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Behind the bans on transgender women in sports

by Tillie Burlock on

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On March 25, World Athletics, the governing body that regulates track and field, cross country running, road running, race walking, mountain running, and ultra running competitions at the international level, voted to completely ban transgender women athletes who have gone through male puberty from competing at international events. 

The decision follows a wave of “fair competition” policies that were put into place after Lia Thomas, a swimmer for the University of Pennsylvania, became the first-known transgender woman to win a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) swimming championship. World Athletics joins World Aquatics and World Rugby as one of the several international organizations to ban transgender women athletes based on whether or not they have gone through male puberty, instead of blood testosterone levels. 

The World Athletics’ decision reverses the previous policy that required transgender women to keep the amount of testosterone in their blood under the maximum of five nanomoles per litre, and stay under this threshold continuously for 12 months prior to competing in the female category. World Athletics claims that its “preferred option” was to continue to allow transgender women to compete in the female category while implementing more aggressive regulations for testosterone levels. But the proposition allegedly garnered “little support” from stakeholders, such as member federations, athletes, coaches, and the International Olympics Committee (IOC), as well as transgender and human rights groups. 

World Athletics also elected to alter their policy for athletes with differences in sex development (DSD), a group of rare conditions involving genes, hormones, and reproductive organs resulting in different sex development trajectories, halving the maximum level of blood testosterone from five to 2.5 nanomoles per litre for women’s competition. Those with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), in whom excess testosterone is common and typically exceeds this new cutoff, may also be barred from competition. 

Many organizations that have elected to ban transgender athletes cite a study from the British Journal of Sports Medicine (BJSM) that concludes there is an association between the use of gender-affirming hormones and changes in athletic performance. The BJSM study suggests that more than 12 months of gender-affirming hormone usage is “needed to ensure that transgender women do not have an unfair competitive advantage when participating in elite-level athletic competition.” 

However, some experts are critical of the study’s conclusions due to sample size, narrow research questions, and misleading language. 

“It feels like our sort of Cirque du Soleil contortionist style stretch to say that that’s enough evidence to sort of make that blanket statement,” Dr. Lindsay Duncan, an associate professor in McGill’s Kinesiology and Physical Education Department, told The Tribune. “They present the best evidence available […] to address a pretty specific research question with sport performance defined in a pretty specific, narrowly conceived way [….] Sport performance involves so many other factors [….] There’s a lot more going into it than that one pretty specific study could address.” 

Dr. Charlotte Usselman, an assistant professor in McGill’s Department of Kinesiology and Physical Education, is also concerned with the content of the research paper. 

“Given that some people were only assessed once after starting hormone therapy (and most were only assessed twice), we have no idea how many people are included in the ‘2+ year’ time point,” Usselman wrote in an email to  The Tribune.

 “[T]he authors interpret their findings to directly suggest that ‘governing bodies for sporting competition should require more than [one] year of testosterone suppression prior to competition’,” Usselman continued. “[T]hey did not present enough evidence to support this conclusion.”

The BJSM study, along with the International Federation of Sports Medicine (FIMS)’s 2021 Consensus Statement––a study that concludes serum testosterone concentrations are an objective biomarker to regulate the inclusion of transgender athletes––acknowledge the limitations of their respective research. Many of these limitations stem from the lack of sports performance data from athletes before, during, or after testosterone suppression, in addition to small sample sizes.

World Athletics claims the ban prioritizes “fairness” over inclusion, citing a potential competitive advantage for transgender women athletes competing in women’s categories. These concerns of a competitive disadvantage for cisgender women athletes arise from the BJSM and FIMS studies that conclude transgender women retain physical advantages such as larger wingspan, increased lung capacity, and greater muscle mass, despite reducing their testosterone levels and taking gender affirming hormones. However, with no transgender athletes currently competing at the international level, many question the true prerogatives of the ban. 

“Bans on trans athletes are not primarily concerned with actual trans athletes, they are about stoking fear of trans women and presenting us as ‘invading women’s spaces,” a member of the Trans Patient Union (TPU) wrote to The Tribune.  

“When trans people and transfeminine people in particular are banned from participating or stigmatized for participating in sports, the harm done is also about making it harder for us to participate in everyday life,” wrote TPU’s external affairs co-coordinator, who wished to stay anonymous. “Like bathroom bills, athletic bans don’t present trans people with a feasible new way to participate, it’s about pushing us out of everyday life altogether.” 

The restrictive nature of binary gender categories also excludes both transgender people who do not medically transition and those who don’t fall into the category of male or female. 

“If legitimate concerns about fair play do come up, rather than dealing with such concerns by banning a transfeminine and intersex athlete for participating, we should mitigate relevant unfair physical advantages in ways analogous to the weight and age classes already used to ensure fair play,” TPU’s external affairs co-coordinator wrote. “We should regulate relevant physical advantages, not gender identity.”

Beyond the intricate nature of gender, the concept of “fairness” is complicated by the fact that the very structures of sport are fraught with inequities. 

“Most of our sports structures are not fair for trans and non binary people, forcing people into gender categories, forcing them into gendered spaces,” Duncan said. “Based on our data, if a trans athlete gets to the highest level of sport, from a character perspective, they’re a superhuman, because they’ve been through a tremendous amount of unfairness before they can even get there.” 

Some argue that World Athletics should revert to its former testosterone policy approach, but even the use of testosterone levels as an indicator of competitive advantage is severely understudied. 

“In some sports, testosterone levels might be a reasonable predictor of performance and could signal a competitive advantage [but] in other sports that’s not nearly enough,” Duncan explained. “I don’t think that overall testosterone levels is an effective way to measure a competitive advantage. In most sports, we don’t have any data that we could use to actually check that hypothesis.” 

Will Huckins, a master’s student in McGill’s Department of Kinesiology, notes that dependence on testosterone runs contradictory to World Athletics’ own research. 

“[The World Athletics’] head of health and science conducted research at the 2011 and 2013 World Championships which found that testosterone was only linked with improved performance in five of the 21 events they investigated (400-metre, 400-metre hurdles, 800-metre, hammer throw, and pole vault).” 

USPORTS, the governing body of most McGill varsity sports, currently has no restrictions for transgender athletes in competition. As for McGill Intramural sports, the open, mixed, and women’s categories are inclusive of two-spirit, transgender, and gender-nonconforming peoples, and the policy encourages athletes to participate in the category that best aligns with their gender identity. However, as head coach of the artistic swimming team at McGill, Duncan believes that more needs to be done to ensure that athletic spaces are truly accepting of transgender athletes. 

“If we’re going to welcome trans athletes onto teams, I think we need to make sure that we’re prepared to offer a psychologically safe space,” Duncan said. “Change really comes from having discussions with other coaches, with other athletes, challenging the assumptions that we have and just raising questions.” 

Art, Arts & Entertainment

Montreal’s magnificent murals: How public art sustains the city’s cultural spirit

by Dana Prather on

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Public art is a hot-button topic of discussion, be it in political debates or around the dining room table. While some denounce it as a frivolous waste of tax-payer dollars, others applaud the cultural, economic, and societal advantages of investing in public art: Its presence can accentuate a neighbourhood’s unique character, highlight important social issues, and render the fine arts more accessible.

Montreal is no stranger to these benefits as home to over 1,000 officially sanctioned public artworks. Public art even ornaments McGill’s downtown campus, where you can find eye-catching sculptures such as Jonathan Borofsky’s Human Structures (2010), which features three tiers of brightly-coloured figures outside of Burnside Hall, and Barbara Hepworth’s Square Forms and Circles (1963), a highly abstract, geometric structure located steps away from the Milton Gates.  

Montreal is home to an impressive collection of public art, but the crème de la crème is undoubtedly its murals. These eye-catching artworks can be found across the island, and they range from small-scale murals to expansive portraits stretched across buildings. You would be hard-pressed to find a resident who hasn’t noticed the city’s abundance of colourful murals, which attract attention from Montrealers and tourists alike. A quick Google search reveals several tours of Montréal’s urban street art, guiding interested individuals on foot, or providing detailed lists of must-see murals for self-guided adventures. 

For those who prefer creating to observing, Montreal is also home to MURAL Festival, a yearly public art show that turns Saint-Laurent Boulevard into an open-air museum. Local, national, and international artists are invited to use the street’s building sides as their canvasses, producing creative new works that the public can view for free, furthering the festival’s mission of democratizing art. Set to take place from June 8 to 18, this year’s MURAL Festival will welcome celebrated street artists like OSGEMEOS, a Brazilian artistic duo composed of twin brothers Gustavo and Otavio Pandolfo, and Projet TXYNA, a local mural and digital art collective made up of five creatives. The Projet TXYNA team will undertake the task of reinventing one of Montréal’s iconic murals, the “Graffiti Granny” which overlooks the intersection of Saint-Laurent and Avenue des Pins. 

While MURAL Festival effectively drums up support and viewership of public art during its 11 days of festivities, groups like MU, a charitable organization for unique mural art rooted in Montreal’s history and culture, hope to foster an appreciation for public art all year long. Elizabeth-Ann Doyle, MU’s artistic director and co-founder, maintains that public art is essential to preserving Montreal’s identity as a cultural metropolis.  

“Montreal is a creative city. We should, as Montrealers, feel that in everyday life,” Doyle said in an interview with The Tribune. “Public art is the best central access to free art.”   

Inspiration for MU’s inception struck while Doyle was visiting Philadelphia alongside co-founder Emmanuelle Hébert for their work with Cirque du Soleil. Stirred by Philadelphia’s Mural Arts Program and the economic and social benefits it brought to the city, the pair vowed to establish a similar program back home. The result? MU, which has produced more than 300 murals since 2007 in an effort to help Montrealers get their daily dose of art. 

The organization prioritizes artwork that pays tribute to the city’s creatives. Since 2010, MU has produced two to three murals per year that acknowledge Montreal’s trailblazing artists. 

“We wanted to give a voice and honour artists as opposed to traditional public art, which [pays] tribute to military men or politicians,” Doyle said. “Quebec’s history is important. Recognition of its storytellers is important.” 

MU’s “Montreal’s Great Artists” series has yielded some of the city’s most recognizable murals. These include 2017’s Tower of Songs by El Mac and Gene Pendon, a large-scale portrait on Crescent Street of acclaimed singer-songwriter and Westmount native Leonard Cohen, as well as Magnetic Art (2022) by Marc Séguin, a piece in the heart of Milton Parc dedicated to visual artist Jean-Paul Riopelle. 

Another mural in the MU-produced series, Hommage À Alanis Obomsawin (2018) by artist Meky Ottawa, demonstrates how the medium can serve to highlight Indigenous artists and their cultures in a primarily settler-colonial setting. As a portrait of celebrated Abenaki Canadian-American filmmaker and activist Alanis Obomsawin, the mural paints the artist from the chest upwards, setting her against an azure sky dotted with constellations. The artwork is situated at the corner of Atwater and Lincoln in the Ville-Marie borough and serves as an important reminder of how Indigenous creators and their artistic contributions have shaped Canada’s artistic landscape.    

In an email to the Tribune, Gloria Bell, an assistant professor of art history at McGill, emphasized the capacity of public art一especially murals一in highlighting Indigenous experiences and contributions. 

“Public art such as murals are more accessible than finding artworks in traditional white cube galleries and museums,” Bell wrote. “The large scale of the work is powerful in its visibility and acknowledgement of Indigenous artists.” 

In the case of Hommage, the mural pulls double-duty to further Indigenous representation: Not only does the artwork itself depict an Indigenous creative, but it also platforms Ottawa, an emerging, multi-disciplinary Atikamekw artist whose work incorporates traditional Indigenous techniques. 

“[Obomsawin] seems to be crowned by traditional Abenaki floral motifs, a fitting crown for the queen of Indigenous media,” Bell wrote. 

In addition to creating space for Indigenous artists and artworks, the murals of Montreal help spark important conversations about social issues. For instance, the mural Finding Home Again (William Daniel Buller, 2022), commissioned by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in association with MU, explores the topic of forced migration. Depicting a woman carrying a sleeping child in her arms and a home strapped to her back, the mural stretches across the wall of a four-story apartment complex. Lines from the poem “immigrant” by Rupi Kaur complete the work, stretching across the bottom-right corner in both French and English: 

“they have no idea what it’s like / to lose home at the risk of / never finding home again / to have your entire life / split between two lands and / become the bridge between two countries.”

The artwork is a stark and poignant reminder of the struggle of more than 100 million people worldwide who have been forced to uproot their lives to find refuge elsewhere. Located in the neighbourhood of Côte-des-Neiges (CDN), one of Canada’s most ethnically diverse communities, this mural reflects the forced displacement many of the neighbourhood’s residents have experienced. 

“We feel that art is for everybody, and it should be grassrooted,” Doyle explained. “It talks to communities, so it has to talk about subjects that echo in those areas.”

The mural was unveiled on Oct. 24, 2022. Doyle emphasized the importance of its placement, which is situated prominently on the border of CDN and the Town of Mont-Royal. By displaying the mural in such a highly trafficked area, it serves as an organic catalyst for conversations about forced migrations for anyone who passes by. 

Public art, and murals especially, plays a foundational role in sculpting Montreal as a cultural milieu. To Doyle, the question of whether public art is a luxury is a resounding no. 

“Art is essential to life,” she said. “If [Montreal is] really a cultural city, that means not only having lots of programming. It goes beyond shows. It has to be lived by everybody, everywhere.”

Arts & Entertainment, Theatre

‘English’ asks provocative questions about the meaning of language

by Kellie Elrick on

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“HELLO. WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE COLOUR?” 

The militant aggression of Elham’s (Ghazal Azarbad) tone sends laughter rippling through the audience. She wants to go to Australia for medical research with a renowned professor studying gastrointestinal diseases. She has a fantastic MCAT score. She wants to help people.

She’s failed the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) multiple times.

Elham is one of four students in an English class in 2009 in Karaj, Iran. They all want to learn English for different reasons but stand together under the dark cloud of English linguistic hegemony. 

English, written by Sanaz Toossi and co-directed by Anahita Dehbonehie and Guillermo Verdecchia, explores language, identity, family, and otherness through the ensuing classroom shenanigans. The play ran at the Segal Centre this past month. 

Ghazal Partou gives a compelling performance as the encouraging yet austere teacher Marjan, who had previously lived in London for almost a decade. There, she went by Mary. She encourages her students to speak in ENGLISH ONLY, sparking a combination of malapropisms, frustrations, and major questions about what language really means. 

We see people learning a new language at different stages of their lives, for a variety of reasons. The winsome, overall-clad Goli (Aylin Oyan Salahshoor) is 18. She believes the world will open up to her once she learns English. Roya (Banafsheh Taherian) wants to live with her son’s family in Canada, but her son wants his daughter fully immersed in English and doesn’t want Roya to confuse her by speaking Farsi. And then there’s the enigmatic Omid (Sepehr Reybod), who comes into the class speaking English suspiciously well. 

The production was intentional in casting all Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) actors. An especially important choice as the Asian American Performers Action Coalition found in their 2018-2019 Visibility Report that across the board, only 1.3 per cent of hired actors and 1.5 hired writers claim MENA descent, despite accounting for 3 per cent of the American population. 

English takes a creative approach to storytelling in both English and Farsi to a primarily anglophone audience. When the characters speak English, the actors speak with a Farsi accent. When the characters speak Farsi, the actors speak with American-English accents, vocally flipping the script. 

A key tension within the play is whether or not learning a new language means becoming a new person. The audience is left to ponder how much we lose in translation, and how much good in the world is sacrificed in the name of assimilation. If learning a new language means assuming a new identity, does that mean Roya’s granddaughter will never really know her? 

Though the debates around language are political, the creative team doesn’t overtly centre English around politics. The play’s lighthearted humour is crucial to its message. Notably, the audience and characters rarely laugh together.

For instance, when Omid encourages the timid Goli to ignore the reactions of those around her, to “screw everyone, fuck everyone!”, Goli replies by enthusiastically proclaiming, “OKAY, I WILL FUCK EVERYONE!”

The funniest lines were those that resulted from miscommunications. When the laughter ceases, the atmosphere in the theatre transforms completely, and the audience is left to ponder what exactly they were laughing at.

The purpose of language is often considered to be functionality, but communication and connection go far beyond grammar and vocabulary. Humour is often overlooked in language politics, but it is a key feature that links us together as humans. Perhaps Marjan captures this complexity best when she tells Omid, “[y]ou go years without making anyone laugh.” The audience fell silent. 

Montreal provides a unique setting for a play about language, especially one entitled English. When you walk out of the theatre, the play doesn’t really end—its messages are reflected in Quebec’s language divide, protests against Bill 96 and Bill 21, and the Woman Life Freedom movement following the death of Jina (Mahsa) Amini. The set design also features a window looking out onto Karaj, visually linking the classroom to the outside world. 

Both inside and outside the theatre, the audience is left to question the purpose of language: Ultimately, should it assimilate or communicate? 
English ran from March 19 to April 2 at the Segal Centre.

Sports

Four years of Farnand: A letter from your (favourite) editor

by Sarah Farnand on

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Well, this is it. The last thing I will ever write for The Tribune. No pressure though, right?

I joined the Sports section all the way back in 2019 after I wrote an opinion piece about littering that never got published (thanks a lot, Opinion). Now, four years and over 75 articles later, I still do not understand the rules of rugby. 

We’ve done a lot of great things over these four years. From forming the first all-woman sports editorial team at The Tribune, to interviews with Olympians and creating a Sports section that is about so much more than sports, I am so proud of what this section has become. I have no doubt that it will only continue to get better from here. 

I am so eternally grateful for all the brilliant minds that I have worked alongside at The Tribune. I hate change and I hate saying goodbye, especially to the place that gave me my best friends. To my fellow grads, I can’t wait to see all the great things you go on to do. And for those of you who have a few years left, as corny as it sounds, the time really flies, so enjoy every moment.

Please don’t ask what I am doing next year. I do not know and I am very stressed. 

Forever a loyal Tribune reader,

Sarah

Sports

Know Your Admin: McGill Athletics

by Zoé Mineret on

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If you’re a McGill student that cares even a little bit about McGill sports, odds are you follow @mcgillathletics on Instagram. With over 10,000 followers, the Instagram account connects athletes, students, fans, and alumni who root for the Martlets and the Redbirds. From schedule updates to analytics to live game coverage, the beautifully curated content leaves many followers wondering: Who is behind the account?

Matt Garies and Evelyn Silverson-Tokatlidis are the architects behind all of the McGill Athletics accounts on social media, including Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter. Silverson-Tokatlidis is the Social Media Coordinator for McGill Athletics, while Garies is the Creative Lead. Silverson-Tokatlidis is a former student-athlete who played on the Martlets rugby team for five years and is also the former president of the McGill Varsity Council. Garies is the official sports photographer for McGill Athletics and does a variety of freelance work for various brands, including the Montreal Canadiens and Sportsnet.  

The duo brings a multifaceted perspective to social media management. Silverson-Tokatlidis’ experience as a student-athlete gives her a better understanding of athletes’ needs, while Garies’ experience as a sports photographer allows him to skillfully capture the essence of McGill sports. 

“Our main goal is to have people follow along with our athletes and create that connection for an online audience,” Silverson-Tokatlidis told The Tribune. “[We hope] to share the voices of our athletes and showcase that student side of athletics at McGill.”

Central to fostering this connection is ensuring that students have quick and easy access to information about athletics. Whether it’s the latest scores or upcoming game schedules, providing followers with timely and engaging content is key to building a dynamic sports scene at McGill.

“We want to be constantly engaging as a focal point of content,” Garies said. “We want people coming to our Instagram to get updates and information, and then we can use that as a quicker social point for easy access to links. Our goal was to sort of create a memory where people will be like, ‘Oh, I can check the Instagram; everything will be there.’” 

However, running the McGill Athletics social media is not just getting to attend all the games for free and meet athletes––it’s a complex and demanding job that requires creativity, strategic thinking, and a deep understanding of social media trends.

“We definitely have to be up to date regarding trends,” Silverson-Tokatlidis said. “Even bridging the gap between our first-year athletes and sixth-year athletes [is a challenge] because there are a lot of differences in the way in which people communicate. It’s about trying to find that middle ground and find trends that appeal to everybody.” 

Keeping up to date also requires research on how other teams’ social media management, professional and otherwise, run their accounts. However, they always make sure to maintain a personality fans can recognize. 

“Our voice does shine through a little bit to make our brand a little bit unique,” Garies said. “We also know our athletes very well because we speak to them all the time, which gives us a pretty relatable way of communicating.” 

Garies and Silverson-Tokatlidis go beyond just posting on Instagram to amplify the voices of McGill’s athletes. They also lead the production of the UNSCRIPTED Series on the McGill Athletics YouTube channel, which features interviews with student-athletes specifically highlighting the experiences of Black, Indigenous, and 2SLGBTQIA+ athletes. 

McGill Athletics’ social media presence has become central to the university’s sports culture. Silverson-Tokatlidis’ and Garies’ tireless efforts allow fans to feel connected to athletes by uplifting their stories Their work goes beyond just running social media accounts—it is a crucial part of building a strong and inclusive sports culture at McGill.

Sports

Earl Zukerman: McGill Athletics’ living archive

by Sarah Farnand on

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Earl Zukerman is an icon. The Sports Information Officer has been a fixture in the McGill Athletics department for the past 44 years, spending much of his career working seven-day weeks, at times covering 30 to 40 events during the homecoming weekend. 

Zukerman, or “Zukster” to his close friends, has lived in Montreal his whole life. While he did not initially grow up watching or playing sports—he described himself as more of a bookish child—Zukerman became fascinated with sports at the age of 10 when he started following the Montreal Canadiens, Expos, and Alouettes.

“You know, when parents put their kids in sports, I was never put into that,” Zukerman told The Tribune in an interview. “I only played [in] the street with friends [or] in the park. But once I got to around [the age of 10] […] I started following pro sports from that time on. It has really been my main interest most of my life since then.”

After arriving at the university, Zukerman discovered a whole new world of sports. 

“At McGill, we have 26 teams now. But going back a few years, we used to have up to 50 teams. So in the role that I’ve been in, you have to sort of be an expert in all sports.”

Zukerman, who oversees media relations for McGill Athletics and serves as the main communication point for all McGill varsity teams, started off his writing career as a journalist and Sports Editor for The McGill Daily. Game coverage soon turned into investigations of McGill’s rich sports history, yielding some interesting results. 

“It’s pretty set that James Naismith, a McGill graduate, invented basketball pretty much overnight,” Zukerman said. 

While McGill reports facing Harvard in the first-ever modern football game, and McGill is arguably the birthplace of hockey, Zukerman explained that defining the origins of these sports is a bit trickier. 

“Their origins are a bit murky, because it depends on what form of the game you’re playing,” Zukerman said. “For example, if a bunch of kids are playing hockey in the street, is that hockey? So there’s a debate about how you define hockey and how you define football. And depending on how you define it, then the game could be invented in Canada […] or it could be invented elsewhere.”

After coming to McGill in 1976 as an undergraduate student, Zukerman never left. He’s witnessed 10 of McGill’s 11 National Championships, just missing the 1972 swimming title. Many of his best memories are from McGill and the connections he has made in the sports world, such as his friendship with former Detroit Red Wings coach Mike Babcock, BEd ‘86. He has even been granted several once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.

“I got to drink out of the Stanley Cup three times […] I am not a huge beer fan, but drinking a cold beer out of the Stanley Cup was just amazing. Truly amazing. I did that in 2008, with Detroit. And then I had the opportunity to celebrate Stanley Cups with Los Angeles in 2014 and Chicago in 2015,” Zukerman recounted. 

“Another moment that comes to mind is, in 2001, I went to Beijing for the World University Games as a communications officer with the Canadian contingent and walked on the Great Wall of China. I didn’t really think much of it before I got there, but when I got on the Wall, and you saw how far it was, and you saw how old it was, I found that really to be a moving moment.”

While he has had an amazing career filled with incredible highlights and more championship rings than he has fingers, Zukerman still has dreams for McGill’s future. For one, he would love to see improvements to the athletics facilities because many of them are quite old and run-down.

“If we go down to an NCAA school, most of the big schools, if you go into their gym, and their arenas and their facilities, it’s mind-blowing,” Zuckerman said. “Some of them are better than professional teams. I don’t know if we’ll ever get to that level. But I would certainly like to see improvements.” 

While Zukerman has no plans to go anywhere in the next few years—he hopes to be the first person at any university to reach 50 years as a sports information officer—he is confident that sports will always be a part of his life.

Formula One, Sports

Going green at 200 km/h: Formula 1 takes a climate conscious turn

by Julie Ferreyra on

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Between the roar of engines, lightning-fast pit stops, and pursuits of victory, the world of Formula 1 (F1) has successfully established itself as a world of glamour and exclusivity. Champagne showers, good-looking drivers, and yacht-filled victory celebrations paint the picture of a perfect, untouchable world. However, behind the velvet curtain is a dark side characterized by car crashes, political influence, and exorbitant amounts of oil-fuelled travel. 

Setting restrictions on and off the track 

As of late, the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) has taken steps to promote a greener F1. In 2019, the FIA released a Sustainability Strategy with the goal of reaching carbon neutrality by 2030. The report also revealed that 45 per cent of F1 carbon emissions are linked to transportation, and an added 27.7 per cent to the transportation of personnel and event partners. Identifying these emissions revealed key areas of concern for F1 as the deadline to reach carbon neutrality looms over the world of pro sports.

F1’s strides to be more environmentally conscious begin with the conception and designs of cars themselves. While many believe that the actual racing of cars is what generates the most pollution in the sport, the FIA heavily regulates the fuel consumption  and composition of cars since fuel types greatly impact how much carbon dioxide is released. In an effort to reduce competitive advantages between each car and reduce their environmental footprint, cars can only consume up to 110 kilograms of fuel per race, a substantive decrease from the 150 kilograms of fuel per race allowed in 2010.

“[The requirements for sustainability] are a little bit different than the requirements for performance that you need in racing,” said Susan Gaskin, a professor in McGill’s Department of Civil Engineering, in an interview with The Tribune. “In racing […] the aim is to get the greatest power and the greatest speed, but if we’re thinking about sustainable aims, then we’re looking for the greatest utility for the lowest energy or material inputs.”

The core tension between the search for sustainability and performance creates a precarious task for teams trying to balance both. And with racing success hanging in the balance, more often than not, teams are forced to prioritize performance.  

As part of their Sustainability Strategy, F1 also pledged to offset the emissions of certain Grand Prix races, as is the case for the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve and the Algarve International Circuit, where solar panels will be used to power the venues.

When it comes to the engineering of vehicles, F1 acts as a sort of innovation playground. But while improvements are possible at the development stage of producing a car, there is a limit to how much advancements can significantly decrease pollution during races. 

“You do have greater improvements at the beginning of technology development and then improvements get smaller and smaller as you progress,” Gaskin said. 

The track’s environmental impact 

This year, over the course of nine months, each F1 team will compete in 23 races across 20 different countries and five continents, introducing the Las Vegas Grand Prix and returning to the Qatar Grand Prix—which was not part of the 2022 season because the country hosted the FIFA World Cup. 

FIA takes several factors into account when deciding where and when races will be held. One of the most important factors is weather. While the Montreal Grand Prix must be held during the summer to avoid harsh Canadian winters, Gulf races in Bahrain, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi are held during the winter, spring, and fall months to avoid extreme heat. 

Outside of weather considerations, the racing schedule, and more importantly, locations, are also based on tradition—many of the European races such as Monaco and Monza, Italy are attended by high-profile celebrities and other social elites. 

The destinations and racing schedule make it such that drivers and teams will travel over 135,000 kilometres for the 2023 season, an increase from last year’s 115,000 kilometres. The insane travel schedule sees drivers, team personnel, cars, and all sorts of equipment transported around the world, resulting in astronomical fuel emissions which are not offset by controlled gas consumption in races or other sustainable practices promoted by the FIA. 

Grand Prix races are not solely for F1—Formula 2 and Formula 3 races are also part of the events and emit their own pollutants. As such, not only do 10 F1 teams travel across the globe every other week, but all 11 F2 teams and 10 F3 teams do, too. Those added participants come with their respective cargo and thus, emissions that cannot be ignored.

Some teams have suggested a rotating calendar for the regular season structure to reduce the sport’s carbon footprint. This method would see the FIA organize a limited number of races per year, allowing a different collection of cities to host races every season. Many fans believe the rotating schedule is a crucial step forward for the league.

“I won’t be [satisfied with the FIA’s efforts towards sustainability] until F1 makes major schedule changes so that the 10 teams do not have to fly F1 cars that weigh a lot over oceans and continents every other week,” McGill alumni Erin Smith, BA ‘22, told the Tribune. “As the regulator, the FIA should do more. If individual drivers or teams want to, more power to them.”

In an effort to reduce their individual carbon emissions, Mercedes-AMG-Petronas experimented with the use of biofuels for transport during the 2022 European triple-header––a collection of races in Spa, Zandvoort, and Monza––and found that this reduced their carbon emissions by an impressive 89 per cent. 

Mercedes proved that reducing emissions while remaining highly competitive is possible, so why don’t more teams do it? 

Competing interests

Despite the importance of sustainable practices, F1 remains a business where money takes precedence and everything else takes the back seat. This leaves the FIA in a difficult position when it comes to sustainability.

“To some degree, I don’t think they can reconcile it fully. It’s more of a matter of figuring out what actually matters most to them,” said Matthias Hoenisch, a former senior editor for the McGill International Review and current master’s student in political science, in an interview with the Tribune. “Frankly, like in any sport, or any pastime, the people who are dedicated fans aren’t gonna stop being fans because of [F1’s] environmental progress or lack thereof.”

The FIA’s lack of tangible efforts to make F1 more sustainable aligns with its refusal to allow drivers to be outspoken about their political beliefs––an intentional move by the FIA to maintain a “neutral” stance on political issues and avoid controversy. The recently retired Sebastian Vettel has become outspoken about his efforts to promote sustainability and involvement in initiatives like Green Racing. Vettel’s actions are telling: Environmental concerns are not beyond the scope of drivers’ hopes for a better racing future. 

Some of the biggest sponsors of F1 are heavy polluters, like ARAMCO, the biggest oil and gas company in the world that is also the world’s biggest polluter. What’s more, the newest races have been added in the United States, Saudi Arabia, and China––some of the leading polluters worldwide. These decisions reflect the FIA’s hierarchy of interests, with profits placed far above any concerns for the environment. 

“By holding an event in a certain place, you’re still endorsing the government of that place, to at least some degree,” Hoenisch said. “It’s pretty cynical to claim that you can keep politics out of sport in any way. Sports have been instrumentalized by politicians forever.”

F1, one of the most elitist sports in the world, is known for its traditionalism and refusal to break from the status quo. It’s unsurprising that when it comes to the environment, the only way substantive, institutional change will happen is if public outcry becomes too loud to ignore. 

“They have the technology, they have the funds, they have the resources, they have the engineers, they can figure it out,” Hoenisch said. 

By continuing to prioritize environmental responsibility and push the boundaries of green technology, F1 has the potential to not only maintain its status as a premier motorsport, but also make a meaningful contribution to the global effort to build a more sustainable future. 

McGill, Montreal, News

McGill hit with class action lawsuit for alleged mind control, brainwashing experiments from 1943 to 1964

by Ghazal Azizi on

More in McGill:

Content Warning: Descriptions of medical abuse, physical abuse, and psychological torture

Charles Tanny visited the Allan Memorial Institute, a research and psychiatric centre operated by McGill’s Royal Victoria Hospital, in August 1957. He was referred to the Allan after experiencing pain in his face, a condition his family doctor believed was psychosomatic—Charles suffered from trigeminal neuralgia, a neuropathic condition—rather than a psychological one.  

Nearly seven decades later, Charles’s daughter, Julie Tanny, is now the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit against McGill, the Royal Victoria Hospital, the Canadian government, and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Tanny, along with hundreds of other plaintiffs, alleges that the Allan conducted psychological experimentation on unconsenting patients between 1943 and 1964. 

From 1957 to 1964, the CIA funded 89 institutions that researched mind control and brainwashing techniques in a project known as MK ULTRA. Subproject 68, one of 144, took place at the Allan under the supervision of psychiatry professor Donald Ewen Cameron. Tanny’s lawsuit alleges that the experiments started in 1943 when McGill hired Cameron as the founding director of the Allan, years before the CIA’s involvement. 

Cameron, whose research focused on the causes of mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, believed that mentally ill patients could be “depatterned” through prolonged comas, large doses of psychedelic drugs such as LSD, and extreme electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). After “depatterning”—which resulted in memory erasure, acute confusion, and/or losing bladder and bowel control—Cameron believed patients could be re-taught healthy behaviour through “psychic driving,” a process during which patients were sedated and subjected to tape recordings of a single sentence on repeat. Tanny, who obtained her father’s medical records in 1977, says her dad was put into an insulin coma and kept asleep for 23 out of 24 hours every day, while a background audio recording played endlessly. The content of the recording was not disclosed in his medical records.

“After the first months, he asked to see my mother, so they wrote in his file that he still had connections to his former life […] so they put him back into treatment for another month,” Tanny told The Tribune. “After the second month, they said that it looked like this was as far as they could take him.”

Charles, Tanny’s father, was also subject to extreme ECT shocks, allegedly administered two to three times per day at 20 to 40 times the normal voltage at the Allan. Tanny says that when Charles returned from the Allan after two and half months of experiments, he had no recollection of his three children. 

“My father was a very devoted father [….] Every weekend, he took us to Belmont Park, we went fishing, he built us a skating rink, very attached. And after the experiments, there was zero relationship. He was extremely detached, and that never changed,” Tanny said. “There’s one common thread with a lot of people who were depatterned: They came home quite physically violent and angry. And in my father’s case, he went from a very loving and gentle man to someone who used to hit me regularly.”

Lana Jean Ponting spent a month at the Allan in April 1958. She was admitted because of a court order her parents received after running away from her house at 15 years old. Now 81, she remembers her time at the Allan vividly. 

“When I got to the Allan, it was a scary-looking building,” Ponting said in an interview with The Tribune. “When I went in there, I noticed a strange chemical smell. Dr. Cameron assured my parents that he would take care of me. I remember going to sit in Dr. Cameron’s office, he took me to a room where I had one pillow, a mattress, and a blanket. He told me to stay in the room. The nurse came in with a pole and a bag with something in it. She told me to lie down and she put a needle in my arm. I felt funny. And so it began.”

Ponting, who has been on medication since the experiments to offset the side effects, suffers from flashbacks and never spoke of her time at the Allan with anyone, not even her husband. She only recently uncovered that she was a victim of the experiments after her brother noticed an ad about the class action lawsuit in The Montreal Gazette. 

Since piecing together her memories of the Allan with her newfound knowledge of the experiments, Ponting has testified in the Kanien’kehà:ka Kahnistensera (Mohawk Mothers)’s ongoing lawsuit against McGill. The Mothers suspect the university’s New Vic site, formerly the Royal Victoria Hospital, holds unmarked Indigenous graves. In an affidavit that was enclosed with a note from her doctor attesting that she is of sound mind and body, Ponting says she saw digging at night as a patient. 

“I would sneak out of the Allan at night when I could. I actually saw people with shovels. I could see them because their lights were so bright. And I noticed that [the shovels] had red handles, I will never forget the red handles,” Ponting said. 

While most of the plaintiffs are the relatives of victims, Ponting is one of the few living child survivors. 

“I’m hoping this lawsuit can bring to the attention of the Canadian people what we suffered,” Ponting said. “I consider what all of us went through as a journey into madness [….] I’m not doing this for myself. I’m doing this for all of the people that have suffered without knowing through the Allan.”

While the class action was filed in 2019, it has yet to be certified—the process through which a lawsuit is approved by a court before proceeding to trial. In March 2021, the United States Attorney General filed a motion to be dismissed as a defendant, claiming it had immunity from lawsuits in Canada at the time of the alleged experiments. The motion was heard and later won in 2022. The plaintiffs have since filed an appeal, which was heard at the Quebec Court of Appeals on March 30, 2023.  

Jeff Orenstein, the plaintiffs’ lawyer, says the State Immunity Act, which determines how foreign states can be sued in Canada, is retrospective and can apply to cases before the Act was passed. Orenstein argues that when Canada drafted the Act, it took direction from similar documents in Europe, the U.K., and the U.S. While the British and European documents clearly indicate that their immunity acts are not retroactive, both the American and Canadian immunity acts do not establish whether they apply to instances prior to the policies’ adoptions. Orenstein sees the lack of a specific retrospectivity clause in the Act as an intentional choice. 

“Anyone who was a Canadian who was injured on Canadian soil for personal injury has jurisdiction in Canada, without a doubt. And so, if the Act applies, there’s not much else to decide. Clearly, we have jurisdiction in Quebec,” Orenstein told the Tribune. “If Canada didn’t recopy [the retrospectivity clause], they obviously intended it to apply to things that happened in the past.”

As Tanny and Orenstein await an appeals decision from the judges, they are optimistic that they will win based on the questions the judges asked during the March 30 hearing. 

“The judges seemed to be quite interested in the retrospectivity debate,” Orenstein said. “It is a serious question that I think will take them some time to work through [….] They’re going to want to take their time to really write a very serious, reasoned judgement, knowing that it might end up in front of nine judges in Ottawa [at the Supreme Court].”

After the U.S.’s status as a defendant is decided, the remaining defendants, including McGill, will have to present their defences for the class action to be certified, a process that Orenstein estimates could take years.

In a statement to Global News in 2019, the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC), which was born from the merger of the Royal Victoria Hospital with four other hospitals in the city,  recognized Cameron’s experiments but denied responsibility, claiming that Cameron acted independently and was not an official MUHC employee. The plaintiffs amended their application to list McGill as a defendant instead of the MUHC. The Tribune contacted McGill in light of its involvement in the lawsuit, but was referred to the MUHC, who declined to comment, citing the ongoing nature of the suit.

Science & Technology

Planting a SEED: McGill sustainability project moves forward in UN competition

by Atticus O' Rourke Rusin on

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Two years ago, roughly half of high school-aged Canadians did not believe that climate change could be stopped. Some of this hopelessness stems from climate education, which still revolves around causes and effects, rather than solutions. 

But, can climate change be stopped without spurring the next generation to action? That is exactly what the founders of Student Education for Environmental Development (SEED) asked themselves. 

The four founders of SEED, Oliver Abrams, U0 Management, Hugo Paulat, U1 Biochemistry, Cameron Kluger, U1 Environmental Science, and Felix Harpe, U1 Finance, came together out of a shared love for the environment. The SEED founders were inspired by the World Federation of United Nations Association (WFUNA) Under the Starry Sky project competition, where participants have to come up with a sustainability initiative. In an interview with The Tribune, the group described their project, which involves setting up sustainable education programs in classrooms around Montreal.

“Through our curriculum, making it hands-on, interactive, and fun, we really think that with something that seems so simple we can actually make a difference,” Abrams said.       

The Under the Starry Sky program received thousands of project proposals covering a wide range of the UN’s sustainable development goals, like no poverty or zero hunger. Of these applications, only 15, including SEED, were selected for future instruction and guidance in achieving their goals. 

“We get their supervision for six months, until eventually we go to Norway in September [.…] In this period, we’ll be able to do our whole implementation,” Kluger said. “Along the way, we’ll have check-ins with WFUNA every week or two weeks and we’ll just be able to continuously receive their supervision and their advice and they’ll help us along the process.”  

SEED aims to educate elementary to middle school-aged students on sustainability and climate change. Currently, the program is trying to integrate itself into Montreal schools, focusing particularly on lower-income areas of the city. 

“The research that we found was that those who are equipped with these tools or given these resources or educated about these ideas at a young age are more likely to be involved in sustainability when they’re older, more likely to pursue a STEM [science, technology, engineering, and mathematics] career when they’re older, more likely to create change in this sustainability field,” Abrams said.    

Although Montreal is a relatively sustainable city—it has one of the best public transit systems in the world and is highly energy efficient—the team believes that sustainable education needs to be expanded in order to take advantage of this infrastructure. Although they plan to broaden their programs, SEED is beginning with a simple workshop on reducing food waste and the importance of composting. 

“Even if there were these robust systems in the city such as composting […] a lot of people don’t know how to use them, or aren’t prepared to correctly compost their food because they don’t have the education to use these tools, ” Kluger said.

SEED is also working to establish an online component for the program to let students keep learning after they complete workshops. 

The team may expand their membership in the near future, but for the time being are focusing on solidifying their project’s goals of bringing sustainability to underserved classrooms. As a final perk of the WFUNA program, the finalists are invited on a historic Norwegian boat, set to sail in September, stopping at several cities around the country along the way. Once they return, SEED will have even more knowledge in its repertoire to better educate students in Montreal classrooms. 

Ask a Scientist, Science & Technology

The infinite potential of untangling quantum numbers

by Harrison Yamada on

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Over the last decade, thanks to developments in hardware and software technologies, computers can now tackle problems previously thought impossible. Computer chips are faster (in accordance with Moore’s Law) and developing fields like deep learning—a class of algorithms that use brain-inspired neural networks to process data—allow computers to more efficiently organize and generate data, further propelling artificial intelligence forward.

Quantum technology is another developing field with revolutionary potential that has gained traction in recent years. The technology relies on quantum mechanics, which is a theory in physics that describes high-momentum objects on the smallest scales, like individual atoms and subatomic particles. 

According to quantum mechanics, particles can exhibit random and counter-intuitive behaviours like superposition—the principle that a particle’s location is not actually a single location, but instead occupies several locations at once. But, as soon as the particle is observed, it randomly “chooses” one of those locations via a process called decoherence. It’s like Shrödinger’s cat. We only know the cat is dead once we open the box—until then, anything is possible.

Besides location, particles have other properties that exhibit this same behaviour, like momentum and spin. As long as the particle is not directly observed, these precarious quantum behaviours are present.

Quantum computing is one exciting application of this principle. By confining and isolating particles, scientists and engineers try to leverage quantum behaviours to create computers that process information differently than your laptop would. While a classical computer uses bits—digits of 0 or 1—to encode information, a quantum computer uses qubits—digits that can be in a superposition of both 0 and 1 by harnessing particles with quantum properties. This affords extra flexibility when doing certain arithmetic computations, theoretically allowing quantum computers to exponentially outperform classical computers.

“If we want to build such a computer, it has some minimal requirements,” says Bill Coish, an associate physics professor at McGill who researches physical systems that are applied in quantum computers. “That we can prepare quantum states arbitrarily in this physical system, that we can evolve them in time in a way that preserves quantum information, and that we can measure them in the end.” 

Currently, scientists can construct quantum computers that meet these requirements, but not at the scales necessary to perform useful computing tasks. 

“If you want to do something practical, current estimates suggest that you probably need millions of these qubits. And you need them to operate extremely well,” Coish said. “People have demonstrated qubits that operate extremely well for up to a few hundred [qubits in a quantum computer].” 

Due to the instability of quantum particles, handling quantum states without disrupting the information they contain is a major challenge to building practical quantum computers. In an attempt to circumvent this issue, physicists and computer engineers are trying to integrate an error correction protocol into quantum computers.

Error correction is the process of mitigating the unwanted decoherence of delicate quantum states that hold information. The particles used to make qubits are prone to unwanted interactions with their environments that collapse the quantum superpositions that make them special. Often, error correction requires adding extra qubits to the quantum computer to create redundant backups of data so that if one quantum state collapses, its information is not lost.

“When you want to introduce a quantum error correction protocol, you need redundancy, and that’s why people estimate you need millions of quantum bits,” Coish explained.

Many algorithms for quantum computers have already been designed and are now awaiting machines to run on. If scientists can successfully construct quantum computers that contain millions of qubits, they could accomplish tasks that would irrevocably change many of the technologies we depend on. 

A working quantum computer could produce more powerful simulations of chemical and physical systems, which would support the development of robust, sustainable materials and medicines. It would also provide much faster solutions to optimization problems used in machine learning and solve the impossible-by-design puzzles that are the backbone of current cybersecurity systems. If we woke up tomorrow with fully-fledged quantum computers, there could be an economic catastrophe within days.

Luckily, the timeline of quantum computing is thought to be slow enough to give us a chance to prepare for these problems before they arise.

“It will be 20 to 50 years, I believe, before we have a full-scale quantum computer. But for us cryptographers, it’s good news,” said Claude Crépeau, a McGill computer science professor and quantum cryptographer, in an interview with The Tribune.

As quantum technologies change the landscape of cryptography, quantum cryptographers look to implement new security protocols in a timely manner.

“From this point on, it’s going to be the industry’s responsibility to change their systems,” Crépeau said. “The budgets to get these changes done are being voted on and governments push [the] industry to do these things. I think this change will happen.”

Outside of pure quantum computing, there is an active scene of quantum technology that could see great advancements in the next couple of years, including light sensors and novel communication methods. 

McGill assistant physics professor Kai Wang, who researches meta-optic materials that manipulate light and harness its quantum properties, is optimistic about the development of these technologies.

“No matter if the goal [of building quantum computers] gets achieved, I think there could be many other things related to this goal that also get developed,” Wang said.

Wang hopes that by applying quantum physics principles, light sensors with lower margins of error and less error overall could be developed. One possible application of such sensors is in lidar technology.

“Lidar is like the light version of radar. There’s an interest in developing this technology for automatic driving,” Wang said. “It scans the 3D environment, then light gets scattered back and there’s some sensor collecting the information.”

Crépeau’s field of quantum cryptography is another rapidly developing area. He researches how quantum effects send information more secretly and securely than classical cryptographic methods, leveraging the same decoherence that haunts quantum computing to provide information on whether a message has been tapped.

Though slower than classical communication, these methods have already been used to stream video from a Chinese satellite back to Earth.

Another developing area is noisy intermediate-scale quantum systems (NISQ). NISQ systems use classical computers and small, noise-prone quantum computers we currently have in tandem to solve optimization problems or perform difficult mathematical computations.

“These problems might be really interesting in the next year or two years. It’s not some far, future, abstract idea,” Coish said. “The best way forward in that area, in my opinion, is to have some really good intuition about what problems you should try, and just go and run them.”

The private sector plays a significant role in these developments, but contact between academics and private industry is an important part of driving the field forward.

“Everyone who works [in the private sphere] comes at some point from academia [….] They started their lives as scientists where they would publish their information as much as possible, and so I think they still have that attitude,” Coish said.

The private quantum space is more collaborative than other technology industries, where trade secrets are more confidential. For Wang, the backgrounds of quantum computer developers have made a difference in the developments achieved in the field.

“I do see a lot of emerging startup companies and people trying to push quantum computing into real-world applications,” Wang said. “This is probably one of the biggest changes that I have observed, but on the other hand, the research community is working closely with the industrial partners.”

As more companies enter the space to tackle specific applications of quantum science, we must prepare for rapid development in the next few years, with frontrunners like IBM and Google working towards building large quantum computers in the long term.

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