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The resistance politics of art, through an honest lens

by Kareem Abuali on

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In my first year at McGill, I took ENGL 279, an intro to Film History course. We started with what is widely recognized as the first film in history, Man Riding Jumping Horse, explored slapstick comedies by Buster Keaton, and traversed the advent of sound in motion pictures until arriving at post-war Italy’s neorealist movement in the 1940s. This is when I was first introduced to the wonders of neorealist cinema—initially a conscious move away from Hollywood filmmaking and towards a distrust of government and large institutions. The form is characterized by the use of non-actors, on-location shooting, heavy dialogue, and ultra-realistic depictions of everyday situations. The movement brought the medium of film into the hands of everyday people, providing a domain to portray the struggles of the working class and placing a critical lens on the role of the ‘actors’ and filmmakers. This introduction to the movement would later open the door for me, as an amateur filmmaker, to discover different forms of self-reflexive media that completely redefine the conventional roles of the camera, cast, and audience. 

With my past projects, I had always felt like I was striving toward a message that was somewhat inauthentic and contrived. As I’ve started to take filmmaking more seriously, I’ve realized that my politics would always be inextricable from any story I hoped to tell. Exploring the techniques of self-referential and neorealist media has made me realize the extent to which radical and anti-oppressive doctrines can bear on a film project. 

Later in the film history class, we visited the Iranian New Wave, a movement influenced in part by Italian neorealism and pioneered in the years after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Filmmaking in Iran, fettered by heavy state censorship post-revolution, required creative mediums to critique the government, often resulting in self-reflexivity, if not total political transgression. Jafar Panahi, a filmmaker barred from making films in 2010 and placed under house arrest for making “anti-system” propaganda without a permit, documents his life under confinement in This Is Not A Film. He films illegally on his iPhone, forbidden by the government to even speak the words “action” or “cut.” Upon completion, the film was smuggled on a USB stick hidden inside a cake sent to France, where it was screened at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. Panahi’s story exemplifies the perpetual risk of exile for filmmakers in Iran. Under the Islamic regime, where the political ramifications of consuming and producing anti-government content can be life-threatening, the producers and audiences of films are hyper-aware of the fact that they are watching films. The real threat of violence makes it ever more necessary for Iranian filmmakers to probe the intention behind their films. What makes a film worth risking a prison sentence? This underlying question shapes self-reflexive media and its provocative techniques at large.  

Reenactment, one remarkable filmmaking tool of the neorealist tradition, requires real people to recreate scenes from their lives. The technique can help its participants process trauma, explore radical degrees of honesty, and challenge institutional oppression. It levels the playing field of everyone involved in filmmaking and its consumption, giving its subjects and audience greater agency over each narrative and its real-life implications.

Despite the space that reenactment gives people to process their trauma and challenge higher powers, the ethics of this technique are highly debated. 

In Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal, for instance, Fielder guides real-life people as they rehearse elaborate re-creations of their regular lives to prepare for stressful moments in the future. In one episode, Fielder helps a man, Patrick, prepare to confront his brother about the will of their late grandfather. He and Fielder exhaustively rehearse every possible scenario of the conversation for days. After Patrick erupts into tears during one rehearsal, embracing the paid actor playing his brother and wishing they could leave the matter behind them, he leaves the set and never returns. In another episode, where Fielder creates an orchestrated simulation of a family, he hires a child actor to play his son. Without a real-life father figure, the child becomes attached to Fielder and starts calling him “daddy” outside the simulation. 

Jonathan Liu, U3 Arts and creator of McGill’s Facebook film group, sees the blurring of boundaries between real and fake as a productive method for managing personal hardships. 

“When you consider The Rehearsal, you might want to consider what’s real and what’s fictional, or whether or not this question still matters,” Liu said. “In a way, the person who immerses himself in a constructed rehearsal of trauma is experiencing a fake reality. But it is precisely such fake reality that facilitates his reconciliation with his reality.” 

Ned Schantz, a professor of cultural studies and cinema at McGill, notes that as projects like The Rehearsal progress, they develop an intimate relationship with failure. 

“So what seems to happen is that the projects keep evolving,” Schantz said. “Because you can’t get what you thought you wanted, so you change what you want a little bit, and that changes the project. And then that fails. So there’s something about reenactment as a mechanism of spiralling failure that is worth looking into.”

Schantz reminded me that with reenactment, it’s not uncommon for deceit, exploitation, and manipulation to coil around each other in dynamic patterns. 

“There’s always a question of: When could something tip over into exploitation? When could [the director] essentially be stealing their meaning and conscripting it for his own ends?” Schantz reminded me. 

No show exemplifies this ethical tension better than The Show About the Show by Caveh Zahedi. Zahedi, an independent filmmaker and professor of screen studies at The New School in New York City, is the mastermind behind the first and only show about its own making. The first episode outlines how he came up with the idea for the show, and how he pitched it to a Brooklyn cable network. Each subsequent episode is about the making of the previous episode, featuring reenactments of events behind the scenes. If his wife is upset that he’s divulging too much in the show, he’ll ask her to reenact their argument with him so that he can include it in the following episode. Throughout his career, Zahedi has employed radical honesty: He expresses exactly how he feels about everything, even if it makes others angry or upset. Zahedi gives his complete and unsuspecting trust in the story, expecting it to write itself.  

“The word on the street about my work, is that it like, ruined my life, destroyed my marriage,” Zahedi told me one morning on FaceTime. “You know, some kind of like, I don’t know, Kamikaze? And my work has definitely created fault lines that have pushed things in a certain direction. But I think those things would have happened anyway. And it just sort of sped up a process. I mean, the thing about honesty is it speeds up the process of growth, right?” 

Albeit sometimes self-destructive, Zahedi’s philosophy is certainly freeing. Stylistically, we often see the director working on the project, silently puppeteering and engaging with the actors and subjects. For Fielder and Zahedi, they’re confronted about their intentions. Understandably so: Why would they subject people to uncomfortable, seemingly gratuitous, and even personally traumatic situations? To what degree is this kind of filming exploitative? Some friends of mine that I’ve shown Fielder or Zahedi’s work are appalled, ethically stumped, but mostly uncomfortable. The self-righteous neorealist in me begs to challenge them by asking how they’d react differently if what they’d seen was entirely fictitious. These directors decided to include their confrontations in the final product. They are honest about the problems that arise. Fielder breaks down, and Zahedi files for divorce. But they never try to absolve themselves from wrongdoing, and they never shy away from moral condemnation.

Most of the films I’ve seen that offer social and political commentary tend to replicate, within their own production, the same systems of oppression and exploitation that they critique. I feel a deep disappointment when monolithic Hollywood production houses spoon-feed us anti-capitalism on their own terms. And the worst part is, people buy it. Take Don’t Look Up, whose A-list cast gets to critique climate inaction on screen and then cruise the world by private jet, or Nomadland, Hollywood’s attempt at realism, which enlisted a well-endowed award-winning actor to try her hand at acting ‘poor.’ Many self-reflexive works, however, are challenging the bureaucratic structures and dehumanizing institutions that dominate our lives. I see them as authentic, politically revolutionary responses against grave social injustices and frameworks of oppression. 

In my second semester at McGill, I enrolled in ENGL 382, International Cinema 1: Arab Cinema at 3475 Peel. Each Friday at noon, we would watch a film. One of these films—a 2015 Egyptian experimental documentary entitled Out on the Street—stuck with me. Filmmakers Jasmina Metwaly and Philip Rizk deploy reenactment and enactment to expose the exploitation faced by nine factory workers in the context of Egypt’s January 25 Revolution, the uprising against Hosni Mubarak’s regime in 2011. These men begin by constructing their set, painting white outlines marking the factory’s different rooms and offices on the floor of an abandoned building. They then proceed to reenact lived interactions with corrupt police officers who harass and detain them, as well as factory superiors who constantly threaten to fire them. The workers function as writers, directors, and characters, drawing upon collective and individual experiences of their exploitation at the hands of both the public and private sector. 

“On one hand, it gave the actors more agency,” Rizk told me in an interview. “They weren’t following a script but were writing the script as they were speaking.”

Techniques of enactment venture to democratize filmmaking by accurately representing its subjects, holding the audience accountable, and reducing the camera to a passive observer—refuting the sensationalist lens Western media imposes on narratives of Egyptian resistance and Arab struggles more generally.

I recently watched Ghost Hunting, a Palestinian film by Raed Andoni. To me, the film revealed the potential of reenactment to offer methods of processing trauma, both collective and individual, and resistance against oppression. Andoni starts by asking a group of Palestinian men to rebuild the interiors of the Al-Moskobiya, the infamous Israeli prison in occupied Jerusalem used to incarcerate and abuse Palestinians. From memory and by hand, the men reconstruct the interrogation rooms and extremely small solitary cells where they were once incarcerated. As the prison begins to take form, the former inmates call upon fragmented—in some cases, repressed and guilt-ridden—memories of the humiliating torture the Israeli occupation forces subjected them to. 

One participant, incarcerated at the same time as his brother, who committed suicide in his cell, breaks down as he recollects his memories from the prison. Another describes how, handcuffed and with a bag over his head, he hallucinated his mother uncovering his head and feeding him water. Together, the men reflect, comfort each other, and reenact their experiences to better process their trauma. Since 1967, the Zionist regime has detained over 700,000 Palestinians, and Palestinian men, women, and children are still regularly incarcerated in Maskobiya and elsewhere. 

Both Ghost Hunting and Out on the Street depict a collective experience of processing severe mistreatment—the resistant and confrontational purpose they serve requires the films to transcend the traditional hierarchy of director and directed subjects. Andoni has made it clear that the men in Ghost Hunting are not actors, but protagonists who are in charge of what they decide to portray. Despite intense, emotional interactions with the past, both films are forward-facing and look to envision the future. Ghost Hunting ends with a celebration of the upcoming marriage of one of the men, while the workers from Out on The Street imagine a future where they take ownership of the factory and run it as a cooperative. 

“[Enactment] opens the power of the imaginary because you’re not engaging with a past event and so you’re not restricted by how events occurred,” Rizk explained. “[It] instead opens up a large number of possibilities and scenarios that are not tied to the political deadlock of the moment when we were shooting Out on The Street.”

These films taught me the potential that radical filmmaking has to renegotiate conventional power dynamics. The potential to be revolutionary in nature.

McGill is an institution that holds its own boardrooms of concentrated power and heavy-handed indifference. We have lost multiple leaders fighting for a more just campus. Dr. Greg Mikkelson resigned in 2020 due to the university’s refusal to divest from fossil fuels, and Dr. Charmaine Nelson in the same year, due to its failure to redress how slavery structured James McGill’s rise to power and their lack of commitment to Black and Indigenous faculty and Black Canadian Studies. This past May, SSMU slashed the democratically passed Palestine Solidarity Policy. It’s easy to see how its countless failures to recognize student demands demoralizes the student body. It’s even easier to feel as a student that you’re fighting with brutalist buildings, documents, and statues, all of which are absurd, arbitrary, and remarkably unresponsive to real-life human needs. I don’t doubt that any of the filmmakers I spoke with would think of what a challenging and fascinating exercise it would be to overcome and harness this absurdity.

Earlier this year, I saw someone freak out when their laptop got stolen after he left it unattended on the fifth floor of McLennan. I found the building deserving of a bureaucratic-nightmare story and wrote a short screenplay about a student whose laptop gets stolen at the library. I imagined how this student might spend the next hour lamenting to the library staff at the front desk. I then imagined that he might spend the following hour arguing with the head of security because they told him they weren’t responsible for it, that he hadn’t read the signs saying not to leave his property unattended. He might ask to view the security footage, and they might say they aren’t authorized to review it until an investigation is opened. 

He might give up, wait it out, or use the desktops on the McLennan main floor to search in the “Low to High” price range of Best Buy’s laptop listings. He might not, though, and instead swim upriver, thrusting against the currents of statements from aloof employees like “there’s nothing I can do” and “this office might be able to help you.” Ultimately, the emails he sends might get lost in the void, and the people he chooses to confront at their offices might be on their lunch breaks. Such a sequence might seem hardly worth capturing. But envision this real person, boxed within the soulless, artificially lit, lime-green painted walls of the back offices of McLennan main, beaming with tremendous frustration and bitterness. 

McGill, News

McGill Policy Association hosts ‘Indigenous Voices in Resource-Sector Policy’ panel

by Shani Laskin on

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On Nov. 9, the McGill Policy Association (MPA) hosted a panel titled “Indigenous Voices in Resource-Sector Policy,” which centred around Indigenous activism within environmental policy. 

The first of the two panellists was Yolanda Lopez-Maldanado, an Indigenous Maya from Mexico and the recently appointed Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Indigenous Affairs Officer at the Montreal-based Commission for Environmental Cooperation. The second panellist was Jen Gobby, an activist, scholar, and current course lecturer at McGill’s Bieler School of Environment and an affiliate assistant professor at Concordia University.

The panel began with a discussion of the challenges Indigenous groups face in the context of environmental policy and protection. As a researcher, Lopez-Maldanado spoke to the neglect of traditional forms of knowledge within academia and the effects that this exclusion has on environmental policy.

“We […] forget that Indigenous peoples are [at] the forefront of conservation and the majority of the information that is around the government policy in environment is influenced by science,” Lopez-Maldanado said. “We need to understand that over the years, science has not been including the voice and the perspectives of Indigenous peoples […] for understanding the natural world.”

Gobby added that Indigenous communities are mostly excluded when it comes time to make policy decisions. She explained that many corporations and governments, including the Canadian federal and provincial governments, claim to consult with Indigenous groups but often do not heed their suggestions or needs.

“When an industry wants to put a pipeline or a mine in […] they consult with Indigenous people, tell them what they’re planning, ask for their feedback, and then do what they want anyways,” Gobby said. “That’s how our federal climate policy was made, reproducing the same settler-colonial relations [….] In my view that’s a very big challenge that needs to be addressed immediately if we have any hope of addressing the climate crisis.”

Lopez-Maldanado stressed the non-homogeneity of Indigenous communities around the world. The nuances of Indigeneity are overlooked, she says, and  to be good allies, settlers must acknowledge that Indigenous people are more than capable of determining what solutions are best for them.

“Stop romanticizing Indigenous peoples. We are the same [as] you. We go to school, we get our PhDs, we are very well prepared to defend ourselves,” Lopez-Maldanado said. “So you can be allies to us and not […] always trying to defend [us] because we can do it by ourselves.”

The panel helped fulfill the MPA’s goal of diversifying the content of the organization’s events and engaging students from different backgrounds and academic interests. MPA Executive Director, Michelle Marcus, expanded more on the organization’s goals for the year in an interview with The McGill Tribune. 

“One of our goals as an organization altogether is to really play into the interests of not just political science and [economics] students, but really trying to be interdisciplinary and appealing to a wide range of students on topics that are relevant, but that people don’t always realize have such deep roots in policy,” Marcus said.

Marcus is a firm believer in the importance of intersectional conversations in the context of policy.

“I think the idea of having both Indigenous perspectives represented, but also the point of having those cross-conversations […] puts us, as settlers, in our place,” Marcus said. “[These conversations allow us] to change how we’re approaching policy, especially in a sector like environmental policy where Indigenous […] prioritization of land is so crucial to how we approach and tackle anything related to the climate or sustainability.”

McGill, News

Association of McGill Professors of Law to become first faculty union at McGill

by Adeline Fisher on

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A decision rendered by Quebec’s Tribunal administratif du travail (TAT) on Nov. 7 certified the Association of McGill Professors of Law (AMPL) as a union and bargaining agent for tenured and tenure-track professors at the Faculty of Law. This is the first time in McGill’s history that an individual faculty association will be allowed to unionize. The judgement marked the finale of McGill’s legal battle with AMPL, which began in November 2021 when AMPL first petitioned the TAT for certification. 

AMPL Interim President Evan Fox-Decent was delighted by the decision. He believes that the establishment of a union is opening a bright new chapter for the Faculty of Law and McGill.   

“We want to make our faculty a better place,” Fox-Decent said in an interview with The McGill Tribune. “We are of the very strong view that with this decision from the Tribunal, we will be in a position to do that, so naturally the decision was received […] with great joy and enthusiasm.”

Although the application to certify AMPL was filed a year ago, law professors have had the desire to unionize for a while. According to Fox-Decent, the primary motivation for a union was to counter the “creeping centralization” plaguing McGill’s faculty-administration relations over the past few decades.

“Whereas we used to do many things entirely at the faculty level, now various things are done centrally or have to be done through centralized processes,” Fox-Decent said. “So we are hoping to recover a certain amount of local control.”

Communication between McGill’s faculties and administration occurs mostly at the McGill Senate, which meets roughly once a month to discuss academic and administrative affairs. Jonathan Sterne, a McGill professor in the department of Art History and Communication Studies, shares Fox-Decent’s aversion to McGill’s centralization. Sterne believes that the balance at the Senate is unfairly tipped in the administration’s favour.

“The composition of the Senate is weighed down with people in administrative positions, such that it is very difficult for it to be run as a faculty majority,” Sterne said in an interview with the Tribune. “I always thought I would be the kind of professor who would take his turn on faculty Senate, and I’ve actually had colleagues advise me not to do it because they say it’s a waste of time, it’s not an effective mode of governance [….] I believe the Senate is broken as a mode of faculty governance.”

Although she was “really thrilled” with the law faculty’s victory against the administration, Charlotte Sullivan, L3 and President of the Law Students Association (LSA), still wonders why McGill opposed AMPL’s certification in the first place. She condemned the university’s uncompromising position against unionization efforts.

“I would love to ask McGill why they would even try to fight this in 2022, when every other school in Quebec also has unions involving their professors,” Sullivan told the Tribune. “To me, it is shocking that McGill has waited this long [to see a faculty union], and it is even more shocking that McGill would try to counter this measure.”

The TAT’s decision to certify AMPL has left Fox-Decent optimistic about the upcoming negotiations with McGill to ratify their first collective agreement. A collective agreement is a written agreement between employers and unionized employees that outlines the rights and duties of all implicated parties. 

“When we gather members in our faculty now to decide on what our bargaining position is going to look like, we’re going to discuss that amongst ourselves, and we’re going to vote on it, and we’re going to assert it as fairly and forcefully as we can with the university,” Fox-Decent said. “Hopefully we will find that our interests align […] and we’ll reach an amicable collective agreement.”


In a written statement to the Tribune on behalf of the administration, McGill media relations officer Frédérique Mazerolle said that “the university acknowledges the decision rendered by the Tribunal administratif du travail. We will be examining the decision thoroughly over the coming weeks.”

Off the Board, Opinion

My body is not the enemy

by Sarah Farnand on

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Content Warning: Mentions of disordered eating

I started running competitively when I was eight years old. My earliest memory from that year is a race with my dad where I was kicking toward the finish, shouting, “I can’t feel my legs!” Let me tell you, as a runner who too often feels the ache of every individual muscle in her legs, running so fast that I can’t feel my legs was and will always be euphoric. 

I joined the track team in middle school and the cross-country team in high school. I started out strong, winning a few races and boosting an ego that was already much too large. However, after injuries from overtraining, I started falling behind my teammates. Desperate to get faster and mad at my body for being so easily injured, I began to dislike what I saw when I looked in the mirror. I tried to lose weight, to not eat as much, to punish my body for growing up. I still loved racing, but running now had an ugly ulterior motive. 

As my relationship with my body began to teeter, there were days when the only reason I wanted to run was to lose weight. When my final high-school race ended in an asthma attack that put me in last place, my mental health spiralled. I decided that running and I needed to take a break for a while.

After coming to university, I ran rarely and almost always as a punishment for eating “too much” or for looking a little too bloated when I took a glance in the mirror. Unfortunately, these toxic thoughts that had followed me from high school were more normalized at McGill. Eating with friends became arduous, as they would brag about their own lack of food intake. I could skip one or two meals a day, and no one would question it. I restricted my food intake until my body became so hungry that I would binge extreme amounts of food. And as my relationship with food continued to deteriorate, so did my mental health.

Last fall was an especially difficult time for my mental health and body image, and I decided I needed a trip home for a few weeks toward the end of the semester. During this time, my dad and I became semi-regular running buddies. Running with my dad felt safe and helped me begin to relearn to run for myself. Instead of thinking about how I needed to keep up a certain pace and distance to burn a specific amount of calories, I was focused on chatting with my dad about life and the goings on of the world (as well as trying to figure out how the hell this old man runs so fast). Thoughts of body image and food still plagued my mind, but running with my dad became a slight reprieve instead of an instigating factor.   

My relationship with my body hasn’t made such positive strides. I still struggle with body-image issues, and on a daily basis, I fight the urge to fall back into patterns of disordered eating. I don’t think I have gone a single day in the past seven years where I haven’t thought about my body. And frankly, it’s fucking exhausting. Being constantly surrounded by people telling me how little they ate or how they avoid eating before going out in order to get more drunk feels extremely triggering and often makes me want to book another ticket home. Luckily, running and I have become friends again, and our renewed relationship has taught me that I need to fuel my body for it to perform the way I want it to. 

Over the past few months, I have fallen in love with longer runs. I recently ran 10 miles (16 kilometres) for only the second time in my life, and it made me so proud of my body’s capabilities. I feel myself relearning to love running as much as that excited girl who couldn’t feel her legs, and I know that one day very soon, that girl is going to relearn to fully love herself too.

Rugby, Sports

We are the champions, my friend: Men’s rugby captures first RSEQ title since 2015

by Sarah Farnand on

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On Nov. 4, McGill men’s rugby (6–1) faced off against Ottawa (6–1) in the RSEQ Championship match. With the bitter taste of defeat still lingering in many Redbirds’ mouths from last year’s championship, the team came ready to fight in front of their home crowd of 1,830 fans—the largest crowd to ever watch an RSEQ rugby game in Molson Stadium.

The air thick with tension, Ottawa struck first, scoring a try in the first two minutes of the match, putting the Gee-Gees up 7-0. McGill responded seven minutes later with two penalty kicks by captain Monty Weatherall to bring the score within one. However, unable to score a try, the Redbirds fell behind once again when Ottawa responded with a penalty kick of their own, giving the Gee-Gees a 10-6 lead five minutes before the half. McGill was undaunted by the deficit with third-year inside-centre Alexander Armstrong giving the fans something to cheer for, scoring a converted try and giving the Redbirds a three-point lead heading into the half.

Alexandre Laurendeau opened the second half with a try to gain the lead despite the Redbirds being one player down due to a yellow card given to tighthead prop Alex Pantis. Six minutes later, loosehead prop Nicholas Smith received a yellow card as well, leaving the Redbirds with 13 players against the Gee-Gees’ 15. Capitalizing on the Redbirds’ mistakes, Ottawa retaliated quickly with a try. A penalty kick by Martin Laval put the Redbirds up by four. 

A game-sealing try by Laurendeau cinched the game for the Redbirds, despite a final try from Ottawa. Laval made one final penalty kick to punctuate McGill’s victory as the crowd went wild for their RSEQ champions.

Fourth-year Liam Pantis had complete faith in his team’s ability to win, even when down by seven.

“They got up early and we knew that was liable to happen,” Pantis told The McGill Tribune. “A big part of our game plan is just knowing how to deal with adversity and I mean, if anything showed that, it was this game. Coming back from a seven-nothing deficit, the guys just showed a hell of a lot of grit, a hell of a lot of heart and we went out there with a purpose and we achieved it.”

Star of the game and RSEQ Rookie of the Year Laurendeau had similar sentiments to Pantis, emphasizing the chemistry and shared mindset of the squad.

“The boys played together,” Laurendeau said. “All week we’ve been prepping for Ottawa. The word was believe and I think today everybody just had the same mindset going into this from the beginning of the day to right now.”

The next stop for the Redbirds is the University of British Columbia where the 2022 Canadian Championship will be held. Armstrong explained how nationals will serve as a great learning opportunity.

“Nationals [will allow us to] get some good experience for next year,” said the rookie. “It’s going to be great fun seeing some teams we’ve never played before.”

And if you want to know if the team is excited for the opportunity to show the country what McGill rugby can do, just ask Laurendeau.

“We can’t wait [for nationals]. Book our flight, we’re going to B.C., baby!”

Quotable:

“I only take dubs. I don’t like losing and I don’t lose, so personally, just keeping the streak alive.” —Alexander Armstrong on how he has never lost a game (except maybe the one against Concordia)

Moment of the Game:

In his game-sealing try, Alexandre Laurendeau caught the ball on one sideline before deciding to gun it to the opposite corner, running through the entirety of Ottawa’s backline and earning himself RSEQ Rookie of the Year.

Stat Corner:

McGill men’s rugby has never lost a game to the Ottawa Gee-Gees with a current match-up record of 6-0 since 2018.

McGill, News

Charles Bronfman’s $5 million donation to MISC raises concerns about academic freedom

by Ghazal Azizi on

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Statement of Retraction

The original version of the article below quoted Students for Palestinian Human Rights McGill (SPHR) about Charles Bronfman’s latest donation. The quote stating that the “McGill administration [are] puppets to their Zionist donors” played into anti-Semitic stereotypes about Jewish people being “puppet masters” of institutional decisions—a trope that is both harmful and untrue. The Tribune apologizes for allowing this language to be published and deeply regrets any harm this caused to Jewish readers in the McGill community and beyond.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

On Oct. 27, the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada (MISC) announced that alumnus Charles Bronfman, LLD ’90, is donating $5 million to the institute during a special segment at the 2022 MISC Annual Conference. The donation will help launch an endowment fund for a conference series titled Conversations, sponsored by Charles Bronfman that will gather prominent Canadian and international experts for discussions on social, political, and economic issues the country is facing. 

Bronfman’s donation represents a full-circle moment for the MISC; it was his initial gift that established the institute in 1994. Daniel Béland, MISC Director and professor of political science at McGill, is excited about the “game-changing” endowment, given both its size and the “high-profile” nature of the series it will fund. 

“It is […] a gift that, for us, will […] increase really dramatically our resources as an institute […] to help […] foster these conversations outside of the Ivory Tower,” Béland said in an interview with The McGill Tribune. “I think it will […] show our commitment to really engage with Canadians about the future of the country but in a global way.”

Bronfman is an Honourary Founding Co-Chair on MISC’s Board of Trustees, and as a condition of the donation, he can appoint a member to the Advisory Committee for Conversations. Béland stressed that the committee exists for consulting purposes only and that all final decisions at MISC will be at the discretion of the director—currently Béland himself. Stakeholders at McGill and beyond, however, have raised concerns about the potential influence that donors such as Bronfman can exert over academic and political conversations on campus. 

Charles Bronfman’s net worth is estimated at $2.5 billion USD (mcgill.ca)

Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) McGill worries about the implications of Bronfman’s donation for student activism and governance, especially surrounding Palestinian liberation. SPHR condemned the university’s relationship with the Bronfman family due to their alleged support for the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the Zionist agenda. Bronfman co-founded Birthright Israel, was chairman of Israeli investment holding company Koor Industries, and financed Sunday Culture events for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). 

“With this donation, as with the Sylvan Adams donation, McGill has once again proven that when it comes to filling up its pockets, it will ignore its students’ pleas,” SPHR wrote in a statement to the Tribune. “Accepting such large donations from so-called Zionist ‘philanthropists’ ensures that no pro-Palestine policy will ever be adopted at McGill University. It stifles student activism and governance, as we’ve already seen with the failure to adopt the democratically-elected Palestine Solidarity Policy.”

David Robinson, executive director at the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), said that administrations have a responsibility to prevent donor interference in the internal matters of a university, student groups, and student governance. He believes that democratic discussions with students and faculty about donation contracts are crucial for limiting third-party influence over university affairs. 

“Have transparency, [show] the contract, […] debate whether or not it is acceptable that Charles Bronfman will have one person appointed to this committee,” Robinson said in an interview with the Tribune. “It should be the academic governance body that makes those decisions in order to protect and preserve academic integrity.”

Derek Cassoff, managing director of communications at McGill’s University Advancement (UA) office, insists, however, that the donation and its terms do not infringe on the university’s or MISC’s autonomy. 

“We are very careful at McGill […] to maintain […] academic freedom,” Cassoff told the Tribune. “We certainly do not want to be in a situation where outside parties, whether they be donors or other […] people of influence, would be in a position to be able to dictate the academic direction of the university or any of its programs. That is something that we are very clear on.”

Nonetheless, Robinson remains concerned about a tendency at universities to appease donors, especially those who make significant contributions and maintain long-standing relationships.  

“A more subtle, almost unconscious bias that is built-in is that people don’t want to offend the donor, which would cause problems,” Robinson said.  “It is sort of like the old joke […] that whoever has the gold makes the rules. So the donors do have some kind of influence, even if it is not a direct influence.” 

Arts & Entertainment, Pop Rhetoric

Quinni of ’Heartbreak High’: Finally, a successful example of autism representation

by Louise Secher on

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On Sept. 14, Netflix released Heartbreak High, a remake of the 1994 Australian coming-of-age TV show of the same name. Critics praised the series for its realistic portrayal of high school and the diversity of experiences the show depicts. The series remained in Netflix’s Top 10 list in 43 countries for a month after its launch, and the streaming platform quickly renewed the show for a second season. After the show’s release, the autistic community flooded the media to applaud the series’ autistic representation. 

Set in the fictional Hartley High School, a handful of students are forced to follow a sexual literacy course after their names appear on a “hookup-map” on school property. The cast navigates the ups and downs of friendships and relationships, and develops a sense of identity while also dealing with racism, structural violence, sexuality, and neurodivergence. 

Behind the acclaim is Quinni Gallagher-Jones (Chloe Hayden), an autistic Hartley High student. Hayden, herself an autistic person, writer, and disability rights activist, is one of the first openly autistic actresses to play an openly autistic lead. She collaborated closely with Heartbreak High’s writing team to create Quinni, and her success stems from the initial possibility of playing herself. A character like Quinni on a platform like Netflix is more than riveting: It is a celebration of the autistic neurotype and the possibility of feeling seen for a group that has been historically misunderstood and marginalized. The potential impact of positive and meaningful representation for young autistic people––who often report feelings of loneliness and alienation––isn’t just refreshing, it’s “life-saving.”

Quinni is one of the first notable examples of an autistic TV character outside of the stereotypical white boys who are savant geniuses and—you guessed it—played by non-autistic actors. A disturbing recent film is Sia’s //Music//, an infantilizing attempt to represent autistic folks that forgoes the notion of agency to uphold mockery and harm. Allistic actors only mimic autistic behaviours and ways of being, which can echo painful feelings of being mocked and essentialized. On the other hand, Quinni reflects an accurate experience of the spectrum. She stims to self-regulate, copes with sensory processing difficulties, relies on routines and schedules to function, masks her autistic traits to fit in, always remains honest, and loves to engage with her special interest. TV shows and films rarely depict these azutistic attributes accurately. But the portrayal of Quinni’s traits conveys humanity and honesty, allowing viewers on the spectrum to see themselves in the young student. 

Quinni’s role in the show remains meaningful because her autism is not her entire storyline and is neither exploited nor instrumentalized. Quinni explores flirting, dating, sex, and her queer identity while advocating for herself and her relationships. Folks on the spectrum are more likely to be LGBTQIA+ and often emphasize how intertwined these identities are. The depiction of Quinni’s intersectional experience opens up the possibilities of representation for autistic audiences. She develops two meaningful relationships—one which exemplifies active support, and the other, adversity. Darren (James Majoos), Quinni’s best friend, demonstrates how to actively support someone who is autistic: They accommodate Quinni’s needs when she has a meltdown and accept her when she has a non-speaking episode. Quinni’s love interest, Sasha (Gemma Chua-Tran), struggles to truly understand Quinni and infantilizes her. The series addresses Sasha’s ignorance and ableism, portraying its impact on Quinni and how the couple nurtures their growing relationship.

Quinni, however, cannot and should not represent the entire spectrum, as she is one autistic person. Black autistic activists online have pointed out how Quinni’s experience does not reflect theirs “at all.” Folks on the spectrum come with different expressions of autistic traits and across all ethnicities, races, ages, genders, and classes. They all deserve to see themselves represented across TV shows, movies, books, and other media. The casting of Chloé Hayden should not be understood as a perfect representation—there is no such thing. Despite this, Quinni is an embodiment of hope and represents new avenues for autistic portrayal in media, mirroring the true diversity of people on the spectrum.


Heartbreak High is available to stream on Netflix.

Editorial, Opinion

Abolish migrant prisons now

by The McGill Tribune Editorial Board on

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On Oct. 25, the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) opened a new migrant detention centre in Laval, Quebec. Canadian provinces, often in accordance with CBSA contracts, forcefully detain migrants for “administrative reasons” and continue to incarcerate many for indefinite periods of time. The excuse of administrative detention undermines the violent reality of the centres: People are illegally detained for months or even years, children are either separated from their families or grow up incarcerated, and individuals are being forced into solitary confinement. The grounds for imprisonment often relate to perceived risks to public safety, which are notoriously grounded in racism and ableism. Black and brown migrants, as well as disabled or mentally ill individuals, are subjected to longer sentences and harsher treatment. 

The forceful detention of migrants in the Laval facility, operated by the CBSA, is in violation of international law and is just another iteration of colonial state violence. Furthermore, the CBSA has no institutional oversight, meaning the agency is free to treat migrants as it wishes without repercussions. This lack of accountability is endemic to the immigration bureaucracy, and both federal and provincial governments who partake in these practices, such as Ontario, must take responsibility for their complicity in human rights abuses. Quebec must end its contract with the CBSA, close all migrant detention centres, and end the illegal and horrifying incarceration of innocent migrants.

Canada, much like the United States, has a shameful legacy of forcing migrants and refugees into detention centres. Canada’s government has never shied away from kidnapping minors, separating families, and attempting to rid their population of those considered a risk to the white status quo. Canadian history is scored with violence, from internment camps for Italian-Canadians and for Japanese-Canadians during World War II, to residential schools for Indigenous children. The Canadian government has long operated a brutal border regime on land unceded by its native inhabitants. No one is illegal on stolen land, and for the state to presume otherwise is ardent proof that Canada’s white supremacist project has continued into the 21st century. 

Beyond detention centres, the immigration process is inherently racist and elitist, especially when it comes to Quebec. Language and value tests, established to filter out anyone who does not fit the white Francophone ideal, are just another rendition of the exclusionary vision of a Great White North. The hypocrisy of the state is further exemplified by the admission of immigrants accepted into higher-education institutions, while also luring working-class immigrants to strengthen Canada’s declining workforce, only to illegally incarcerate many upon arrival. It is painfully ironic to see Canada claim that its doors are open while subjecting many to inhumane conditions and upholding a hostile assimilation system once immigrants settle. If Canada wants to truly embody the values of benevolence and multiculturalism it purports to have, this country must abolish the current immigration system and its violent border regime. 

Simple calls to reform the immigration process fail to recognize the true harm inflicted by the CBSA, provincial jails, and detention centres. The illegal incarceration of Black and brown migrants cannot be addressed by simply installing better plumbing in prisons or building shiny new centres. Canadian society must move past reform and fervently support prison abolition. Black American abolitionists like Angela Davis have spoken about how deeply ingrained the carceral system is in society. Abolition prompts imagination, and to envision a just world in an environment so hostile towards Black and brown lives is an act of resistance.

The government-led mission to cover up the reality of migrant prisons must not prevent the media, universities, and students from looking beyond Canada’s front of multiculturalism. Universities like McGill have a duty to inform students about the world that surrounds them, and ultimately, to hold provincial bodies accountable. Furthermore, students at McGill have the responsibility to question their positionality in Canadian society and to participate in the abolitionist movement. Not all immigrants are treated equally, and part of the path to abolition is acknowledging the ways in which the state attempts to build a national identity through eugenicist practices. The future of Quebec and Canada must be non-carceral, and it depends on the immediate decriminalization of immigration and the razing of migrant prisons.

Know Your Athlete, Sports

Know Your Athlete: Liam Pantis and Alex Pantis

by Renée Rochefort on

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On the eve of the RSEQ Championship game, I sat down with brothers Liam Pantis and Alex Pantis to talk rugby, brotherhood, and mullets. 

The Pantis brothers first touched on their sibling bond and the great opportunities that playing together has given them.

“Honestly, the best part about playing on the same team is a lot of great photo ops,” Liam joked. “Everybody seems to love the fact that we’re brothers and we look nothing alike. It’s like a really big thing when nobody believes that we’re siblings. Also, celebrations on tries are really, really fun. You know, we’ve got a picture of both of us at least three feet off the ground, chest bumping.”

As the duo completes their swan song seasons with the McGill rugby squad, we took a look back at the many memorable moments during their tenure with the team. 


The Covo Cup stands out as a highlight for both brothers. Despite 2019 being the tournament’s last edition, it remains beloved by those who still remember it at McGill rugby.

“[I] scored a hat-trick in Boston. That was one of my favourites,” said Liam, proudly reminiscing about McGill’s triumph over Harvard in 2018. He shared another special memory of the Covo Cup in [2019]. “The day before the game, the coach told me that I was going to be playing for the second team and on the bench for the first team. And at first, I was really bummed out [….] [But] it was kind of a moment that made me realize how special playing at Molson Stadium actually is [….] Seeing it from the crowd is so different. And it just kind of puts it all into perspective.”

“Pumping Harvard in front of like 1,600 people,” concurred Alex fondly before adding, “There’s a lot of really good memories, but honestly, everything that’s happened this year has to be part of it.”

This 2022 season has undoubtedly been excellent for the team’s elder statesman and  self-proclaimed “forwards captain,” Alex Pantis.

“This is my last year at McGill rugby […] if this is how McGill Athletics remembers me, it’s just me being a loose guy who has fun and dominates on the rugby field,” said Alex with a laugh. 

For both Pantis brothers, the Redbirds team transcends the sport of rugby. It is also a special program that helps its athletes achieve their maximum potential on and off the field. 

“We’re two people that like to have fun and joke around. But if anything comes out of this, you know how much McGill rugby means to us,” Alex shared with much sentimentality.

Nostalgic feelings filled the room as the duo recalled one fond memory after another. They highlighted their strong relationships with their teammates and their support staff. 

“The coaches, the players, everybody involved. I think they contribute to every student athlete’s success in being a student as [much as] an athlete,” Liam said, echoing his brother’s passionate words. 

Speaking about the championship game, Alex reiterated his total confidence in his teammates ahead of the finals.

“We got a hell of a starting 15. Our reserves are the second-best team [in the league]. We’ve got the best death squad. We’ve got guys not even in the program showing up to every game. We’ve got a helluva staff. We’ve got the best announcer in the league, and that’s not even close,” explained Alex. “We will not lose this game.”

A few days later, McGill conquered Ottawa to secure the RSEQ conference title.

Before we forget, we promised a special shoutout to the newly-revived death squad, a special Halloween edition of the Redbirds team. We rounded out our conversation with some rapid-fire questions: The award for best mullet on the team was unanimously given to Jack Tucker, while both brothers collectively named Dominic Russell as the owner of the worst mullet on the team. The McGill Tribune wishes them all the best as they head west for nationals.

Art, Arts & Entertainment

SUKO Magazine seeks to uplift artists and foster a collaborative artistic community

by Ella Buckingham, Dana Prather on

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Ornate lines intersect and intertwine in an eye-catching design, etched in a variety of burgundy, gray, green, and purple hues. Designed by visual artist William Mora, this intricate image, pulling inspiration from the artist’s Colombian roots, serves as a gateway to SUKO Magazine’s glossy 100-page spread featuring interviews with and creations from 10 diverse artists.   

An ambitious artistic endeavour, SUKO Magazine was conceived by Concordia students Sophie Dixon and Kioni Sasaki-Picou. The name comes from Sasaki-Picou’s middle name “Satsuko,” meaning “child,” and with the pair’s goal for the publication to be a non-judgemental space reflective of the curiosity and creativity of children, SUKO was the perfect fit.

Developed from passionate conversations between the two friends, SUKO Magazine seeks to provide a safe and uplifting platform for artists. In particular, Dixon and Sasaki-Picou want to highlight work from Black artists, Indigenous artists, queer and trans artists, and other marginalized individuals that are often misrepresented, underrepresented, or outright excluded from traditional artistic institutions. 

“We didn’t really see a space where people felt like they weren’t being pigeonholed in an institutional sense,” Dixon explained in an interview with The McGill Tribune. “A lot of artists we know have had experiences where gallerists or different people of authority don’t allow freedom of expression in their artwork.” 

SUKO offers artists an avenue for sharing innovative pieces and grants them creative control—which they may lack in a gallery space—without sacrificing formal aesthetics. Dixon and Sasaki-Picou collaborated with a hardworking team of editors and designers to create a finished project that marries soulful, artistic content with a sleek design that could be sold in galleries or boutiques to provide featured artists with professional exposure.

“[We are aiming for] grassroots combined with the more corporate [aspect] to be able to have the best of both worlds [….] Many grassroots [projects] never get the attention, and many corporate [projects] get all the attention but lack a lot of the soul and passion that goes into it,” Sasaki-Picou said.

The pair aims to foster a sense of artistic community through SUKO’s collaborative creation process. Starting in fall 2021, they gathered a group of creatives whose artistic processes aligned with the publication’s values, hosting interviews and photoshoots with the artists throughout the year. The team gave artists ample time and space to consider which pieces they wanted to present and how to display them in the publication, allowing them to come to a conclusion on their own terms. The first edition was released in October 2022, two years after Dixon and Sasaki-Picou had the idea; however, by taking their time with the creation process, they hoped to push back against the pressures of “hustle culture” and notions of the artist as a solo creator. 

“Growing up in Toronto there is such a saturated community of artists who do so many things [….] You have this pressure to have hustle culture and be doing everything yourself,” Sasaki-Picou said. “I think [SUKO] definitely was the opportunity for us to give space to other people.”

The magazine’s second issue is slated for release in August 2023, though both Dixon and Sasaki-Picou hope to turn SUKO into a bi-annual publication. Other aspirations include featuring a greater number of artists, opening artist submissions to those from outside of Montreal and potentially even outside of Canada, and producing a theme-based issue. 

While anticipation for what’s to come is high, the SUKO team wants to give themselves time to curate and publish the next iteration. The team consists of students and artists who impressively juggle their studies with work and their own artistic endeavours. The process of collecting submissions, interviewing artists, formatting the magazine, and publishing is a time-intensive labour of love. 

It’s all worth it in the end, though, as Dixon points out.

“A lot of artists we have worked with […] have told us they’re happy to be a part of the project [which] is so uplifting to hear and also to inspire other people to do their own creative projects.”

Artists wishing to work with SUKO can contact them via email at [email protected] . Artists who identify as people of colour, Black, Indigenous, or belonging to other marginalized communities will be prioritized in the application process. Volume 1 of SUKO is currently available for purchase.

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