what I then conceived of as a genius schedule, by which my presence is requested in classes only on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on those days non-stop from 8:30 AM to 2:30 PM, with barely a long enough break in the middle to blink my eyes, not to mention to dislodge my breakfast (what little I’ve had time to consume) from my aching, creaking bowels. This all on top of the fact that I am a prodigious coffee drinker, downing three cups practically before I wake up, and two more before I even realize what I’m doing. Then there’s a few more cups just to keep me awake during classes, necessary no matter how interested I am in the course material or in the student-on-student debate going nowhere fast. This steady diet of coffee, the first cup of which I’m usually unable to get through before rushing to the john, potty-lit book in hand and Radio-Classique on the stereo, as well as the firm conviction, inherited from my dear father, that ritualistic morning poops are just where it’s at, means I’m in serious trouble for the rest of the semester.

The natural solution would be to wake up early enough to conduct my business at home. Problem there, however, is the coffee. Back when I was really into efficiency and waking up early and wanted to rule the world, I used to be into drinking coffee on the toilet. But now experience has taught me, in this as in other situations, that the result of joining together two things one cares so deeply for – in this case, coffee and pooping – is not necessarily something to be desired. I’ve found it compromises both components, and degrades the morning experience – sacred to me, as to my father – as a whole.

Another solution, one I’ve tested a few times with moderate success, is quietly excusing myself from that first class in order to do my business in a campus restroom, in peace. The obvious drawback here is missing a good portion (for me, a very good portion) of the lecture, material which, if your professor doesn’t record the lectures or post the notes, you may very well never otherwise have access to. However, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m at a point in my life when if I need to go poop, I’m going poop. With half a dozen cups of coffee rolling around in my belly, and an unwavering commitment to my own happiness, I hereby challenge anyone to try and stop me.

News

History faculty members address BP Gulf oil spill at forum

by Noah Caldwell-Rafferty on

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McGill history professors Jason Opal, Thomas Jundt, and Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert spoke at a public forum on Wednesday to address last April’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The aim, according to Opal, was to tackle “the legal, cultural and political dimensions of deep-water drilling in and near American waters and relate it to the American sphere.”

The speakers took a historical, rather than strictly environmental, approach to the subject. The idea for the forum, Studnicki-Gizbert said, began by discussing how the Deepwater Horizon disaster could be a turning point in the environmental and political consciousness of the United Sates.

“We said, ‘If we did some history on this, we could look at how environmental crises feed into environmental consciousness, environmental politics, and in particular issues of regulation,'” he said.

History Students Association VP Internal Marni Isaacson coordinated the forum and reached out to the professors.

“They were all very enthusiastic about coming together with the McGill community to both share their insight on the topic and hear what the public had to say,” she said.

The forum, though long after the initial oil well blowout, took place just 10 days after the U.S. government announced that the spill was officially over.  

The forum and discussion were  pertinent to the summer-long fiasco, and allowed academics, students, and the public to reflect on, as Opal said, “what we find to be most troubling, what we find to be most compelling, and above all perhaps where we are now and where we are going to head in terms of environmental disasters and the political response to them.”

On April 20, a fire erupted early in the morning on the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon.  The failure of a “blowout preventer” resulted in a massive explosion, the death of eleven workers, and the release of a continuous stream of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

Each professor approached the disaster differently. Opal, who studies early American history, compared aspects of the disaster to the 19th century American frontier.  

“British Petroleum had a reputation as ‘cowboys.’ The terminology of the frontier suffused this disaster and is everywhere if you look carefully,” he said. “A frontier, or horizon, relates to or describes a specific relation of peoples to the environment and the people living there.”

The notion of untouched tracts of wilderness, Opal said, gave people the sense that anything they conquered would be theirs, and the frontier was the future. Now, he said, we see the consequences of similar attitudes regarding oil, and “a sense of being impotent in the face of crisis.”

Studnicki-Gizbert, on the other hand, who researches mineral and resource extraction in Latin America and the involvement of Canadian mining companies in these activities, discussed the spill in the context of other environmental disasters. He linked the spill to similar ones in the last century, like the spills of the Exxon Valdez or the Newtown Creek in Brooklyn.  

“It was a highly mediagenic event, because of the kind of historical resonances with other disasters and other events,” he said. “We inherently relate images of today’s crises to those for which we already have an understanding. This in turn dictates our reactions to current disasters.”

Jundt, an environmental historian, took the most straightforward approach to the disaster.

“In the case of the BP spill, it speaks quite loudly in terms of being representative of issues that characterize 20th century United States history,” he said. “It reflects a long-standing tension between protecting the environment and promoting the economy.”

Jundt discussed the issue of responsibility, and where the blame should lie. While all of the presenters agreed there was no clear-cut answer, Jundt explored the complex relationship between excessive corporate power and governmental involvement.  

“The U.S. government, through tax exemptions and lackadaisical egulation, has helped big companies get a foothold in this deep-water drilling,” he said.

Over five months after the enviromental disaster took place, McGill faculty and students were able to analize the issue from a historical perspective rather than the traditional environmental view, by relating and comparing the oil spill to previous events of the same nature.

News, SSMU

SSMU will support campus food boycott

by Theo Meyer on

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In an effort to pressure the McGill administration to reopen the Architecture Café, the McGill Students’ Society Council voted to support a student boycott of McGill Food and Dining Services at its meeting on Thursday, despite the vocal opposition of several councillors.

The motion, brought to council by Arts Senator Tyler Lawson and Arts Representative Kallee Lins, represents the most direct attempt to engage students in SSMU’s efforts to convince administrators to reconsider McGill’s summertime decision to close the popular student-managed café.

Erin Hale, a former McGill Daily editor, first proposed the idea for a campus-wide boycott of Food and Dining Services shortly after the September 21 rally outside the Leacok Building, where of hundreds of students gathered in support of reopening the café. Hale started a Facebook event urging students to boycott all McGill Food Services, which had more than 3,000 members at press time.

Lawson and Lins proposed the motion after seeing the groundswell of student support for the boycott. According to Lawson, the motion commits SSMU to supporting the boycott until McGill releases the financial data showing that the café was losing money—a major point of contention for Architecture students, who have claimed that the café was in the black—and agree to discuss reopening the café. The motion exempts students with prepaid meal plans, however, as well as first-year students in residence.

“The point is to try and get some consultation on the issue,” Lawson said.

However, several councillors declined to support the motion on Thursday, with four dissenting and five abstaining, with the latter group including SSMU President Zach Newburgh. One of the most vocal councillors who opposed the motion was Lauren Hudak, a Science representative to SSMU and an occasional Tribune contributor.

“I felt that we could do something more constructive, more positive, in trying to get the administration to listen to the demands of students,” Hudak said.

Along with other councillors, Hudak argued that passing a motion supporting the boycott did not address students’ frustrations with the administration, which contracts out the management of food outlets on campus to Aramark, an outside company.

“I think by placing the pressure on McGill Food and Dining Services, we’re moving away from the original reasons students were upset that the Architecture Café closed,” she said.

Other student associations on campus have echoed Hudak’s concerns. The Management Undergraduate Society discussed passing a motion in support of the boycott at a meeting on September 26, but ultimately decided against it.

The MUS, said Eli Freedman, Management representative to SSMU, decided to not to take a stance in the fight over the Architecture Café, which few Management students patronized. In addition, the MUS feared damaging its relationship with Sinfully Asian, the popular eatery in the Bronfman Building.

“To be honest, I don’t know how many people in Management are that concerned and are participating in the boycott,” Freedman said, though he added he was personally supporting the boycott.

The Engineering Undergraduate Society also decided against endorsing the boycott at a meeting on September 29, instead leaving the decision of whether or not to boycott up to its members.

“We wanted the debate to stay centred on the lack of support for student initiatives, the lack of consultation with students,” said EUS President Daniel Keresteci.

Though the boycott will not affect the McGill administration directly, Newburgh said he hopes the indirect pressure on the university will convince administrators to reopen the café.

“Because this will affect Aramark’s sales,” he said, “which are unrelated to any kind of profit that would be received by the university, Aramark will then have some kind of incentive to approach the university and say, ‘Listen, it’s time to reconsider the closure of the Architecture Café.'”

SSMU is currently exploring several options for promoting the boycott, Newburgh said, including Facebook and the listserv emails. All six SSMU executives have been boycotting Food and Dining Services since the motion passed.

Along with representatives from other campus groups, including the EUS and the Architecture Students Association, Newburgh said SSMU has been planning additional events to protest the Architecture Café’s closure. A potluck outside the Macdonald-Harrington Building, which housed the café, is planned for the near future. Newburgh also intends to bring up the issue at the next senate meeting.

“I am confident that the university will hear us,” Newburgh added, “and that they will respond positively and constructively.”

News

David Suzuki discusses his legacy in lecture at McGill

by Maria Flores on

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Anna Bock

David Suzuki, the famed Canadian author and environmentalist, was welcomed by the McGill Bookstore last Tuesday. With the release of his newest book The Legacy: An Elder’s Vision for our Sustainable Future, the author addressed an eager McGill audience in a full Pollack Hall, presenting what he referred to as “a lifetime of thought distilled into a one-hour lecture.”

“It’s his legacy project, and it’s probably one of his final projects,” said Anna Stein, events administrator of the McGill Bookstore. “He is getting older and he is recognizing that and so it’s his big push to pass it on to the youth.”

To set the right mood, Suzuki began his lecture by taking the audience on an imaginary journey to four billion years ago, when the Earth was unsuitable for life. He stressed that the human race today has a large ecological footprint, due to the vast amount of resources needed to sustain an exponentially growing population, as well as our increased appetite for “stuff,” which has led to an ever increasing consumer culture.

“We have become cut off from the world that keeps us alive,” Suzuki said. “We forget that the word economics comes from the same group word as the word ecology … which means home.”

This way of thinking, Suzuki said, has led to value economy over ecology, an unsustainable idea in a world constrained by the laws of nature.

“We depend for our very survival on ecosystem services, but economists are so smart they figure we don’t need that,” he said. “They’re not even in the economic equation. They refer to them as an externality.”

Suzuki argued that the 2008 economic recession was a wasted opportunity to change the direction of the economy. Instead, trillions of dollars were injected back into the system that led to the recession in the first place.

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result,” said Suzuki.

As the night proceeded, Suzuki moved on to climate change and the federal government’s inaction on the issue.

Stephen Harper’s government, Suzuki said, has decided to focus on the economy, and has failed to act on climate change. He used the example of Sweden, a country that has managed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 8 per cent below 1990 levels and at the same time achieve an economic growth of 44 per cent over the same period of time, to demonstrate that the two targets are not mutually exclusive.

“Our prime minister for more than four years has said there’s no way we are going to act on climate change […] because it will ruin the economy,” Suzuki said, “How dare you tell us that? It’s time to put the ecology back into the economics.”

As the talk progressed, Suzuki said that the exponential growth of the human population, coupled with the ever-present desire for growth in a fixed biosphere, is leading humanity on a “suicidal path.”

“The only two systems that think they can grow forever are cancer cells and economists,” he said, adding a little humour to his lecture.

Suzuki, 74, also took the lecture as an opportunity to reflect on his legacy.

“We’ve gone off on this weird tangent to think that stuff is what makes us happy, [but] the most important things in life have to do with people and the things that we share and do together,” he said.

“At this stage in my life, whatever governments, corporations do or do not do will have very little impact on my life,” he continued. “But what corporations and governments and society does or does not do will reverberate through the entire life of our children and grandchildren.”

After the talk, a question-and-answer period followed. Befitting Suzuki’s desire to pass on his knowledge, a 12-year-old boy asked the final question.

“It’s amazing to see he’s doing this decades after and still going strong, and it’s an inspiration more than anything, that you can’t let anything let you down,” said Ana Vadeanu, a U3 Environment student who attended the talk.

“We’ve partied as if there’s no tomorrow, and we’ve forgotten to think about future generations,” Suzuki said. “Well, the party is over, it’s time to silver up, and clean up our mess and work towards a future that we can imagine into being. We’ve done it in the past, we can do it in the future, all it takes is the vision and the will to do it.”

News

Engineers ban QPIRG from booking tables for one year

by Zach Connerty-Marin on

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The Engineering Undergraduate Society Council banned the Quebec Public Interest Research Group from using its resources for up to one year at their meeting last Tuesday.

The ban will prevent QPIRG from booking table space in any engineering building on campus.

The ruling followed last week’s incident between members of QPIRG and the QPIRG Opt-Out Campaign, a campus group that encourages undergraduates to opt-out of paying QPIRG’s $3.75-per-semester fee. According to the QPIRG Opt-Out campaign, QPIRG supporters allegedly attempted to prevent Opt-Out Campaign members from distributing their fliers, which resulted in Opt-Out members calling McGill Security.

But Rae Dooley, a member of the QPIRG Board of Directors, said the situation wasn’t enitrely one-sided. Members of QPIRG alleged that Jess Wieser, leader of the Opt-Out Campaign grabbed Maddie Ritts a QPIRG board member.

“We weren’t the only people being confrontational in that environment,” Dooley said. “Our students could have just as much called security.”

Allan Cyril, vice president internal of the EUS, said that although QPIRG could have also acted in formal avenues at the time of the incident, they did not.

“QPIRG didn’t call security and didn’t make a complaint to us at the time,” he said.

The EUS Council responded by passing the ban last Wednesday, citing concerns about how the incident reflects on their ability to manage table bookings in Engineering buildings.

“We have to show we are responsibly administering [our resources], or there’s a risk we might lose those privileges in the future,” Cyril said.

Dooley lamented that QPIRG was banned because of last week’s event but said that “[QPIRG is] in an open dialogue with EUS and we are interested in working with them, reaching out to more Engineering students, and hopefully over the next year we will gain that ability back.”

QPIRG and the EUS met on September 27 to discuss scheduling a moderated discussion between QPIRG and the Opt-Out Campaign. However, QPIRG requested that the EUS wait at least a week before holding the session in order  to allow tempers to cool. The EUS has also considered bringing in an outside mediator.

The proposed session between QPIRG and the Opt-Out Campaign would facilitate discussion on the proper handling of issues between conflicting interest groups, especially in the context of using EUS facilities.

 “We are trying to speak to QPIRG Opt-Out,” Dooley said. “We are trying to make sure events like that don’t happen in the future.”

Dooley also expressed concern regarding how the incident is being “sensationalized.” She said QPIRG is trying to move on and that their “major concerns are running QPIRG right now and challenging the entire opt-out system.”

According to its website, QPIRG is an organization that “conducts research, education, and action on environmental and social justice issues at McGill University and in the Montreal community.” According to a press release, QPIRG Opt-Out argues that QPIRG has “grossly violated their mandate, funding organizations whose basic principles are opposed to those of McGill students” and therefore informs students how to opt out of the organization.

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