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Feeding ourselves, and our roots

by Kevin Vogel on

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Drinking cold sweet tea has always been my preferred way to pass a warm summer’s day. Growing up in Georgia, sweet tea was one of my favourite treats as a young child. While seemingly every Southern household had a pitcher of the sugary beverage in the fridge, ready to be enjoyed at any time, now that I live in Montreal, I have to brew sweet tea myself. As adults, it’s these specific foods and drinks that help us remember our families, even when we move far away from our hometowns. Having the dishes we grew up with not only reminds us of our childhood, but also keeps us connected to our roots. With limited options in Montreal to enjoy food from back home, however, finding these dishes can require a bit of effort.

Kayin Queeley, a case manager for the Office of the Dean of Students, grew up eating the national dish of Saint Kitts and Nevis: Saltfish and dumplings served with potatoes, breadfruit, and fried plantains. Now living in Longueuil, most of Queeley’s family remains in Saint Kitts and Nevis, making it all the more important for him to continue cooking Caribbean cuisine with his wife and daughter.

“In many ways, when I’m cooking something that my mom cooked, [that] I saw my aunt cook or my brother cook, it’s like sharing that experience, even though they’re not there,” Queeley said. “So really, it just means keeping my culture alive.”

Recreating the dishes made by loved ones is an integral means of staying connected to home, but there are limited options in Montreal. Restaurants might not serve regionally specific dishes, and attempting to make it yourself may require travelling out of the way to buy ingredients at specialty stores. Yet, this does not mean that finding echoes of familial dishes is entirely impossible.

Science & Technology

Data scientists seek the perfect picture of a whale

by Matthew Hawkins on

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For most Quebec residents, whale watching is a special occasion. For Whale Seeker, a Montreal-based artificial intelligence (AI) developer, it’s everyday business. To meet the needs of ecological research, Whale Seeker uses cutting-edge AI technologies to detect marine mammals with imaging methods that can be delivered as quickly and as easily as possible. Fast and simple whale tracking is vital to helping governments and environmental organizations develop fishing quotas and manage shipping lanes.

Co-founded by biologists Emily Charry Tissier and Bertrand Charry and software designer Antoine Gagné-Turcotte, the very heart of Whale Seeker lies in the combination of biology and AI. Tissier and Charry had previously worked together in visually analyzing images of whales for the World Wildlife Fund. Usually done by hand, this process was tedious and time-consuming. Tisser and Charry were frustrated by the lack of widely available software to make their analysis easier. Tissier met the third future co-founder and software developer Gagné-Turcotte by chance, and the three founded the company. Whale Seeker has since added five more members, including specialists in unmanned aerial vehicles, remote sensing, and water quality. 

Software developed by Whale Seeker can automate the process of image filtration by searching through and identifying images that contain whales from aerial or satellite footage. Adding to this automatic image analysis and sorting, which on its own can cut weeks or months of work, Whale Seeker’s AI can also generate heat maps, along with plot data. These tools permit clients to observe patterns in whale movement, helping them create models that allow whales and humans to coexist better.

Despite these incredibly useful tools, ethics remain a major concern in AI, especially when it comes to marketing a company at the forefront of AI development. Whale Seeker maintains that their products are to be used for good.

“Whale Seeker was created to provide cutting edge solutions for detecting marine mammals from imagery, delivered as fast and easy as possible,” the company wrote in a statement on their website. “We do not support our work being used for whaling, illegal fishing, skirting other environmental laws and regulations, and other activities we perceive as going against our core values.”

The blog section of Whale Seeker’s website also includes several articles on the ethics of AI, addressing both the issues of privacy violation and inequalities in the workplace, as well as the potential benefits that AI presents. Above all, they stress the need for regulation in the world of AI development. 

Whale Seeker has also made a commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals set forth by the United Nations. These include actively seeking to hire women in STEM to ensure gender equality and gender empowerment. 

To create a sustainable economy, Whale Seeker dedicates much of its research to environmentally-friendly solutions that not only can solve the short-term needs of their clients but also ensure an ongoing positive impact on the natural world. Actors such as oil companies are mandated to track whales in order to regulate their environmental impact, and more efficient analysis and data plotting will make that much more effective. In keeping with their commitment to combating climate change, Whale Seeker uses drones and satellites to capture footage. Unmanned aerial vehicles like drones use fewer fossil fuels than traditional methods of data collection. Not only do methods like motor boats have higher emission levels, they can also create disturbances underwater, potentially harming marine life. Studying marine biology and ecology is key to effective climate action, and human actions above the ocean’s surface have great impacts below it.

Whale Seeker’s impact stretches beyond the immediate world of whale watching and into the  larger ecosystem of marine biology and climate action in STEM research. Through custom-developed AI, Whale Seeker’s novel methods of data analysis aim to create a more equal and sustainable world.

Editorial, Opinion

Bill 21 is guilty as charged

by The McGill Tribune Editorial Board on

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The Quebec Superior Court began hearing testimony on Nov. 2 in a civil case against Bill 21, a 2019 policy that prohibits certain public sector employees from wearing religious symbols in the workplace. Although the plaintiffs contend that the Bill violates certain fundamental rights protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (CCRF), the Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ) has pointed to popular support for secularism and invoked the CCRF’s notwithstanding clause, arguing that religious freedoms fall under provincial jurisdiction. If the Court favours these arguments, many McGill students pursuing employment in the public sector will continue to be discriminated against. Moreover, considering the magnitude of the constitutional issues in question, the outcome of the proceedings could turn the Canadian legal system on its head. 

But respect for basic human dignity cannot become a casualty of limitless litigation and performative politics. On trial is not just the wording of the Constitution, but also the CAQ’s fervent xenophobic agenda. Canadians’ civil liberties must be upheld by the courts, notwithstanding the notwithstanding clause. Yet it is equally incumbent on McGill and other educational institutions to protest such legislation that undermines the livelihoods of their students.

If the law affected Quebecers equally, it would still be unconscionable because it insinuates that Quebec is a cultural monolith, whereas it is and always has been diverse. But its proscriptions are not equally distributed. Unlike Muslim women who wear hijabs, Sikhs who wear turbans, or Jews who wear kippahs, people of the Christian faith do not traditionally wear conspicuous garments. Although some may wear rosary necklaces or other religious adornments, these can easily be hidden under clothing, allowing them to more easily comply with the law. 

This double standard is morally bankrupt, and it should not become legally permissible. Secularism must be a ruse if it favours Christian religious expression over others, as its most passionate prosecutors paradoxically advance it under the shadow of the giant cross atop Mount Royal while touting other legacies of colonial French Catholicism. Even if Bill 21 is propped upon stilts of legal technicalities, it will nonetheless fail to differentiate between religious and public affairs because it was only intended to exclude some religions, not all. Instead, the law will triumph when the CAQ’s cultural intolerance expels thousands from public careers in a misdirected effort to preserve Quebec’s cultural idiosyncrasies. 

Still, Bill 21’s proponents claim that separating Church and State is especially necessary in the classroom. Nevertheless, by denying teachers’ right to religious expression, the law is preventing them from doing their jobs, pushing them out of schools, and hindering their chances of promotion. But the law does not only harm teachers, it also harms their students. Psychologists have shown that all students benefit from diversity, not just students from specific religious or cultural backgrounds—although it is important for these students to be able to relate to their teachers. 

The CAQ’s mission of exclusion threatens McGill as an institution. It is likely to discourage many Muslim, Jewish, Sikh, and students of other faiths from applying, as its implications not only suggest that their faith would hinder their economic mobility, but also that they are unwelcome in Quebec. Although McGill has released statements of “concern” and provided resources to assist current students who are affected by Bill 21, the university can do more to protect students. Many medical and education students, for instance, are required to complete professional experience components in classrooms and hospitals across the province. Administrators must facilitate these programs in a safe manner that ensures students’ right to religious expression. 

Above all, as sanctuaries of learning and critical discourse, universities have a responsibility to promote the moral integrity of the societies that produce them. Likewise, as reservoirs of capital, innovation, and national reputation, they possess tremendous political influence that their administrators often underestimate. Bill 21’s secularism belies Quebec’s multicultural reality, but universities are indeed a source of public wisdom and guidance. It behooves McGill to denounce bigotry and demand that Quebec’s courts dig channels of social equality rather than deep trenches of fortified ignorance.

Science & Technology

New research centre to usher in the era of digital democracy

by Shafaq Nami on

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In an age of increased globalization, social media makes it easy for people to voice their opinions online, discuss issues, organize around causes, and hold leaders accountable. However, media and technology have a tendency to amplify both positive and negative trends in contemporary discourse. In recent years, media technologies, and social media in particular, have progressed to a point where they have started to undermine democracy.

McGill’s Max Bell School of Public Policy recently launched the Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy to combat threats to democracy through research and public debate about how media and technology affect social systems and shape public policies. 

Threats to democracy include fake news, user privacy breaches, influence campaigns, “bots,” and the growth of information cocoons. These can lead to an increase in media fragmentation, political polarization, and, in the worst cases, extremism. Despite having access to huge amounts of knowledge at their fingertips, most people live in an information cocoon—interacting only with a limited number of people online who tend to share the same views. These social media “bubbles” can become ideological echo chambers reverberating with the same types of online content and opinions, regardless of their veracity, to the exclusion of a diversity of ideas. As such, those in power and with large online platforms can use media and technology to set agendas and spread hate and disinformation. 

“The kinds of democratic harms we see arising today—from mis- and disinformation to political polarization and election interference […] are not the result of ‘bad actors,’ they are baked into our tech infrastructure, and into our social investments and institutions,” Sonja Solomun, the Research Director of the Centre, wrote in an email to The McGill Tribune.  

The Centre is run by a team of researchers and journalists who are committed to changing how the public receives online media. They hope to bring about lasting structural change through the design of new technologies and economic models to foster accountable governance, and are thus attempting to rebuild and reimagine digital infrastructure in the public interest. 

“I joined [the Centre] because this is public-facing work that directly speaks to the communities and groups that are most affected by the kinds of harms we see arising,” Solomun wrote. “At the end of the day, I firmly believe in the power of the public to mobilize for a different future, and to hold governments and technology companies to account for that future.” 

The team is currently working on several projects. One of these is Tech-Informed Policy (TIP), an initiative to inform policy makers by explaining the implications of new technologies and their social consequences. They are also developing an essay series to examine how surveillance technologies deployed by public institutions and governments during the pandemic are disproportionately affecting historically surveilled populations, like low-wage workers and racialized groups.

The Centre is planning to hold events for students and the public. Aside from a monthly reading group, they are also hosting the Annual Beaverbrook Lecture, a two-part virtual event on abolishing surveillance capitalism. 

In the future, the Centre hopes to support and amplify other initiatives working on issues of democracy and technology. 

“A more democratic future for me is one where we value collective human life over property,” Solomun wrote. “That means thinking of technology––be it AI, data, or even things like privacy, as a possibility or as a relationship, rather than a commodity or as property. Once we depart from this premise, we can reimagine how we build, use, and govern these possibilities in ways that enrich collective life and public institutions.” 

If you are interested in learning more about the Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy, their research, future events, and other resources, visit their website and subscribe to their newsletter.

Off the Board, Opinion

Growing up with immigrant parents—kind of

by Sophia Gorbounov on

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Though I was not born in my family’s home country of Russia, having parents who were new to Canadian customs had many influences on me. Because I was born in Canada, my background did not provoke much of an identity crisis, but my parents still brought their traditions into our new suburban home. While it took many years to understand, I learned that these cultural quirks were harmless at worst and added to the fun personal narrative that is my life.

Those who keep a fairly balanced diet would know that eating three meals a day is the standard. But no, not I. From the moment I could consume solid food until the age of 14, I ate four proper meals a day. Breakfast, school lunch, home lunch, and dinner. This was how my mom fed me, so naturally, I assumed this was simply the way things were.

Imagine my surprise when I finally started going over to friends’ houses (albeit later than some), to learn that there was one, only one, meal after school.

After a talk with my mom about my daily meal plan, she explained that she thought it was silly to be awake so late and eat so little. She simply ignored the three-meals rule and continued emulating what her parents had done.

Eventually, I was no longer stifled with a 7:30 dinnertime, allowing me to pursue my dream of eating three balanced meals a day. In retrospect, my mother was right to ensure I was not spending six or more hours without eating. As I grew up, I started to learn that my parents were doing what they thought was best for my well-being for no other reason than previously successful traditions. 

While on the topic of food, I can’t leave out tea. Growing up, tea was the only beverage in the house. I seldom drank water, let alone soda or juice. 

At school, I was known as the “Tea Girl,” because every day for lunch, my mom would fill my reusable water bottle with piping-hot tea. As with mealtimes, developing a social life made me realize that tea is not the typical drink of 11-year-olds. However, I embraced the honorary title of Tea Girl. It was a harmless quirk, and frankly, my mom’s tea tasted great.

Growing up in a Russian-speaking household, living in an English-speaking city, and going to a French-speaking school meant some words were lost along the way. It is common for people to forget words in one language and remember them in another, and I sometimes went years before I learned the English translation for common words. Among the list are the words “comma” and “acetaminophen,” but my personal favourite was the word “buckwheat.”

In the Gorbounov household, a fan-favourite breakfast food was cooked buckwheat with milk and sugar, like a dense cereal. Called “grechnevaya kasha” in Russian, the term bears a striking resemblance to the Russian words “Greek oatmeal.” 

Until the comfortable age of 17, I casually told my friends about the Greek oatmeal I had for breakfast. Upon asking my mom, after a laughing fit that lasted four minutes, she introduced the word buckwheat to my vocabulary and explained that the word “grechnevaya” did not, in fact, even mean “Greek.” Telling this embarrassing story to my Russian roommate earned a similar explosion of laughter, but hearing the words “I thought so too!” reminded me that I was not alone in my language fumbles. More than anything, it was an entertaining connection I shared with my multilingual friends. 

Compared to some, my experiences with parents from another country are mild and entertaining. I was lucky enough to rarely deal with clashing cultural differences, and being a second-generation immigrant did not cloud my upbringing. Sometimes though, it is fun to share and enjoy the little things, and for that, I cannot thank my parents enough, even if it earned some confused looks from my peers as I sipped my lemon-infused orange pekoe.

Editorial, Opinion

SSMU Fall 2020 referendum endorsements

by The McGill Tribune Editorial Board on

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The McGill Tribune presents its endorsements for the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU)’s Fall 2020 Referendum.

Ambassador Fee Renewal: Yes 

The proposed renewal of the $2.00 opt-outable fee would continue to fund students’ participation in academic and extracurricular conferences, competitions, and other events until 2025. Although most activities covered by the fee are currently suspended or online due to the pandemic, renewing the fee will allow campus organizations to engage in them when in-person activities are possible again. Considering that demand for the Ambassador Fund in 2019 greatly exceeded the amount available, student groups evidently need the money to attend external events. These activities are incredibly valuable, as they enrich students’ experiences and give them the opportunity to represent McGill at functions beyond those offered on campus. Moreover, some of these events are financially inaccessible for many students, and the fee is instrumental in ensuring that all students who want to attend them can. The Tribune’s answer to this first question is a definite “yes.”

Daycare Fee Increase: Yes

The SSMU daycare, which was founded in 1999, provides childcare for 38 children aged 18 months to five years old of both graduate and undergraduate students at McGill. The proposed increase of the non-opt-outable fee from $2.72 to $3.00 is necessary for the maintenance and expansion of the daycare, which has been operating at a near deficit for the past several years. The daycare provides an integral service for student parents and offers important experience for students pursuing work in childcare. Because the daycare is currently unable to meet demand, the Tribune endorses a “yes” vote to ensure that the facility is able to best serve the student body.

Musician’s Collective Fee Renewal: Yes

The renewal of the $0.10 opt-outable fee from 2021-2025 for the McGill Musician’s Collective would allow the club to maintain operations at its current capacity. Founded in 2010, the Collective serves as a hub for the McGill music community and provides services that include teaching and performance opportunities, rehearsal spaces, affordable music lessons, and a supply of instruments available to all students. The club’s services make music accessible to students of all musical backgrounds, from total beginners to more experienced players. The Collective also fosters a sense of community and a unique outlet for creative expression during the isolation many are facing due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Tribune endorses the renewal of the $0.10 opt-outable fee, as the Musician’s Collective is a valuable service for many students.

Interest in student transport initiative: Yes 

McGill Student Transport (MUSTBUS) is a student-run cooperative that seeks to provide students with a safe and affordable way to travel by bus from Montreal to major cities like Toronto, Boston, and New York City. MUSTBUS ran a pilot route to and from New York in February 2020, with each trip selling out. Priced at around $30 each way, the buses departed from Service Point on Friday and returned on Sunday, with no substantial delays reported. Once it is safe to travel again, MUSTBUS aims to expand its service to other cities and continue to make student travel more accessible. Although the cooperative plans to propose a small opt-outable fee next semester to keep the service affordable, there is no fee increase associated with this question. Therefore, the Tribune endorses a “yes” vote to support the continued development of this project. 

Science & Technology

Gliding, bat-winged dinosaurs surprise scientists

by Margaret Wdowiak on

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When most people picture flying dinosaurs, they picture beasts like pterodactyls and the pterosaurs. Although iconic to fossils of the Jurassic period, these flying reptiles were not dinosaurs at all, but instead a distant dinosaur cousin called archosaurs that flapped their forelimbs to achieve flight. However, scientists have recently found evidence of another type of flight that is unique to just two species of dinosaurs. One hundred and sixty million years ago, strange bat-like dinosaurs glided across the canopy of prehistoric forests: These creatures were Yi and Ambopteryx.

In a new study, an international team of researchers sought to determine whether gliding and powered flight were possible for these winged dinosaurs. The researchers scanned Yi and Ambopteryx fossils using laser-stimulated fluorescence imaging. This technique uses highly amplified light to identify soft tissue details of wing membranes that are invisible when conducting ultraviolet light analysis, the standard imaging practice in the field. 

Yi and Ambopteryx were scansoriopterygid theropods that lived 160 million years ago during the middle to late Jurassic period, in an area that is modern-day China. Scansoriopterygidae were a family of bizarre arboreal and semi-arboreal theropods with an enlarged fourth digit. Yi and Ambopteryx were not large, weighing only half a kilogram and living on a diet of insects, seeds, and plants. Their membranous wings, similar to those of bats, were formed from the webbed skin between their elongated fingers. 

From their imaging results, the team, which included Dr. Hans Larsson, Director of McGill’s Redpath Museum, used mathematical models to predict the dinosaurs’ flight and gliding capabilities. The predictions were based on the dinosaurs’ weight, wingspan, wing shape, and muscle placement. Researchers concluded that Yi and Ambopteryx were incapable of powered flight.

“The results are clear,” Larsson said in an interview with McGill Newsroom. “These animals were not able to fly like birds. They didn’t have adaptations to even get close to the physical thresholds for powered flight, but their weird membranous wings do give them enough of an aerofoil to have glided.” 

The study found that these creatures had severe deficiencies in flapping-based locomotion and limited gliding abilities, suggesting that they were, at best, only able to clumsily glide between trees. 

To achieve gliding, Yi and Ambopteryx would have had to first climb to an elevated position. As such, it is unlikely that their proto-flying abilities evolved to escape predators on the ground. 

“They are not comparable to living gliding squirrels or lizards, but seem to have come up with a really novel way of getting a large enough wing membrane,” Larsson said. 

Unable to compete with other arboreal archosaurs and early birds, both species are predicted to have become extinct after just a few million years. Despite being a relatively short-lived species, Yi and Ambopteryx’s gliding abilities have important implications for the evolution of flight. Indeed, they represent a unique, but failed, evolutionary experiment, suggesting that dynamic and complex evolutionary pressures were acting upon dinosaurs in the middle to late Jurassic period. Moreover, this failed mode of flight does not correspond to early models of flight evolution in birds: The wings of these species are structurally distinct from those of other flying dinosaurs, which indicates multiple independent origins of flight. 

“We used to think of birds evolving as a linear trend from their ground-dwelling dinosaur ancestry,” Larsson said. “We can now revise this textbook scenario to one that had an explosive diversity of experimentation, with dinosaurs evolving powered flight several times independently.”

The researchers’ discovery suggests that there is a lot more to learn about the evolution of flight, and that widely-held assumptions about evolution can be susceptible to change. According to Larsson, when it comes to figuring out the origins of flight, evolutionary scientists are still just scratching the surface.

Commentary, Opinion

Harm reduction in residences can save lives

by Michael Dickinson on

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For many students, experimenting with recreational drugs is part of the university experience, and a subculture of illicit drug use exists at McGill. To mitigate harmful consequences such as addiction and overdose, floor fellows in first-year residences have historically been trained to practice a harm reduction approach to drug use, based on the principles of non-judgement, compassion, and openness. However, in January, McGill enacted changes that shifted its policies towards a zero-tolerance, abstinence-only approach. This decision can have dangerous ramifications for students since a lack of honest communication about drug use can prevent students from seeking help for drug-related issues. McGill can better protect students in residences by reinstating a harm reduction policy that focusses on safety rather than punishment.

Abstinence-based policies penalize drug users rather than prioritize their safety. On the other hand, harm reduction methods have proven to be more effective than zero-tolerance policies because they destigmatize drug use and encourage users to seek treatment if they want or need it. Accordingly, places that have implemented harm reduction methods have seen decreases in addiction, overdose, and drug-related diseases. However, under the new policy, McGill students who need such support may fear they will be punished for coming forward. This could make them less likely to seek guidance from health and support services, including the Student Wellness Hub. It is unrealistic for McGill to believe these policies will prevent students from using drugs, and it would therefore be more effective for the administration to prioritize making drug use as safe as possible. 

One way to implement harm reduction is to foster open communication, but McGill’s new policy compels students to report any suspicion of drug use by their peers. This creates a hostile atmosphere that pits students against one another and discourages them from being honest with their friends about using drugs. If someone is struggling with addiction, they may be less likely to tell their friends, who could risk punishing the user by reporting them or being punished themselves for keeping quiet. Harm reduction encourages openness and honesty, while abstinence-only policies isolate drug users.

New policies also put significant pressure on floor fellows, who are now obligated to file reports to administration or law enforcement if they learn of a student’s drug use. This alters the role of a floor fellow from a supportive to an authoritative figure, discouraging students from seeking help if they or their friends are facing addiction or an overdose. Many popular party drugs in the city have been laced with opioids such as fentanyl, which makes them especially dangerous. If McGill returned to a harm reduction approach, floor fellows could distribute testing kits to students who intend to use drugs so that they can be conscious of what exactly they are taking. Instead of encouraging floor fellows to report their students, McGill should want students to see them as trusted resources. This way, students using drugs can do so in the safest way possible.

By turning to an abstinence-only policy, McGill is ignoring both the realities of student drug use and the research proving the benefits of harm reduction-based policies. It is impossible to keep drugs out of residences, but it is possible to treat drug use as a health issue and encourage students to receive support if they face problems related to addiction. Condemnation and punishment do nothing to keep students safe. McGill students should call upon Student Housing and Hospitality Services to reinstate a harm reduction policy that includes drug testing kits in residences and further training for floor fellows. In doing so, they could reduce the risk of addiction and overdose and potentially save lives.

Sports

In conversation with Sophia Monahan

by Reza Ali on

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Over the course of the pandemic, physical activity has become somewhat of a rarity. Though Montreal is, unfortunately, still in the red zone, sports teams at McGill have been doing their best to stay active. Typically, varsity sports teams are applauded for their adaptability, but various McGill dance teams have shown similar resilience and creativity to keep their season alive.

Sophia Monahan, U0 Arts, is a part of two dance groups: Mosaica and United Groove (UG). Mosaica, founded in 1984, is one of the oldest dance companies at McGill. They do not have a specific dance specialization, but rather invite dancers of all styles to join. UG is a more recent group, formed in 2009, focussing on hip-hop dance. 

Despite imperfect conditions this year, Monahan explained that having practices over Zoom can have many benefits.

“What’s really nice about the Zoom platform, especially on UG, [is that] there are a lot of students who are not in Montreal,” Monahan said in an interview with The McGill Tribune. “One girl is actually doing a roadtrip across America, and she can do this while she’s still in the dance crew since it is on Zoom.” 

For Monahan, dancing is almost as natural as walking. She shares her journey as a dancer and the many different styles of dance that she competed in. 

“I began dancing when I was three [years old] at a community centre in Ottawa,” Monahan said. “I loved it so much that I began increasing my hours by one extra hour of dance a week pretty much every year. I also switched to a real studio at the age of 12 and that’s when I started competing in ballet, jazz, acro, contemporary, hip hop, and lyrical. I’ve been super involved in the last six years from Grade 7 to 12, and I was even more involved in my last year of high school, as I did competitive [dance] for two separate teams back home in Ottawa.”

Monahan added that no matter how gruelling the training was, she kept dancing because she enjoyed it.

“I was training over 30 hours a week,” Monahan said. “I stuck with dance because I love how challenging it can be. You can never be perfect and there are always things you can improve on.”

When she arrived at McGill, Monahan did not want her dancing career to end. 

“[At McGill] I did not want to stop dancing and lose the fitness aspect of it [….] I really wanted to continue in any way possible, so I joined the two teams,” Monahan said.

Dance has been an integral part of McGill’s Physical Education Department since the early 1900s. The department played a key role in spreading modern dance in Montreal. During the department’s start, almost all classes were taught by Ethel Mary Cartwright, the department’s original director, and dance only continued to grow at McGill from there, especially with the hiring of Thelma Wagner as a dance teacher in 1938. Wagner founded the Dance Club, which still puts on yearly productions. 

The dance diploma program shut down in 1990, 20 years after movement classes became a part of the Faculty of Education. Yet, today, dance at McGill is still alive and thriving, with over a dozen groups dedicated to different forms of dance. 

Dance teams have remained creative in their operations during the pandemic. Recently, on Nov. 8, Alegria Contemporary Ballet Company, Recreational Dance Company, K-Rave, and Mosaica collaborated to hold a virtual dance-a-thon. The event will donate 50 per cent of their proceeds to Big Brothers Big Sisters, a local youth mentoring program. 

Offering students a creative and physical outlet is incredibly important in a year as stressful as this one. The McGill dance teams have set an impressive example for all clubs trying to remain active during this pandemic, by continuing to provide a space for activity and self-expression.

 

Arts & Entertainment, Theatre

Tuesday Night Cafe Theatre takes theatrical activism to the radio

by Michelle Siegel on

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Although the COVID-19 pandemic has considerably hindered live theatrical productions at McGill this year, Tuesday Night Cafe (TNC) Theatre has persevered. State of Denial, written by Rahul Varma and directed by Zachary Couture, U3 Arts, was TNC’s first production of the year, and instead of taking to the stage, it took to the radio waves. State of Denial premiered on Oct. 29 on SoundCloud and was broadcast on McGill’s radio station, CKUT 90.3 FM until Nov. 6. 

The play is primarily set in 1996, and follows Odette (Emily-Rose Njonde, U1 Arts), a Rwandan-Canadian documentarian who travels to Turkey to record stories about the Armenian genocide for a film project. After meeting Sahana (Andrea Kilajian, U4 Arts), an elderly Muslim woman, she is shocked by Sahana’s stories of the Armenian genocide. Odette becomes determined to share Sahana’s stories with the world, no matter the cost.

Each act of the play was approximately an hour long, broken into a Thursday evening performance of Act I, followed by a Friday matinee performance of Act II. While the auditory medium of radio had the potential to alienate actors and audiences, the cast successfully adapted to the format. The pacing of the recording felt natural, and the use of sound effects greatly enhanced the listening experience for viewers. The narrator, voiced by Max Clark, U3 Arts, grounded the play’s context and made the transitions and settings of the show easier to understand.

State of Denial deftly examined the heavy material of state-sanctioned mass murders and genocides. The production did an excellent job of addressing grave topics by effectively balancing the necessary facts and the nuanced emotions of the characters and story, providing the right amount of information without feeling like a textbook history lesson. Couture excellently wove together the plays’ myriad of narratives. Although Odette’s actions spur the plot progression, it is her close relationship with Sahana that changes the course of both of their lives and the emotional centre of the play. The similarities in the characters’ experiences are slowly revealed, bridging the individual gaps between the Armenian and Rwandan genocides to reach a larger theme of shared experiences of trauma.

Though State of Denial relies on specific historical narratives, the play does not simply act as an educational lesson: Its ability to maintain a strong narrative structure through Couture’s direction and the efforts of the cast creates an emotionally resonant core.

In dealing with such serious topics, the production respectfully navigated its subject matter for both the performers and the audience. In one scene, Sahana tells Odette the story of an Armenian girl named Sinam, who had experienced firsthand the horrors of the genocide and the lack of accountability taken for it by the Turkish government. Sinam’s story is extremely heartbreaking and graphic, with the narrator giving a trigger warning in the middle of the scene. This interruption did not disrupt the flow of the show, and provided needed context for the audience’s wellbeing. Despite taking place far away from the other contexts of the play, the raw and brutal truth of Sinam’s story resonates equally with the other characters and the audience.

The denial alluded in the play’s title becomes apparent as audiences listen to all the characters shielding different truths in different ways. From the state ignorance and violence that allow for genocides to occur, to the evasions and ignorance over individual identities, practically everyone in the play denies something about themselves. The show cautions against this notion, demonstrating that the only way to genuinely move forward from horror and tragedy is to be internally and externally truthful. 

 

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