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Know Your Sport: The McGill Woodsmen saw it all

by Julie Ferreyra on

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On Mar. 9, McGill’s Macdonald Campus hosted its 62nd Annual Woodsmen Competition, serving as the penultimate stop for the universities competing in the Canadian Intercollegiate Lumberjacking Association (CILA). The athletes hailed from six different Eastern Canada post-secondary institutions: Algonquin College, Dalhousie University, Fleming College, Maritimes College of Forest Technology, and the University of New Brunswick.

With over a dozen events, the competition is split into team, doubles, and singles events, each of which is subdivided by gender. After the opening ceremony’s early 8:30 a.m. start, friends, family, and curious onlookers were welcomed by the pulp-throwing events, introducing the physical and excitement that would unfold during the day.

Events revolved around traditional lumberjack skills, including multiple variations of woodchopping, with competitors using a Swede saw, a single buck saw, a chainsaw, or an axe. Other events, such as axe throwing or log rolling, offered constant entertainment for the families and friends in attendance. 

Arguably one of the most impressive events—the pole climbing competition—saw multiple competitors try to climb a 28-foot-tall pole as fast as possible. Parker Chase led McGill to a third-place finish under the watchful eyes of her teammates. Next to the pole, the log decking event took place, where athletes took turns trying to roll the log from end to end of the course. McGill’s log decking team faced some challenges, as the log slipped and had to repeatedly be brought back on the trail.

The afternoon opened with light rain and hail, but that did not deter the pairs from competing in the overhand and quarter splits events. Women’s captain Louanne Marquis and teammate Marlene Herzog succeeded Massimo Malorni and Sebastien Beaulieu for the underhand event.

“We were excited for the competition today with all our family and friends out here to support,” said Herzog, who was competing in the overhand and single buck event, in an interview with //The Tribune//. “I feel like we’re crushing it so far today.” 

This prediction came to fruition, as the McGill women’s team delivered an outstandingly speedy and technical performance on the team Swede. The even saw six teammates try to succeed each other in chopping wood discs from a trunk as possible in under five minutes. Their cohesion and technique propelled the women’s team to second place overall, closely following Dalhousie University’s score. The team achieved first place in the team sawing and crosscut saw events, as well as winning individual honours, with first place in single buck sawing and individual supersweet sawing, and podiuming in chainsaw and water boiling. 

The competition ended with the long-awaited water boil event. Each participant gets a tin can filled with water and soap and needs to make a fire out of a supplied log, bringing the can’s contents to boil until the liquid overflows. The spectacular panorama of competitors, each kindling the flames in hopes of heating the can as fast as possible, left audience members speechless. 

As the 2023-24 season is coming to a close soon, coach Andreanne La Salle reflected on the performance of the teams. 

“We just want to keep up our game like it is right now. Just keep focusing and correct a few things that could have gone better in the last competition,” La Salle said. “Maybe fine tuning a bit of technique [here and] there.”

As the only Quebec team on the circuit, the team faces more difficulty with recruiting, which plays a role in their ability to compete with provinces where logger sports are more popular.

“For example, in the Maritimes, the logger sports are something that they do in 4-H, whereas in Quebec, even though we do have really big, deep roots in the logger disciplines or work field, it’s not a sport that’s well known,” La Salle concluded. 

The Macdonald Campus Woodsmen will be travelling to Nova Scotia to attend Dalhousie’s 38th annual Rick Russel Loggersport Competition on Mar. 23.

Arts & Entertainment, Books

Revisiting Lucy Maud Montgomery

by Kellie Elrick on

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I didn’t grow up by the sea. It’s strange that it elicits nostalgia from me—I hadn’t even visited the East Coast until last summer. But it also makes a lot of sense: I spent a good portion of my childhood within books, and many days with Anne Shirley. It started with the first Anne book. In a Victorian novel about Prince Edward Island (PEI), red hair, broken slates, raspberry cordial, and orphanhood, I found a depiction of childhood and the natural world truer than anything I’d ever experienced.

Growing up, Lucy Maud Montgomery’s island seemed to be refracted around me. Southwestern Ontario has a similar softness to it—rolling hills, blithesome rivers, land that’s open, but not flat. 

I visited PEI for the first time in August. I wanted to see the place that had existed in my head for so long—there was a temptation to keep it that way, but my desire to feel close to Montgomery overwhelmed my fear of damaging my imagined idyll. I visited the major literary landmarks: Green Gables Heritage Place, the Lake of Shining Waters, Lover’s Lane, and the Haunted Wood. I dragged my boyfriend—who once told me he hated The Sound of Music because there was “too much music”—to see Anne and Gilbert: The Musical.

Montgomery’s old church still stands (it’s now a fast-food joint called “BOOMburger,” but the original exterior has been preserved).

I felt closest to Montgomery in natural spaces—while walking along Lover’s Lane, gazing out at the sea, watching the breeze rustle the grass, looking out at ruddy, eroding cliffs, and anytime I looked at a tree for long enough. In these moments, I had the strangest feeling that I had been there before. And, in a way, I had. 

Montgomery’s descriptions of nature are those of someone who has observed something very closely for a very long time. It extends into her prose itself: Blooming with mayflowers; warming with the break of day.

“I felt there was a rhythm in the language that resembled the land itself,” Dr. Elizabeth Epperly, a Montgomery scholar and Professor Emerita at the University of Prince Edward Island (UPEI), said in an interview with The Tribune. Epperly was born in Virginia—her love of Montgomery drew her to the island, where she enrolled as UPEI’s first student in 1969. 

“The ocean has its own feeling of striving, standing on the shore,” Epperly said. “Mountains always at least make me feel like striving. They remind me of effort, and of climbing. But because [Montgomery’s] favorite passage was the Alpine Path […] I always thought of the mountains, even the physical ones, as metaphorical [….] And so the ocean, deep as she goes—the illimitable sea—was for her, like the mountains.”

Returning to Montgomery’s novels in the past year, I began to see something that had glided past me before—over time, they take on a certain hardness. As Anne aged, something seemed to change. The darkening of Montgomery’s novels echoes the author’s own evolving worldview and personal trials—but also the fogginess of a society traumatized by the First World War.

“I don’t think [the war] changed her outlook on nature,” Epperly observed. “But I think it changed her outlook on human nature.”

Montgomery’s novels, beautiful and nostalgic, take on new meaning in the era of the climate crisis. The Great War destroyed large swaths of the natural world, and modernity brought about a certain kind of speed: Fast cars, skyscrapers, industry, new forms of communication—many of which are deeply intertwined with fossil fuels.

Montgomery’s writing is highly attuned to natural cycles. I’ve always loved how time passes within her novels: Fresh buds in spring, golden summers, fiery autumns, elegant lacy winters. But recently I’ve begun to notice something else: Decay.

When she left her beloved island upon marrying the Reverend Ewan Macdonald, she revisited the past through her fiction. Many of Montgomery’s works have a lovely stillness to them. They’re vivid and lively, but they displace the reader into a dreamlike bygone past, distorting time by standing still.

Jane of Lantern Hill (1937), one of her later works, opens with the description of a Victorian mansion in Toronto that seems to atrophy. The house is said to have “died thirty years ago.”

Mistress Pat (1935), the sequel to Pat of Silver Bush, takes place over 11 years, when Pat—the heroine who Montgomery said resembled her most in spirit—is a young woman. The first year lasts 110 pages; then, as time goes on, each year takes up fewer and fewer page numbers. The 11th year lasts but 15. At the edge of youth, the days slowly begin to dissolve into the background. The novel ends with Silver Bush, Pat’s beloved home—essentially an extension of her own body—going up in flames. Place decays with life.

“Within the Pat books, there’s a reference to how all the bears have been gone,” Kate Scarth, Chair of L.M. Montgomery Studies at UPEI, told The Tribune. “I forget when the last bear was killed or died in PEI. But there is, you know, a sense in the novels of the community’s hands, of a world that has been dramatically altered.”

After the war, after Montgomery lost a child, after she had left the Island, her writing changed. It’s as if the sun didn’t shine quite as bright upon her heroines—but she continued to write. And she found solace in nature, even as it was being destroyed.

“Montgomery believed that no matter where you were, you could find nature,” Epperly said. “You could, even if it was just looking in a flower pot, you know, seeing it there, too […] It’s that feeling not that we’re escaping out of, but we’re escaping into.”

This June, Montgomery scholars and enthusiasts from around the world will gather at UPEI for the L.M. Montgomery Institute’s Biannual International Conference to escape into her work together over the course of five days.

“It is really such a wonderful event because it really feels like a homecoming,” Scarth said. “You know, whether or not you’ve been there before, because everyone has this shared love [….] It’s just a really collegial and fun and interesting space.”

Epperly’s keynote address at the Conference will incorporate Angus Fletcher’s Wonderworks: Literary Invention and the Science of Stories—exploring why we return to stories through neuroscience.

“No wonder we enjoy rereading all through our lives, rereading favorite books, because […] the actual nerve hints are entangled and so you’re reading your old self as well as creating a new self while you’re reading it. It’s quite an interesting take on a neurological level,” Epperly remarked.

Montgomery describes a kind of veil. Something fluttering between the visible and the sublime, obscuring this world from something else, something untouchable, undefined. But there are moments when the veil blows aside.

“Amid the commonplaces of life, I was very near to a kingdom of ideal beauty. Between it and me hung only a thin veil,” Montgomery wrote. “I could never quite draw it aside, but sometimes a wind fluttered it. I seemed to catch a glimpse of the enchanting realm beyond—only a glimpse—but those glimpses had always made life worthwhile.” 

There have been moments where I’ve felt something akin to “the flash.” Clear summer nights on Beausoleil Island on Georgian Bay, walking along the Speed River in Guelph at night after a fresh snowfall—for a moment, or maybe less, everything becomes hyper-sensory. Something else seems to emerge, not only out of the margins, but in the spaces between stars, between pine needles. 

This sudden, fleeting escape into another world, a place that seems uncertain and phantasmal, but which I also know to be deeply true, is difficult to describe. The best comparison I can make is to say that this is how reading makes me feel. 

Through time, through conflict, personal and political, through the climate crisis, as seasons meld and familiar cycles spin out of control, as the past dissolves, upon each new read the wind lingers a bit longer, and the veil blows back a bit further, and Montgomery’s enchanted realm coalesces the slightest bit more with ours.

Montgomery should be read in childhood—and again in adolescence, and again in adulthood. Her works should be read to comfort and uplift, but also to confront and challenge. Every time I open one of her works, I discover something new that had just slipped out of view, and it makes me yearn to return to the island.

McGill, Montreal, News

Open letter supporting Hunger Strike for Palestine amasses over 1,000 signatures

by Fabienne de Cartier on

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On Mar. 2, a group of McGill alumni drafted an open letter to McGill’s administration in support of the McGill Hunger Strike for Palestine. As of March 10, it has received over 1,100 signatures from alumni, faculty, and students alike. The letter calls on McGill to meet the demands of the hunger strikers by cutting ties with corporations and academic institutions complicit in Israel’s ongoing siege on Gaza and the genocide of Palestinians. 

The hunger strike was launched by twelve students on campus. Sage*, U3 Arts and member of McGill Hunger Strike for Palestine, told The Tribune that the strike came after the university ignored students’ continued demand that McGill take a stand against the genocide in Palestine.

“We have been protesting, emailing, and calling the Board [of Governors], and we just haven’t had any response back,” Sage said. “So for us, this was really our last chance to show them that we were actually very serious about this.”

The open letter, which started circulating eighteen days into the strike, urges McGill to meet the demands of the hunger strikers and divest from companies directly or indirectly supporting Israel’s genocide against Palestinians. Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) estimates that these investments total approximately $20 million—including $519,949  in Lockheed Martin, $1,546,209 in Safran SA, $1,820,816 in Airbus SE, $1,217,646 in L’Oréal, $1,323,824 in Thales SA, $1,396,445 in Chevron Corp, $1,215,308 in Coca-Cola, $11,372,580 in Royal bank of Canada, and $605,482 in Unilever 

The letter also supports hunger strikers’ demand that McGill boycott academic institutions complicit in the genocide of Palestinians, including universities involved in Israel’s military research and development. Although the university has stated that they will not cut ties with academic institutions because of where they are located, the letter asserts that the boycott demands were not linked to the institutions’ location but rather stemmed from their involvement in the human rights abuses against Palestinians. 

The letter reads, “We wish to emphasize that the calls to cut ties with Israeli academic institutions are not aimed at institutions because of where they are located. Rather, they are aimed at specific Israeli institutions with well-documented records of complicity in human rights violations against Palestinians.”

The authors of the letter also condemn McGill’s response to the hunger strike. Sage explained that although the McGill administration has been willing to meet with the hunger strikers, they have been unable to agree on the terms of a meeting. On Feb. 19, McGill invited the hunger strikers to meet with them. On Feb. 21, the hunger strikers responded, asking for a public meeting so that students supporting the cause could attend and asked McGill to set the meeting a week in advance so that hunger strikers could sufficiently prepare. They also asked to meet for at least an hour and a half so they would have enough time to discuss their demands. 

According to the group, on Feb. 28, the McGill administration agreed to these terms and set a meeting date for Mar. 11. However, they quickly rescinded the offer. Later that day, the McGill administration stated that although they would be willing to explore a public meeting in the future, they wished to have a private meeting with the strikers on Mar. 4, given the health risks of a hunger strike and the urgency of the situation. Strikers refused the terms of this meeting, maintaining that they were uninterested in discussing the health of the strikers. In response, McGill stated that they felt a meeting to discuss the hunger strikers’ demands would be unproductive. Consequently, discussions stalled and students continued their strike over the reading break. 

“McGill supports the rights of students to exercise their rights in connection with civic engagement in accordance with the Charter of Student Rights and applicable laws [.…] It is equally important to note that all members of our community have the right to learn, teach and work in a peaceful environment. Any civic engagement that results in a hindrance of those rights is not acceptable,” McGill’s media relations officer Frédérique Mazerolle wrote to The Tribune. 

Although the hunger strike does not interfere with the conduction of classes, SPHR, asserted that “[the hunger strikers] demonstrate how McGill’s inaction and refusal to heed student demands has pushed committed students to extreme forms of protest.”

Sage told The Tribune they were hopeful the letter would pressure the university to take the demands of the hunger strikers seriously.

“[The letter] legitimizes our strike,” Sage said. “We believe that support from alumni, staff, and faculty is a good step forward.” 

Behind the Bench, Sports

Public subsidies for sports facilities are a misuse of public funds

by Marco Zeppilli, Sara Escallon Sotomayor on

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In recent decades, city and state governments across North America have earmarked huge amounts of public funds for sports infrastructure projects. As part of the legislative session that ended on Mar. 1, Utah’s state lawmakers passed bills approving $900 million in funding for a baseball stadium and $500 million for a new hockey arena in Salt Lake City. Utah has neither a Major League Baseball (MLB) team, nor a National Hockey League (NHL) team, but the legislature was evidently not interested in letting present-day reality stop them from funding the potential presence of future big league teams.

Public subsidies for privately-owned sporting facilities have been a perennial headache for elected officials. Privately-owned men’s sports teams threaten underfunded municipal governments with relocation if they do not receive generous financial packages to fund exorbitant stadium infrastructure plans complete with incorporation into public transport systems, resulting in a humiliating ‘race to the bottom’ at taxpayer expense. Funds are committed to attract lucrative men’s major league professional sports teams, rather than invested into women’s, grassroots, or other levels of sports, and single-team stadiums are common, meaning the investment needed is often multiplied two or three times depending on the number of teams a city has. 

Governments have allotted eye-watering amounts of public dollars to build stadiums in recent years. These subsidies include building new facilities at the taxpayers’ expense for existing teams that already have functioning stadiums. New stadiums are built to increase profitability as they contain higher percentages of more lucrative seating, such as luxury suites. These profits then flow into the pockets of ownership groups rather than back to the city or local community. If these stadiums aren’t full, franchises will often leave regardless of investment, hoping to increase profits in other markets. For instance, the state of Tennessee and the city of Nashville are contributing $500 million and $760 million respectively to a new stadium for the National Football League’s (NFL) Tennessee Titans. The Buffalo Bills scored $850 million in funding from their state and county for a new stadium. Oklahoma City residents passed an $850 million funding package to replace a 22-year-old basketball arena in a public referendum that totalled 58,000 votes. The list could go on, but the pattern is clear.

Hidden costs, invisible benefits

In negotiations for public subsidies, team owners typically cite the community benefits that these infrastructure projects can provide. Friends and families can create lifelong memories at the live events these stadiums host. The argument that communities need these facilities in the same way they need public swimming pools, libraries, and museums is understandable. 

 The problem lies in the staggering dollar amounts contributed to these facilities—especially in cases where infrastructure already exists. When large-scale sports infrastructure projects are funded to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars but governments leave roads and bridges in disrepair, fail to provide adequate support to underfunded school systems, and neglect entire networks of overcrowded, short-staffed hospitals, officials are failing those they are elected to serve. 

Prospective owners claim that tangible benefits for communities and governments come in the form of an increase in economic activity and tax revenue as a result of these projects. They suggest that tourists will occupy hotel beds, eat at restaurants, and contribute to the local economy when they are in town for sporting events and concerts. However, studies have shown that the economic impact of tourists visiting a city specifically for a single live event is negligible, and, in most cases, those tourists would still visit and be contributing to the local economy in other ways. 

The environmental impacts of sports stadiums are almost never considered. Stadiums, such as Los Angeles’s SoFi stadium, are often built on land at the fringes of urban areas which previously were green spaces. These stadiums require transportation infrastructure built with public funds, and result in emissions from fans driving cars. Despite stadiums becoming increasingly energy efficient, huge amounts of energy remain necessary  to power operations, and tonnes of waste are created with each event. Increasingly, teams such as Everton in the Premier League are choosing to build new stadiums rather than update old ones, as Liverpool did with Anfield. Concrete production and construction generate huge amounts of carbon dioxide, and in a climate crisis we must ask ourselves: Is this really what we want to spend emissions on?  

Breaking ground by sharing grounds

While teams may find the prospect of operating their own facilities appealing for the bottom line, they should consider using existing facilities or holding their events in venues that are already being used by other local teams. For instance, basketball and hockey arenas are often shared—as is the case for soccer and football stadiums—as the seating configuration is similar enough for those sports’ purposes. Yet there are many cases where soccer-specific stadiums are being built for Major League Soccer (MLS) teams in cities where an NFL or college football stadium already exists, including New York City and Miami. While team owners in those cities are funding their projects with private dollars, it is estimated that the deal in New York will cost $516 million in lost property tax revenue over 49 years by leasing the land to developers instead of selling it, while the Miami club is benefiting from a no-bid lease agreement. Teams are also looking for considerable sums to fund renovation projects or, worse yet, ditch their existing stadiums, even in cases like Oklahoma City’s, where the stadium is not yet 30 years old. In these cases, public funding packages yield no added community benefit, as adequate infrastructure already exists.

Not every city needs to play in the big leagues

North American sports franchises are notorious for moving cities as soon as it is no longer lucrative to remain in place. The reality is that not every city has a market for a major team in some of the most lucrative leagues in the world. As soon as attendances drop, a franchise’s viability is at risk—a fact that supporters of the Oakland Athletics and the Winnipeg Jets know all too well. The value of sport to local communities is not in question: But does every city need an NHL team? Utah is a state of 3.4 million people which is already home to the NBA’s Utah Jazz and MLS’s Real Salt Lake. According to this 2014 survey by the University of Utah, the most popular sport is college football. Are state residents really clamouring for more professional men’s sports teams?  

When franchises leave, it is local communities who lose. Afterall, the capital investment is transitory: Ownership groups do not need to take on expensive stadium build costs or deal with the legacy that these crumbling concrete monsters leave behind in their communities. Ownership groups also do not feel the traumatic repercussions which reverberate throughout communities when much-loved teams leave. Elite sports franchises can be synonymous with community investment but not intrinsically so. 

Most cities do not have the capacity to support more men’s major professional sports leagues: Athletes are overworked, and more and more games are being fit into increasingly tight schedules. We need more investment outside of the status quo: into burgeoning women’s sports leagues such as the NWSL and the WNBA, into second and third division development leagues, into grassroots sports, and into youth development pathways. The strength of the National College Athletics Association (NCAA) means that many development leagues are little more than an afterthought. However, for sports such as baseball and hockey, minor league teams are vital community institutions. One of those minor league teams is located just south of the border, in Burlington, Vermont, where the Lake Monsters, a former affiliate of the Montreal Expos, continue to honour their parent club’s legacy during a theme night, taking the field in Expos colours. In other countries with competitive league pyramids decided by promotion and relegation, small town teams may never get to the top, and that is fine. They are proud community institutions with deep roots. When they do make it to the top, as Luton Town did last season, it means all the more, as the fairytale has come true. 

The last thing we need is for more municipalities to be held hostage by corporate greed. Private ownership groups bully elected officials by leveraging their franchise mobility against the best interests of communities, wrecking everything in their path. It is time for local governments to be brave and stand up to private ownership groups for the benefit of those who really matter—the supporters. The Green Bay Packers are living proof this model can be achieved even in North America. After all, a team is not a team without a community rooting it firmly in place.

Commentary, Opinion

The latest draft of Bill 96 is the latest demonstration of Quebec’s lose-lose francophone agenda

by Lulu Calame on

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The most recent draft of Quebec’s Bill 96 is yet another in a long line of regulations whose promotion of the French language comes at the unnecessarily hostile suppression of English. This newest draft, published on Jan. 10 by the Quebec government’s Official Gazette, imposes a regulation whereby any storefront signage or document inscription must be accompanied by its French translation in a size at least twice as large as the English text. Thus, for the first time since the assent of Bill 96 in June of 2022, Quebec’s pro-francophone regulations have become unavoidably visible, making it clearer than ever that one population is welcome, while another is not. 

Quebec’s relationship with its coexisting anglophone and francophone communities, as well as its relationship with Canada as a whole, has been a point of contention for decades. The province made numerous attempts to separate in the latter half of the 20th century, culminating in the unsuccessful 1995 referendum that voters narrowly defeated. Since then, the Canadian federal government has acknowledged Quebec’s individuality as a province whose official language is French, but Quebec is still under the umbrella of the national government and included in the Canadian national identity. 

The primary aim of Bill 96, officially labeled the “Act respecting French,” is to “affirm that the only official language of Quebec is French.” Such regulation enforces stricter linguistic regulations on the workplace, higher education, public services, and commercial advertising, thus rendering social and economic participation in Quebec much less accessible to any citizen who does not speak French . 

This clash of motives and cultural values between Quebec and Canada as a whole is unproductive for both governments. The latest draft of Bill 96 solidifies Quebec’s exclusive stance, ensuring that Quebec––regardless of its success in official separation––will not conform to Canada’s explicit commitment to respectful and inclusive multiculturalism. Thus, Quebec stands in the way of a unified, multicultural Canadian identity, yet its connection to Canada instigates internal cultural conflicts that destabilize its provincial strength in both political and social realms. It is a political stalemate that harms Quebeckers. With such logic, a sovereign Quebec seems the only realistic sustainable path.  

Ideally, Quebec would find compromise for harmonious cultural coexistence between anglophone, francophone, and allophone communities. The vehement addenda to Bill 96, however, show that such harmony is unrealistic. While demonstrated dissent should be a fundamental catalyst for positive change, the protests against Bill 96 have yet to create space for cultural harmony in Quebec. 

The latest draft regarding commercial signage displays an illogical and costly desperation for a French Quebec; it represents a massive visual shift for cities like Montreal. The CBC published an article on Jan. 26 broadcasting the concerns of municipal governments (including Montreal) regarding the $7-15 million required provincewide to make these infrastructural changes. The article also highlighted the translation issues of store names such as Costco, Walmart, and Starbucks, whose names are not direct translations of French or English. This regulation is expeditious (demanding implementation by the summer of 2025) and proves Quebec’s determination, regardless of its Canadian ties or its large anglophone and allophone communities, to root the francophone agenda deeply in its physical infrastructure.

Quebec’s latest drafts to Bill 96 reaffirm its intensifying nationalist francophone agenda. In such an environment, conflict will persist both within the population and between citizens and the provincial government. These drafts also make it impossible to solidify a unified Canadian identity. While Quebec’s endorsements of Bill 96 trigger immediate, short-term changes, dismissing the protests of the substantial anglophone community in Quebec is not a sustainable strategy, and will inevitably delegitimize any progress being made toward a francophone Quebec. It is critical that Quebec radically rewrites Bill 96, understanding its implementation and motivation as harmful to Quebec’s francophones, anglophones, and allophones alike. Otherwise, the remaining realistic future is a sovereign Quebec.

Sports

Varsity Roundup: March 1-10 

by Tillie Burlock on

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While some McGillians jumped on a plane for a beach vacation, headed home, or found a way to make a stay-cation work in Montreal for reading week, the Redbirds and Martlets remained hard at work. 

On Friday, Mar. 1, the Redbirds (21–5–2) hockey team bounced back from their game-one loss to the Université du Québec à Trois Rivières (UQTR) Patriotes (21–6–1) in the Ontario University Association (OUA) East men’s hockey best-of-three series. With their season on the line, the Redbirds looked to stave off elimination and push the series back to McConnell Arena. Despite going down 3-0 just seven minutes into the first period, the Redbirds dug deep with Eric Uba scoring three unanswered goals to register a hat trick. With the game tied at three, Zach Gallant netted what would be the game-winning goal with just under two minutes remaining. As four seconds remained on the clock, Mathieu Gagnon scored the final goal of the game resulting in a 5-3 victory for the Redbirds. 

Unfortunately, for the Redbirds fans who remained in Montreal, McGill could not find the same magic in game three of the series. The Redbirds fell 4-0 to the two-time defending league champions, leading them to face off against the Brock Badgers (21–7–0) in the OUA bronze medal game on Mar. 9. The Badgers, who finished first overall in the OUA West’s regular season, fell to the Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) Bold (19–9–0) in the OUA semi-final. The Bold went on to lose 3-2 in double overtime to the Patriotes in the OUA finals. As for the Redbirds, they successfully defeated the Badgers 5-2 with goals from Uba, Charles-Antoine Dumont, Caiden Daley, and William Rouleau. McGill will play next at the U SPORTS National Championship hosted by TMU from Mar. 14-17. 

In the pool, McGill hosted the U SPORTS National Championship where the Martlets finished fourth overall and the Redbirds claimed bronze. The Martlets’ competition was highlighted by Naomie Lo snagging a silver medal in the 400 m freestyle. As for the Redbirds, Pablo Collin flourished yet again, taking home gold in the 200 m freestyle. Collin, Artiom Volodin, Bruno Dehem-Lemelin, and Mats Baradat earned the Redbirds their second gold medal in the 4x200m freestyle relay. The Redbirds also medalled in the 4x100m freestyle relay while Malachy Belkhelladi took home a silver in the 50 m freestyle and Hazem Issa added a bronze to McGill’s medal tally in the 50 m butterfly. Baradat also claimed a bronze medal in the 400 m freestyle. The Redbirds’ third-place finish with 898 points was behind the University of Calgary’s 922.5 and the University of Toronto’s dominating 1,145 points. As for the Martlets, their fourth-place finish was with 788.5 points while the University of Toronto claimed 1,444 points, just ahead of the University of British Columbia’s 1,300 and the University of Calgary’s 872.5. 

On the track, McGill travelled to Winnipeg for the U SPORTS Track and Field National Championship. The Redbirds finished fourteenth overall while the Martlets finished sixteenth overall. In terms of medals, Matthew Beaudet earned silver in the 3,000 m with a time of 8:01:44 and snagged a fifth place finish in the men’s 1,500 m. Donna Ntambue took home a third place finish in the women’s 60 m and helped carry the Martlets’ 4×200 m relay to break the McGill record by 1.5 seconds. In the men’s 4×800 m, the Redbirds earned a fifth place finish and round it all out, Kilty McGonigal took home a fourth place finish in the men’s heptathlon and set a new Redbirds record.

Album Reviews, Arts & Entertainment, Music

The Children’s Hour is going home

by Annabella Lawlor on

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As the bouncy plucks and resonant acoustics of the nylon-string guitar line underscore “Going Home,” vocalist Josephine Foster joins in, crooning, “I am going home.” Her vocal inflections are sweet and sombre, resembling the warbling mimicries of a lark as a spidery electric guitar melody spins between the interweaving words. The track straddles the line of loud and soft, balancing the mellow acoustic rhythms with moments of booming chorus brimming with melodious vocals and aching guitar harmonies. Foster sustains her operatic hums into the song’s ecstatic and sonorous peak, crying soberly, “If you wait for me, my darling, I will wait for you.” Amid the culminating noise of the track, the melodic pattern of the song’s opening emerges isolated once again to resolve the album.

On Feb. 23, The Children’s Hour released their sophomore record, Going Home, two decades after its initial recording in 2003. Originally a duo, songwriters Andy Bar and Josephine Foster met the third member of their trio, David Pajo, at Chicago bar The Hideout while playing at a variety show in 2002. A member of the band Zwan at the time, Pajo befriended the pair after lending his guitar to Foster for their set, soon asking them to open for Zwan’s 2003 tour. For a louder sound fit to fill the depths of these large concert halls, Pajo joined Bar and Foster on the drums, producing new and distinct arrangements of songs the two had been playing acoustically since their conception. This album, recorded after the tour’s completion, was lost for twenty years among the Kentucky studio’s tapes and archives. In 2023, producer Paul Oldham finally unearthed the recording, and The Children’s Hour, now separated, reunited for the record’s mixing and mastering.

Going Home is a groundbreaking record brimming with nostalgia and eccentricity, familiarized by its traditional folk roots and poetic lyricism. The songs elicit the feeling of musical storybooks, comforting while invigorating in their structures and melodies. Throughout the album, there is an underlying sense of familiarity and connection that the band upholds through their partnership with symbiotic trust. 

“We have a bond we’ve worked on,” Bar said in an interview with The Tribune. “I like playing with Josephine because I really respect her as a songwriter, and I learn from her as I’m playing with her as well.”

The album features an exploration of vastly different tonal narratives and genres. “Bright Lights” chronicles the sentimental yet celebratory final minutes of a person’s life, transitioning harmoniously into themes of gloom and reflective sorrow in “Rainbow.” 

“This album is two kind-of shy kids singing songs together, what they come up with, and how they express themselves. We tried to write a dance song, like ‘Dance With Me,’ and it definitely comes from wallflowers,” Bar said. “I remember the day that I came up with that opening [for ‘Dance With Me’], I showed it to Josephine and it was kind of a fun moment. It was such a special song to us so I’m glad that it’s finally out on a record.”

“Dance With Me” is a whirling jive that explores and embraces introversion and stands out as one of the record’s finest. The unadulterated joy and amusement that emanates from this track is contagious, beckoning every listener to join the sea of twirling recluses and poetic angst.

On Mar. 23, The Children’s Hour will embark on their album release tour, playing two shows throughout the U.S. before finishing at The Hideout—the Chicago venue where it all began twenty years ago. The nostalgic sentiment that much of Going Home’s content evokes is further heightened by the circumstances of the record’s release. It celebrates the past, acknowledges the group’s accomplishments, and commemorates the band’s musical relationship. With Going Home, The Children’s Hour achieves a dreamlike soundscape of conviviality and liveliness, reminding us through music to savour every passing moment.

Student Life, Tribute

Tribute: Remembering Professor Monica Popescu

by Matthew Molinaro on

More in Student Life:

Born in Brasov, Romania in 1973, Monica Popescu was a star student throughout her studies. After receiving degrees from the University of Bucharest, the University of Windsor, and the University of Pennsylvania, she began teaching at McGill in 2005, where she taught courses on African literatures, literary and social theory, imperialism, gender studies, and the Cold War. On February 24, after a year-long battle with glioblastoma, Monica passed away at age 50.

In her presence, we were all Monica’s students. Her commitment to anticolonial pedagogy challenged what this university and a liberal arts education could be—she always “moved the centre” to use Ngũgĩ’s phrase. In teaching the mandatory survey course for English literature majors, she passionately lectured about African, Caribbean, and South Asian histories, literary traditions, and revolutionary struggles. Over many eagerly anticipated office hour visits, her encyclopedic knowledge, fierce determination, and tender soul enchanted me, as did our discussions on Zoe Wicomb, post-Communist politics, and campus organizing. I was lucky to have Monica as my Honours supervisor and to grow under her exuberant light, warmth, and mentorship. Her words, lessons, and generosity fortify me—I will miss her dearly. 

Below, Monica’s students, colleagues, and friends share their memories of this beloved scholar.

Monica Popescu made so many things possible. She was one of the most brilliant and insightful scholars I’ve ever met—and also one of the kindest, most down-to-earth, and committed friends. During our twelve years together at McGill, we published, edited, and organized several transformative books and symposia. She brought celebrated writer, activist, and professor Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o to McGill—a watershed. We shared jokes, stories, lunches, karaoke sessions, birthday celebrations, and walks.

And there was so much more work left to do. Her loss leaves a yawning abyss. Its pain ripples through all the lives she touched. I know that Monica’s legacy will live on through our work and our tributes. – Katherine Zien, Associate Professor, Department of English

“It is a truth universally acknowledged” that Monica had a deep love of Jane Austen and a penchant for all things Regency. We never got to attend a Jane Austen theme weekend at the Governor’s House in Vermont or to co-teach a course on decolonizing the Regency, as we had hoped. But “let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.” Austen wrote that “perfect happiness, even in memory, is not common” but attending the immersive Bridgerton ball experience with my dear friend was one such moment of perfect happiness and a memory that I’ll always cherish. – Fiona Ritchie, Associate Professor, Department of English

Monica came into my life ten years ago and we felt close almost instantly. Her easy laugh and generous, heartfelt compliments broke your defences and brought out something more elevated in people she encountered. She infused a vibrant and joyful spirit into the academic projects we embarked on together. Monica had a talent for deep literary readings fused with a critical historical analysis. She brilliantly expanded the field of Cold War literary and cultural studies, a legacy that we must all strive to uphold and amplify. – Bhakti Shringarpure, Associate Professor at the University of Connecticut

Professor Monica Popescu was a phenomenal and humane person and a stellar scholar. Monica possessed a profound respect for African literatures, and she shaped generations of students at McGill. Monica was an exemplary educator. Her love of Africa infused the African Studies Program with a weight and intellectual gravitas belied by its still limited resources. Whenever Monica was around, we all knew that African Studies had a home and that it had a future at McGill. Such was her electric energy that she almost single-handedly centred Africa on campus. The renowned Nigerian writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, famously warned of the danger of Africa being contemplated in terms of that ‘single story,’ that single narrative, and how this often robs readers and writers alike of understanding Africa’s full diversity and humanity. Monica never needed to be taught that cautionary tale. At McGill University she taught all of us that this particular lesson was as profound as commonsense. – Khalid Medani, Chair of African Studies 

As everyone who knew her will attest, Monica Popescu was a profoundly capacious human being. In addition to being a brilliant and groundbreaking scholar, she was incredibly generous in mind and spirit. Monica wanted her students to have the opportunities that she had, and she went out of her way not only to open doors that would have remained closed but to devote her energy to transforming their minds and lives. Within the Department of English, I always thought of Monica as the “gold standard.” What I mean by that is that I always felt that her intelligence, political beliefs, and ethical integrity were the keystone to our department. Monica proved that one could be at the very top of their scholarly field without sacrificing time for their students, or one ounce of their kindness. She was also a dear friend, who was always so supportive of every one of my endeavours. I loved her and will miss her beyond measure. – Ara Osterweil, Associate Professor, Department of English

“I am so glad you could come—I have heard a lot about you from common friends.” These were Monica’s words to me when we met for the first time—in the corridor connecting Arts to Leacock, during my campus visit in February 2013. In a few months, Monica became my departmental colleague and fellow “postcolonialist” (notwithstanding, as I was soon to realize, that we shared a disdain for that term). But she was also, as I would call her, my fellow co-conspirator and a dear, dear friend.

We all know of her formidable scholarship but what may be less obvious is how warm and generous she was to others; how encouraging of others as they pursued their own lines of thinking. Monica embodied warmth, joy, and laughter, and was one of the kindest people I have had the privilege to call a friend. And she was funny. I recall one Montreal winter evening she arrived late for drinks: “Sorry I got late,” she said as she entered the bar on Avenue du Parc. “I slipped on the snow and fell—I think I am a fallen woman now.”

This was just one of the many memories I have of sharing a meal or a drink (often several drinks) with her. These moments were times to catch up and compare notes: about course texts and syllabi but also about new restaurants in Montreal and possible endings to the Game of Thrones (Monica preferred the novels to the television show). She initiated me to the joys of mici, the Romanian sausage, on one such outing; on another, I introduced her to the classic Bollywood song “Monica, my darling.” Her laughter at seeing the video—the legendary Helen, twisting and twirling to the words—still rings in my ears. Monica leaves us poorer—I miss the warmth, joy, and that sparkling laughter that she brought to all our lives. She was, simply put, wonderful. Or as she would have said, in that incantatory joyfulness that was so singularly her: “wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!” – Sandeep Banerjee, Associate Professor, Department of English

Monica probably had the premonition that she wasn’t going to be here forever, so she packed the goodness of five lifetimes into just five decades. Unarguably the kindest academic I ever met. Sad that I knew her too late. Sad that she had to go the way she did. – Onyeka Dike, MA ‘23

Of Stars and Grief (for Monica Popescu, 1973-2024)

I started this note without tears in my eyes

I started this note with a kind of beautiful denial

I started this note from a place some of us have known:

grief—that city we must all reach, that unmapped terrain.

I refused to believe Monica is no more, that Brasov’s pearl lies still

I cannot imagine that she will sleep subterraneanly somewhere in the city

I am haunted by Monica’s eternal silence

Even my words are reluctant in their acceptance:

Monica is no more—her breath is history.

My people say that those the gods love do not live long

They kiss the world just enough to complete their mission

They leave us, we who outlive them, with a rare gift:

A lifetime of the best memories, a bowl of endless affects

From the mountains of Transylvania to the estuaries of Pennsylvania

From the prairies of Windsor to the rapids of the St. Lawrence:

Everything and everyone bear testimony to Monica’s existence

The favourite of the gods and of mortals: Monica lived

We all testify with tears in our eyes.

Mathias Orhero, PhD candidate in the Department of English

Read the full tributes below:

Monica was one of the most welcoming, open-hearted, and collaborative friends and colleagues. When I arrived at McGill, I was eager to meet her. She took me out to lunch and for a Labrador tea. I was immediately charmed by her gentle, kind, and enthusiastic nature. A bit later, we started to realize that our research interests intersected in important ways. I was becoming fascinated by the Cold War in Latin America, and she was at work on what would become the ground-breaking At Penpoint. She invited me to several workshops of the African studies group in Montreal, and we organized a colloquium on ‘Third World aesthetics’ and invited amazing scholars and people to take part. Monica’s academic circles were so cool. Shortly thereafter, we would start working on our edited volume, The Cultural Cold War and the Global South: Sites of Contest and Communitas. With the fantastic Kerry Bystrom, we created this book – a community, really – including many of our friends and colleagues working on literature, theatre, film, and visual art throughout the global south during the Cold War years. Although our work intersected with the Covid pandemic, our zooms kept us going. It was a wonderful collaboration.

Monica started a book series and included me and Sandeep Banerjee as co-editors. She welcomed us into this collaboration, and I was so appreciative. She also invited Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o to speak at McGill around 2016 – a watershed event. I was in the first trimester of pregnancy and completely exhausted, but this event was so amazing. Meeting Ngugi and hearing him speak will forever be one of the highlights of my professional and personal life. Monica made so many things possible. And throughout she remained one of the kindest, most down-to-earth, and committed scholars and people I’ve known. Her loss is huge and resonates on so many levels. She touched so many lives. The unfairness of her passing so young, before she could finish her several works in progress on world literature and Ngũgĩ, is so painful. I know, however, that her legacy will live on through our work and our tributes.

Monica was both a cherished colleague and a great friend. She and I enjoyed lunches at Mamaia, having her homemade sour soup with mici, karaoke with Fiona and Alanna, tea at café Aunja, birthday dinners, and chats in the hallways. Seeing the light on in her cheery yellow office always made me happy. She would regularly come and knock on my door with a story or joke to share. Her eyes had a wonderfully impish twinkle, full of humor and keen intellect. She was stylish and flamboyant and perceptive and proud and funny and brilliant and totally special and unique. My only regret is that we didn’t spend more time together. I will miss her forever. – Katherine Zien, Associate Professor, Department of English

Professor Monica Popescu was a phenomenal and humane person and a stellar scholar. What I remember most is the students who would come up to me and say do you know of her course, it is terrific. I didn’t know that African literatures were so fascinating. Monica possessed a profound respect for African literatures, and she shaped the thinking of that genre for generations of students at McGill. Monica was an exemplary educator. Her love of Africa infused the African Studies Program with a weight and intellectual gravitas belied by its still limited resources. Whenever Monica was around, we all knew that African Studies had a home and that it had a future at McGill. Such was her electric energy that she almost single-handedly centered Africa on campus. When she taught more broadly thematic courses on English language literature, she made sure African literature was included as an integral rather than a peripheral part of her syllabi and curriculum. She refused to situate African authors on the margins or represent them as outside of the canonical texts as is so common elsewhere. Monica was also a generous colleague far more interested in building an intellectual community around African Studies across the disciplines rather than pursue a singular and narrow path in her work and life. For Monica, the joy of education was embedded in community. Monica also represented something else: perhaps more profound in its learning properties; more resonate in its teaching moments. While she was not from Africa, she quietly modeled for non-Africans how scholars working on Africa can teach Africa on its own terms absent epistemologies borrowed from the Eurocentric tradition. Few professors enjoyed such loyalty from African students and an earned trust from all students wary of the misrepresentation of Africa and Africans in and outside the classroom. At a time when conversations around the ‘decolonization of the curriculum’ have emerged as immensely important but also disappointingly controversial, Monica was surprised at this controversy, this dispute over representing and centering African voices in literature. After all, she had been engaged in just such a project for years throughout her career. For Monica this came naturally, it was unremarkable, it was right, and it was just. More importantly, it was simply the love of literature. Her legacy then was to mute the facile debate over what constitutes ‘grand’ and canonical literature, and to include everyone across the false divides of nationality, race, and gender. One always knew that Africa and Africans were safe in her company and that she would interject a kindness and empathy whenever she entered a classroom, an African Studies Program meeting, or just when she took the time to talk to you over a cup of coffee. The renowned Nigerian writer, Chimamanda Ngozi, famously warned of the danger of Africa being contemplated in terms of that ‘single story,’ that single narrative, and how this often robs readers and writers alike of understanding Africa’s full diversity and humanity. Monica never needed to be taught that cautionary tale. At McGill University she taught all of us that that this particularly lesson was as profound as commonsense. – Khalid Medani, Chair of African Studies

Of Stars and Grief (for Monica Popescu, 1973-2024)

Mathias Orhero, PhD Candidate in the Department of English

I started this note without tears in my eyes
I started this note with a kind of beautiful denial
I started this note from a place some of us have known:
grief – that city we must all reach, that unmapped terrain.

I refused to believe Monica is no more, that Brasov’s pearl lies still
I cannot imagine that she will sleep subterraneanly somewhere in the city
I am haunted by Monica’s eternal silence
Even my words are reluctant in their acceptance:
Monica is no more – her breath is history.

As the first tears I shed trickled from my eyes
They forged an image of Monica on my mind:
I remembered last night’s dream of stars and stardust: cosmic elements vital to our existence
A star is formed from the forces of fusion and gravity within cosmic clouds
They shine and illuminate the universe, pulling cosmic forms into orbit
When their energy is spent, they become iron, sprinkled across the universe
In life or death, they shine bright and spread across the eternal, infinite void.

Monica was made of the same elements as the stars
Her presence was luminous, boldly wrestling the darkness of our world
She was the brightest star around – creating the orbital motion of everything
The gravity she pulled allowed things to swim easily:
Those caught in her orbit sing of beauty, harmony, motion
Their tongues confess Monica’s stellar simplicity
Their eyes bear witness to Monica’s exemplarity
Even now, they sing and weave tales of Monica’s luminosity

A nebula is where stars are born: where creation unfolds
Monica comes from Orion, one of the brightest ones
She danced to the music of the spheres, natalized the libra constellation
Her colours are rare – those you see once and feel fulfilled
Monica now dances again with the stars –
Look towards the night sky, she is Polaris, guiding us all
Her cosmic story tells us that the brightest things in the universe are not far from us.

My people say that those the gods love do not live long
They kiss the world just enough to complete their mission
They leave us, we who outlive them, with a rare gift:
A life time of the best memories, a bowl of endless affects
From the mountains of Transylvania to the estuaries of Pennsylvania
From the prairies of Windsor to the rapids of the St. Lawrence:
Everything and everyone bear testimony to Monica’s existence
The favourite of the gods and of mortals: Monica lived
We all testify with tears in our eyes.

Student Life

On the (internship) hunt

by Katherine Weaver on

More in Student Life:

“What are your summer plans?” As 12-degree days start to make their way back to Montreal, so too does the topic of summer plans. How about an internship?  

While internship application periods vary depending on the field, late winter can often be a busy period with many job openings being posted and deadlines looming. Here are some valuable tips and resources to help make this process a little bit less painful. 

Set aside a dedicated internship day

With school and other responsibilities, internship applications can get lost in the shuffle. Time batching, when you set aside one day a week to focus on a particular task, will pay off in terms of productivity. 

Head to a café or any location outside of your usual routine and allocate three to four hours to research and work on applications—you’ll thank yourself later for this commitment.

Get organized 

Being organized before you start your search is incredibly important to help you stay on top of the entire process. Some may prefer project management software like Notion, while others may choose a simple spreadsheet. Regardless of your platform of choice, having a central place that holds all relevant information such as the position and company name, required material, deadline, links to applications, and emails of contacts will prove invaluable. 

It is also key to keep tabs on which materials you have sent to each application. You should be sending a tailored version of your CV and cover letter to each job, so when it comes time to interview, you want to know what information the interviewer has seen.

The search 

There are many tried and true places to search for internships. First, there are public sites, such as Indeed, where users can browse and apply for internship postings made by companies. Another place to search is LinkedIn, a professional site where users can network, apply for internships, and be recruited by employers. One of the benefits of LinkedIn is the ability to connect directly with current employees at your companies of interest. This can help tremendously with not only your search but also with making your application stand out in the hiring process. 

School resources, such as myFuture, Workday, and faculty-specific internship offices, provide a host of specific internship programs that are of interest to students. 

Your McGill email is another great place to find internship opportunities, as faculty coordinators and professors will often forward openings to students. Setting aside a specific folder for these emails will help you make sure you don’t miss any opportunities. 

Finally, don’t be afraid to use your McGill connections. Reaching out to professors, or alumni can be a great way to search for potential opportunities, and maybe even get a referral. 

Or… create your own internship

Just because a company doesn’t have an internship posting doesn’t mean that they don’t offer one, or are not open to creating an internship program. Don’t be afraid of sending cold emails or making cold calls if you don’t see an internship available at an organization of interest. You can find tons of tips online for cold-calling effectively.

The applications

Applying to internships is a job in itself: It requires time and attention to detail. With enough practice, you’ll know how to tailor your CV and cover letter to each opportunity. Highlight your past work, volunteering, leadership experience, and skills in your CV, while using your cover letter to explain why you are the best fit for the role.

Some final tips 

Be creative. This is just one step in your long career process so it can be a great time to branch out and try new things. Finally, don’t be afraid to ask for help. McGill Career Planning Service (CaPS) offers students a host of resources, from workshops to career guidance appointments. You can get help at any stage in your search and application process, whether you’re just writing your CV or prepping for a final interview. Best of luck!

Montreal, News

Writer and filmmaker asinnajaq explores art, technology, and perspective in virtual talk

by Eliza Lee on

More in Montreal:

On Feb. 29, artist, writer, curator, and filmmaker asinnajaq took to Zoom to give a talk on their artistic practice and works. The talk was organized as part of the Disrupting Disruptions: Feminist and Accessible Publishing, Communications, and Technologies speaker and workshop series in collaboration with the Indigenous Futures Research Centre (IFRC) at Concordia University, an organization that supports Indigenous-led research.

Disrupting Disruptors is a series that unites diverse disciplines such as computer science, feminist studies, LGBTQIA+ studies, and critical race theory to explore “critical approaches to publishing practices, innovative communication strategies, and techniques for making research dissemination more accessible.” The Institute for Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies (IGSF) at McGill also provides financial and administrative support for the series.

Remarking that “making slideshows is one of [their] love languages,” asinnajaq began their presentation by discussing some of the methods and core values that they bring to their work. They noted the importance of asking themself “Am I the person to do this?” when approaching a project and reflecting on how they can bring their unique perspective to the art, as well as doing research and listening to others to best explore the subject at hand. 

asinnajaq then described several of their mixed media artistic projects, such as the installation Where you go I follow, which incorporates a photograph printed on a fabric sheet and written scores. They also detailed their installations Nuna and qulliq as part of the exhibit ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home, which originally appeared in the Canadian Centre For Architecture. asinnajaq’s work in the exhibit included creating an augmented reality (AR) artwork as part of Geronimo Inutiq’s installation, which audiences could view using Microsoft Hololens. The AR exhibit depicted an ever-changing landscape in the gallery room—clouds hanging overhead, a running river, and iridescent ravens swooping from perch to perch. 

“[This] installation to me was really about Iqaluit and about the feeling of being there,” asinnajaq said. “One thing that I could see that I could really add to make it feel like Iqaluit was to add something about the atmosphere and some environmental elements like the clouds, the water. And […] we have the Raven which are iconic for their tenacity […] and their character.”

asinnajaq finished their presentation by discussing their 2017 documentary short film, Three Thousand, which they created out of archives from the National Film Board of Canada. They explained that the film uses roughly 100 years of archival representations of the Inuit to create a “timeline of colonization and our cultural fabric.”

During the question and answer period, asinnajaq spoke to the way the film is for them “a document primarily for Inuit so that we can see and understand how we got to where we are,” while also underscoring the possibilities for change.

“Because there are some people, some fellow Inuit that I know, that sometimes forget […] the situation we’re in with really precarious situations with mental health, housing, food, safety, security […] and trauma that so many people are moving through is not an inherent part of us, and it’s happening for a reason,” asinnajaq said. “While doing that, I always want to leave space for hope […] that we can create worlds that we want [….] This world is a created world, and we can create worlds.”

Alex Ketchum—the organizer of Disrupting Disruptions and Assistant Professor at the IGSF—spoke to the connections between asinnajaq’s work and the themes of the series in an email to The Tribune.

“The asinnajaq event came about due to my partnership with the Indigenous Futures Research Centre,” Ketchum wrote, noting that their “work thoughtfully engages with technology.”

IFRC programming coordinator Joëlle Dubé explained in an email to The Tribune that the organization’s collaboration with Disrupting Disruptions for the speaker series was motivated by an interest in exploring disciplines in science, technology, engineering, art, and math (STEAM), as well as from Indigenous, queer, and feminist perspectives. 

“Whereas the acronym used to be STEM, we were curious to delve deeper into the role arts can play as the latest inclusion within this cluster of disciplines,” Dubé wrote. “We thought that the way asinnajaq makes use of new technology, through their work as a filmmaker, an artist, and a curator exemplifies a not-yet-presented perspective or facet of STEAM, one that pertains to visual storytelling.”

The next event in the Disrupting Disruptions Series is a workshop by Gabryelle Iaconetti and Liam Devitt on Queer Oral Histories on Mar. 15.

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