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Can art save us?

by Yusur Al-Sharqi on

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//Content warning: Sexual violence//

In 2014, Lady Gaga performed //Swine//—a song about being raped by a music producer at 19—while an artist onstage shoved two fingers down her throat and vomited rainbow paint across Gaga’s body. 

The performance was disturbing. It was also the most precise depiction of the feelings of shame, disgust, and paralysis of sexual violence I have ever seen. She did not merely describe her trauma; she made you //feel// a fraction of it.  

The performance raises questions about what trauma-based art accomplishes. Disgust does not undo rape, and catharsis does not constitute restorative justice. Some see art that engages with violence as a luxury of those who can afford to aestheticize pain rather than endure it. Yet art’s power lies not in repair but in revelation: It exposes what violence conceals, insists that suffering be seen, and transforms recognition itself into a form of resistance.

In that way, the effects of art are not solely therapeutic or ornamental; they are epistemic. They alter our perception of reality, collapsing the emotional distance between experience and witness that makes apathy possible. Art has the unique ability to transmit the pain of the few into the conscience of the many. In doing so, it serves as a medium for revelation, transmission, and survival. 

//Art as revelation//

Psychology has long known what politics refuses to learn: Intellectualizing our emotions doesn’t resolve them; it represses them. Therapists call it a defence mechanism—the mind’s way of avoiding what the body already knows. What occurs in the individual psyche also operates at the collective level. Entire nations learn to rationalize horror, to translate it into data and debate. But if emotional repression keeps individuals stuck in cycles of trauma, moral repression does the same to societies. 

In an interview with //The Tribune//, Eric Lewis, associate professor in McGill’s Philosophy department, traced the intellectual roots of this repression to nineteenth-century formalism—a European art theory that defined a work’s value by its structure rather than its emotional or social content. 

“From my perspective, it’s really hard to see how you could actually imagine art merely to be decorative,” he said. “That really is a product of a particular moment in time in European, North American theorizing about art. [….] But it stands in stark contrast to a much longer tradition of viewing art, in some sense, instrumentally, socially and politically.”

Originally aesthetic, formalism rapidly gained prominence amidst the logic of capitalist modernity, which privileges abstraction, exchange value, and efficiency over affective meaning. As art became increasingly commodified, emotion was recast as excess: Something to be managed rather than engaged. What began as a style of interpretation hardened into an ideology that treats feeling as a threat to reason. And when societies learn to distrust emotion, they become easier to govern through abstraction. 

Politically regressive and reactionary governments have long known this, and that is why they continue to wage a war on empathy—and by extension, on art. 

“One of Hitler’s very first proclamations upon being made chancellor was to ban what was called at the time, ‘Negro art.’ [….] You know, in 1969, in the aftermath of the Paris student riots in France, the French banned a jazz and new rock music festival, fearing that would reignite the kind of protest movement,” Lewis said. “Going back in the Western philosophical tradition […] Plato literally bans certain musical modes because he believes they incite turbulent emotions that could yield in violent and active behaviour.” 

Yet the capacity of art to move people is what makes it politically indispensable. By collapsing the distance between viewer and subject, art does what reason cannot. 

“One thing that has to happen in order to convince folks to not just cognitively believe in anti-racism […] but to get them to actually modify their own behaviours […] is somehow transmitting to folks who are the oppressors what it feels like to experience oppression,” he explained. “[That is] something pure argumentative text is not very good at doing, but that’s something that Nina Simone is very good at doing, that Jean Michel Basquiat is very good at doing, that Nikki Giovanni is very good at doing.”

Palestinian artist Khaled Hussein is a prime example of how art anchors social change in care for the individual rather than allegiance to an abstract ideology. Hussein’s exhibition features various sculptures of legs, unassuming at first glance—mere limbs suspended in space, painted in muted tones—until one looks closely and reads the title: //i miss you so much//. The sculptures represent parts of bodies that no longer exist. Gaza has the largest number of child amputees anywhere in the world—a fact too easily diluted to numbers, until Hussein’s art renders it human again.

“It is true that amputees are everywhere, but a large portion of these victims are confined to their homes, reliving their physical and psychological pain, away from the eyes of others,” Hussein said in an interview with ArtZone Palestine. “I wanted people to recognize that something unseen can still wound us.” 

His work takes mass tragedy and scales it down to an individual wound, pulling the viewer’s focus away from debates about the definition of genocide and ‘who came first’ and instead toward the innocent people at the heart of it all. Sadly, the violence Hussein confronted in his art did not spare him: Israeli occupation forces bombed his house and //Gallery 28// in Rafah, displacing him and reducing his art to rubble. 

A representative of Students for Palestine’s Honour and Resistance (SPHR) at McGill, who wished to remain anonymous, reiterated Hussein’s sentiment about focusing on those directly affected by tragedy. For SPHR, discomfort is not a weakness of art, but its ethical function—it reminds us that no amount of physical distance from the genocide absolves us, and our institutions, of complicity. 

“When images of the occupation and genocide are used, we need to remember this is what our academic institutions are knowingly funding, and it should absolutely make us uncomfortable.”

A similar idea plays out in Ibtisam Azem’s //The Book of Disappearance//, in which every Palestinian vanishes overnight. The premise may appear speculative, but Azem’s realism lies in the details; after all, the book imagines a reality that some already wish for, and that history has made possible in increments.

The novel’s Israeli narrator—a “friend of the Palestinians”— slowly inherits what isn’t his: His friend’s apartment, his coffee, even his words. Erasure here is not a single event but an accumulation of small actions, such as the choice to call the city  ‘Tel Aviv’ as opposed to Jaffa, or to sign a lease for a home whose owners left in 1948. 

The novel thus collapses the moral distance between complicity and atrocity, reminding readers that the scale of destruction we see today is sustained by millions of such minor, plausible gestures. 

//Art as transmission//

The moment art leaves the page, the screen, or the gallery, it begins to circulate. As it weaves itself into conversations, gatherings, and protests, it transforms private emotion into public action. 

In an interview with //The Tribune//, Montreal-based photographer William Wilson emphasized the importance of art in shaping public opinion and propelling activism. 

“The level of grotesque violence that you see […] does inform the political opinions of people. The more severe the images […] and the more pressing the issue feels, perhaps the more likely [you] are to mobilize the streets for it,” Wilson said. “Probably the single most important mobilizing thing [is] imagery.”

Wilson’s work has exposed countless instances of police brutality at protests across the city. At the Rad pride demonstration this year, the Service de Police de la Ville de Montreal tear-gassed protesters; nearby, a family attending a salsa event was caught in the cloud. Wilson captured a photograph of the scene, showing a father clutching his infant, the baby’s tiny hand pressed against her eye, a five-year-old beside them frozen in fear. The photo spread rapidly across social media and quickly became a topic of conversation throughout the city. 

Some commenters accused the family of negligence, claiming they should not have been near a protest, or that “children shouldn’t be out past nine.” William dismissed these deflections as obscene, but this kind of conversation in itself reveals the photograph’s power. Images don’t merely depict injustice but participate in its contestation. The circulation of that photo forced audiences to confront competing narratives about culpability, protection, and power. In doing so, it altered the long-held moral coordinates of public discourse: Who is seen as innocent, who is seen as dangerous, and who is meant to keep us safe. 

Similarly, the representative from SPHR described how the group’s imagery, particularly on social media, has enabled it to reach thousands of students across the city, resulting in record-breaking student support for the Palestinian cause. 

“We live in a visual world and images help us communicate our message more efficiently, whether that be an image of previous student protests which show the will and power of the student movement, or images of Palestine which remind people who we are fighting for when demanding divestment.”

The evidence is palpable: On Oct. 7, 2025, SPHR helped mobilize thousands of students and community members for a strike and rally across Montreal, demanding university divestment from industries complicit in the genocide of Palestinians. 

Taken together, these examples make it hard to believe that theory alone could have moved so many people. To call art futile or self-indulgent is to confuse it with argument. Art does not reason—it reorients. And reorientation is where action begins.

//Art as survival//

Still, hesitation to speak of art amid suffering is understandable. It can feel almost perverse to speak of paintings and poetry while people endure material and bodily catastrophe—those in the midst of rape, occupation, or famine are not asking for performance art to make people empathize with them. And it is true that art, even when it mobilizes and exposes, can still fail to create the change we hope for. Yet, when all else fails, consider instead its most elemental power: Survival.

Discomfort is part of art’s purpose, especially in times of crisis. If art like Lady Gaga’s //Swine// performance makes us recoil, that reaction should remind us how fortunate we are to encounter pain only through art, not through our own bodies. It is easy to call a performance ‘too graphic’ when we are safe enough to experiment with its horrors only through representation. The least we can do to honour those who create art in times of suffering is to recognize their pain: Look, feel, and resist the privilege of detachment. 

We might think of the children of the Terezín ghetto, awaiting deportation to Auschwitz. Their art was discovered hidden behind the walls of the barracks after the war. Among them was a poem by Hanus Hachenburg, which reads:

“I am a grown-up person now,

I have known fear. 

[…]

But anyway, I still believe I only sleep today,

That I’ll wake up, a child again, and start to laugh and play.”

Hanus was killed in Auschwitz in 1944 at the age of 14. 

Art may not have saved him, but if nothing else, it gave him a form of survival beyond the body. Maybe that’s why the children of Palestine paint flowers and the children of the Terezín ghetto wrote poems about butterflies—because art offered them what reality no longer could: The hope of freedom, and perhaps the feeling of it. 

Off the Board

Why local politics matters

by Malika Logossou on

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Getting my driver’s license a few years ago was the highlight of my teenage years. I finally felt like I had the keys to freedom—able to go wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted—and, most importantly, to venture downtown to hang out with friends. But driving in Montreal quickly humbled me. Construction cones seem to multiply overnight, and finding parking is a literal nightmare. My friends and I always complain about how overpriced parking is, and joke that it’s easier to get a parking ticket than to find a free spot.

But it turns out, small frustrations like these are not random. Instead, they are shaped by one thing that rarely crosses most students’ minds: Municipal elections. Many, like myself, tend to fixate on the federal and provincial elections that dominate the headlines. Federal elections determine national leadership, while provincial elections shape healthcare, education, property and civil rights, and more. However, the decisions that affect our daily lives and community—including parking spots—are made at the municipal level. And yet, very few vote. 

In Montreal, the last municipal election in 2021 saw a turnout of a mere one-third of Montrealers, with younger constituents dragging this number down. Among those aged 18 to 35, only 29 per cent voted, and among those aged 18 to 24, only two out of 10. These numbers are shocking considering how municipalities are our closest level of government. City-wide administrations maintain more than 60 per cent of infrastructure and are responsible for a wide range of services, including road maintenance, community programs, waste management, land use, environmental protection, law enforcement, social services, local public safety, and what we love most in winter—snow removal. 

Many young people don’t vote because they believe their vote will not make a difference, and others simply ignore the importance of municipal politics. However, choosing not to vote cedes power to others, leaving decisions about your city’s priorities, your environment, and your quality of life in the hands of people you did not elect. 

Exercising your right to vote is what sustains a truly representative democracy. It gives you the leverage to advocate for issues you care about, while also holding leaders accountable to push for policies that reflect your community’s needs. Concerns about bike lanes versus parking spots, rising populations of unhoused people in the city, food insecurity, and housing initiatives, among many others, fall under municipal responsibility. While complaining about the inadequacies of Montreal’s city government is easy, voting is the first and most important step towards actually addressing them.

Moreover, voting is a civic duty that must not be taken for granted. In many countries, individuals are still fighting for the right to vote and participate in free and fair elections, often risking their lives to have a say in how they are governed. Right now, 38 per cent of the global population lives in countries classified as democratically ‘not free.’ And though Canada may now have free and fair elections, this critical democratic structure came only after decades of advocating for women’s suffrage, voting rights for non-property owners, suffrage for the incarcerated, and the abolition of race-based limitations on electoral participation. By voting, you honour the efforts of those who fought for democratic rights and ensure that decisions affecting your city, community, and daily life reflect your voice.

This year, municipal elections are on Nov. 2nd, and voting will take place at your local polling stations. The date to register for voting has already passed, so if you are eligible and on the list, go vote. Especially given that municipal voter turnout is alarmingly low, it is more true than ever that every vote counts. If you haven’t had the chance to register for these municipal elections, take this as a reminder for next time—whether it’s in Montreal or your own city—to use your voice and help shape your community for the better. Complaining won’t fix the city, but voting just might.

McGill, News

Alum Kai Cheng Thom speaks at McGill’s annual Queer History Month keynote 

by Kaitlyn Schramm on

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Attendees shed tears of queer solidarity on the evening of Oct. 22 as author and somatics teacher, Kai Cheng Thom, addressed McGill during the university’s annual keynote speech for Queer History Month. The event, ‘Remembering Resilience: Embodying the Queer Legacies in Uncertain Times,’ opened with a land acknowledgement appreciating the night’s rain and emphasizing that humans are not superior to the land they inhabit. 

Tynan Jarrett, director of the Equity Team in McGill’s Office of the Provost and Executive Vice-President Academic, then introduced Thom as his previous student at McGill, briefly describing Thom’s activities on campus before commenting on the importance of Queer History Month. 

“Queer History Month is more than a celebration. It is a call to honour the lives, struggles, and triumphs [of] those who came before, to connect our struggle to theirs, and to move forward stronger,” Jarrett noted. 

Director of McGill’s School of Social Work, Nicole Ives, continued the introduction, outlining Thom’s impressive accomplishments since graduating from McGill. 

“[Kai] is [an] award-winning writer, performer, and creative arts facilitator, whose work delves deeply into the themes of revolutionary love, transformative justice, spirituality, and healing from collective trauma,” Ives said. “I know I speak for my colleagues who are here from the School of Social Work, and I speak for myself, saying how thankful we are that she is here to share her vision for how we can transform society into a more socially just and humanist world.” 

As Ives concluded the introduction, Thom approached the stage and shared a hug with Ives before addressing the crowd. She began with a prayer centring love: “Love that heals, love that speaks, love that tells the truth, the whole truth, the ugly truth, nothing but the truth, love that sees it all and yet keeps moving anyway.” 

Shortly thereafter, Thom admitted her complicated relationship with McGill while offering gratitude for the opportunity to speak at the university. She described the mix of emotions she feels as a trans woman and as a changemaker who has evolved from admiring veteran activists to //becoming// one of those veteran activists, despite few corresponding societal improvements for the trans community. 

Demonstrating her expertise, Thom then led a short somatic practice, instructing the group to find their length, find their width, and find their depth physically within their bodies. She then encouraged attendees to take a moment, breathe, and orient themselves within what they have been noticing about their social landscape. She concluded the somatic practice, with many participants crying silent tears and loud cries of relief, before continuing to speak on resilience and resistance for queer activists. 

“The resilient edge of resistance is a term that comes to us from somatic trauma therapy. It refers to the ability to feel stress and even distress, while remaining grounded, centred, connected, crucially connected,” she described. “And my offer to you about this term resilience, […] is that it can be about resistance having more emotion, actually having more sensation, more feeling, but not in a way that fragments, that leaves us feeling despair, […] [but] in a way that leaves us feeling more connected […] to ourselves. Resilience is not about toughness or being superior to others, and I believe that the great mothers of queer and trans history knew this.” 

As her speech concluded, Thom spoke to the feeling of hopelessness common to lifelong activists who fail to see results from their advocacy, quoting Ursula K. Le Guin, who stated that when living under capitalism, its power seems unescapable. But, Le Guin said, so did the divine right of kings. Thom urged the crowd to remember that human power goes both ways: Any human system can be resisted and changed by human beings. And for human beings to stand strong under pressure and see the change they want to make, she emphasized, they must work together. 

“Love survives, love revives, love redeems, love forgives,” she finished.

Editorial, Opinion

McGill must get on the right track and prioritize accessibility—not anti-unionism

by The Tribune Editorial Board on

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This October, employees of the Société de transport de Montréal (STM) filed strike notices that will disrupt bus and metro services throughout November. The Syndicat du transport de Montréal-CSN, which represents maintenance workers, has pledged to strike from Oct. 31 to Nov. 28. The Syndicat des chauffeurs, opérateurs, et employés des services connexes (SCFP 1983)—representing drivers and operators—also plans to strike, instead on Nov. 1, 15, and 16. Their decisions to strike follow over 100 failed negotiation efforts between the unions and the STM, in which the employees sought a 25 per cent wage increase and compensation for the hours they spend on tasks adjacent to their primary responsibilities, such as moving from station to station.

This strike, critical for livable pay and fair working conditions for STM employees, will bear an impact on individuals across Montreal, including McGill students, faculty, and staff. As such, it is crucial that McGill, and other public institutions whose communities rely on public transit, prioritize supporting the strike by offering reasonable accommodations for those impacted—not demonizing the strike as an inconvenience. 

This will mark the third and fourth strikes by STM unions this year, following a two-week strike in September and an earlier strike in June. Yet, the prospects of achieving improved pay structures seem low; the STM has communicated a plan to cut over 300 jobs to offset its severe budget deficit, a fiscal antithesis to the wage increases its unions are demanding. 

The STM serves over 1.7 million riders daily, many of whom take the metro out of necessity. Low-income Montrealers who cannot afford a car or alternative transit options will be particularly at risk if the metro shuts down, alongside commuters, senior citizens, and workers with precarious employment circumstances or irregular working hours. Furthermore, given that the strike measures extend to the closure of metro stations themselves, unhoused populations who rely on stations as a respite during the colder months will be forced into life-threatening conditions.

The McGill community too relies on the services the STM offers: Approximately 50 per cent of students and faculty and 70 per cent of staff use public transit or shuttle bus options to access campus. When strikes disrupt service, students face long waits or are forced to opt for more costly, less sustainable alternatives. Yet when the STM unions went on strike just a month ago, the McGill administration’s only response was a brief memo directing students to consult the STM website and anticipate longer commute times, encouraging faculty to “be flexible” with students who may be impacted—without providing any tangible guidance or institutional support. 

Nowhere in the memo did McGill set standardized expectations for professors and students navigating the strike. Administrators did not mandate classes go online or be recorded, resulting in a confusing mix of responses and varying degrees of flexibility. As a result, the burden of reliable support for the McGill community amidst STM closures fell on Students’ Society of McGill University services such as DriveSafe, while the McGill administration absolved itself of all responsibility to ensure campus accessibility. 

Furthermore, the communication memo lacked any information regarding why the strike was taking place, effectively encouraging the McGill student body to redirect their frustration towards strikers. McGill has an extensive history of suppressing labour movements on campus, most recently during the 2024 strikes hosted by its Faculty of Law, during which administrators dragged out negotiations and insulted students who supported the striking faculty members. McGill must abandon its provocation of anti-union sentiment and blame-shifting among community members, and instead prioritize accessibility during all strikes, STM, faculty union, or otherwise. 

McGill must standardize a university-wide response to STM closures, complete with genuine, effective accommodations that do not shift responsibility to the discretion of faculty. Without a cohesive, integrated response, community members are left disadvantaged and resentful of critical union activity, while the union’s efforts themselves are vilified. Students too must hold in high regard the rights of striking workers and avoid viewing metro closures as an inconvenience rather than a rightful protest tactic. 

STM employees have a right to strike; McGill has an obligation to support union activity and accommodate its affected students, faculty, and staff.

Science & Technology

There are not plenty more fish in the river: A story on endangered Quebec fish

by Antoine Larocque on

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Copper redhorses, a kind of freshwater fish, are the only vertebrates found exclusively in Quebec. However, their population is declining. Recent evidence suggests that the ‘recruitment’—a measure similar to birth rate—has dropped in the past few years.

Hugo Marchand, a postdoctoral researcher in Jessica Head’s ecotoxicology laboratory at McGill’s Department of Natural Resource Sciences, recently collaborated on a paper examining the threats facing young copper redhorses.

Copper redhorses have only two spawning sites, and both are in the Richelieu River. Since most of the watershed is occupied by agricultural land, the researchers hypothesized that pesticide runoff contributes to the mortality of young fish.

“Pesticides, which are often applied during or just before the breeding season, are washed off in the river every time there is heavy rain,” Marchand said in an interview with The Tribune.

In a previous study, the researchers exposed fish embryos to two treatments: River water and laboratory water. Embryos raised in river water had a 15 per cent lower survival rate during their first two weeks of life, which is significant given that copper redhorses typically have a lifespan of up to 30 years.

In the team’s most recent study, they collected daily water samples from the two spawning sites and from two tributaries—rivers that join a larger river rather than flowing directly to the ocean—to determine whether the pesticide concentration during the breeding season could explain the low recruitment rate. The researchers used an additional long-term sampling method to assess how contaminant levels change over time.

The laboratory analyses revealed a cocktail of contaminants in the Richelieu River.

“There are obviously a lot of pesticides,” Marchand noted. “There are also a lot of pharmaceutical and personal care products because [the Richelieu River watershed] is also an inhabited area. Even though the wastewater is filtered, filtration is not the best, and the [wastewater treatment] plants in the area are known to overflow.”

Some pesticide concentrations exceeded the water quality guideline thresholds set by the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment. The researchers even detected chemicals that were banned around 30 years ago, showing how persistent these compounds are in the environment.

Marchand emphasized the need for ongoing water monitoring to track changes in the river’s chemical composition. New pesticides and new regulations can influence what compounds are found in the river, and so can natural changes in river flow from year to year, both factors that contribute to the river’s contamination.

Beyond assessing water quality, the team tested the toxicity of four individual pesticides on early-life-stage fish. None of them had an impact on survival.

“It does not mean that these pesticides in the [river] mixture are not causing the effect, but individually, we cannot pinpoint which one caused the effect that we observe [in the river],” Marchand said.

Moreover, contaminants may have indirect effects on copper redhorses.

“Even though we measured the effects [of pesticides] on the fish, we did not measure the effects on their food,” Marchand said. “[Their food] is all invertebrates, which are most likely going to be much more vulnerable to pesticides.”

Moving forward, Marchand aims to establish the lowest concentrations of river contaminants that induce changes in gene expression in young fish, thereby helping policymakers set more precise safety thresholds.

He also expressed concern about the expansion of the Contrecœur Port Terminal. If the Major Projects Office, established by Mark Carney to accelerate the approval of major projects in Canada, approves the construction project, it will inevitably destroy aquatic vegetation beds—the habitat of copper redhorses. Although the Species at Risk Act prohibits the destruction of an endangered species’ habitat, the Major Projects Office may still propel the project forward. The Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society has launched a petition opposing the project. To protect copper redhorses, the organization COVABAR is raising awareness in communities along the watershed. Marchand also recommends vegetating the riverbanks, restoring natural riverbanks to improve water quality, and implementing agricultural practices that reduce pesticide use. Through a combination of conservation strategies, the currently endangered copper redhorse may persist for generations to come.

Cheerleading, Field Hockey, Golf, Martlets, Men's Varsity, Sports, Tennis, Ultimate, Women's Rugby

McGill Athletics’ varsity program restructuring: Student-athletes’ perspectives

by Clara Smyrski, Zain Ahmed on

For over a year, rumours have circulated that McGill Athletics is evaluating its varsity teams with the intention of making cuts to the varsity program. This year, that rumour was confirmed. Fourth-year Women’s Rugby player and Varsity Council member Annette Yu shared in an interview with The Tribune that McGill Athletics has communicated with select Varsity Representatives that a ‘restructuring’ of the varsity program is underway, having started this in September. McGill Athletics will also consider 12 to 15 of McGill’s club teams that are petitioning to gain varsity status, rethinking which teams at the university deserve to wear the varsity ‘M.’ 

According to Yu, McGill Athletics shared that factors such as a team’s performance, recruitment, funding, alumni support, facilities, eligibility, medical services, and transportation will determine whether they gain, maintain, or lose varsity status. The review is set to be completed on Dec. 1. 

This week, The Tribune sat down with athletes from various varsity and club teams to learn about how McGill Athletics’ restructuring may affect them.

Varsity Women’s Rugby 

Martlets Rugby players Kate Murphy, U2 Science, Olivia Ford, U3 Arts, Yu, U3 Arts, and Captain Raurie Moffat, U4 Education, shared that in a 2024 meeting with McGill Athletics, the team was given an ultimatum: Win games in the 2025 season, or get cut. Moffat explained Martlets Rugby seemed “set up to fail,” when asked to prove their program growth without the resources to do so. 

Because the team plays in the Réseau du sport étudiant du Québec (RSEQ) and U SPORTS leagues, they are ineligible to compete without varsity status. Furthermore, with greater team fees and administrative duties under club status, the players expect that if Women’s Rugby gets cut from the varsity roster, a formal team will cease to exist at McGill. 

Every player spoke to the team’s positive impact. Yu emphasized the sense of community it gave her in her first year, and Ford said that if McGill did not have a team, she would have been deterred from attending McGill. 

Moffat explained how the team’s potential cancellation is detrimental to future women in sport at McGill. 

“I got my five years, but I think about how I don’t get to give back to the girls who are coming after me,” she stated. “There’s so many girls […] that are so talented. [….] It’s not fair to us, and it’s not fair to the players who are going to come after us.”

Varsity Field Hockey

On behalf of the Martlets Field Hockey team, Assistant Captain Grace Hodges, U3 Arts, explained how the team losing status would not end their competition, as they can still compete in the Ontario University Athletics league, but may be detrimental regardless.

“It would be another round of us just feeling frustrated, neglected, and like we’re not actually given a chance to succeed,” Hodges explained in an interview with The Tribune.

Having faced coaching turmoil, budgeting obstacles, and logistical challenges—such as daily early morning practices, long travel weekends, and self-organized accommodation on the road—there is a sense of a disproportionate lack of support for the Field Hockey team, even with its varsity status and with recent donations to the women’s varsity program at McGill. 

“There’s not been a peep about how [those donations are] being allocated,” Hodges stated. “It’s honestly a very confusing and very opaque process.”

Varsity Golf

Varsity Golf team Captain Camden Purboo, U3 Arts, expressed his appreciation that McGill Athletics made the restructuring transparent with Varsity Council after a year of rumours. 

Purboo noted McGill Athletics’ contributions during recruitment are crucial for the competitiveness of the Men’s and Women’s Golf program. The team is self-funded through donations, which helps their case for the restructuring, as they are a lesser burden on McGill Athletics’ budgetary constraints. 

Purboo spoke on how the varsity program’s designation as club-level would hinder the team’s community feel. 

“Whether your team gets cut or not, it’s tough because the varsity teams are pretty close,” he expressed. “When you go to the gym, it’s nice to see the other varsity teams there. I think it’s going to be tough on any team that is restricted in that sense. Hopefully Golf can pull through this.” 

As hard as it may be on varsity teams, this restructuring poses a unique opportunity for McGill’s club teams. The Tribune sat down with club teams to discuss their aspirations to break into the varsity scene.

Club Ultimate 

McGill’s Ultimate program consists of four teams—Women’s A and B teams, and Open A and B teams—comprising a 100-person roster. Captain of the women’s team and co-president of the Ultimate Team Maia List, U3 Science, said that around 200 people tried out for the team this year, showcasing the clear interest in the sport. The team won the Canadian University Ultimate Championships from Oct. 17-19. 

List shared that Ultimate is self-refereed, fostering a unique trust in sport worthy of celebration. 

“McGill [Ultimate] is now doing so well. It would mean so much to our team and to the sport of Ultimate to have [the team] be recognized by [McGill] as an important sport,” List explained.

Club Cheerleading 

Ariane Alarco, U4 Science, said the McGill Cheerleading team is part of the RSEQ circuit and fully self-funded, with athletes paying their own fees. Yet, cheerleaders are pushing for recognition on the varsity level. 

“We […] started the team back up in 2021, so we’re not very competitive with other schools,” Alarco explained. “[We have] limited access to equipment, […] training facilities, and subsidised coaching.” 

Alarco detailed the team’s priorities of giving women athletes a chance to take their athletic careers in a different direction at university by trying out a new, popular sport. 

“We have a lot of girls that come into the program with a history of gymnastics, and this team would allow them to try a different sport, if given the resources,” she stated. 

Club Tennis

Emile Labrunie, U4 Engineering, is captain of McGill’s Club Tennis team, which he reports has been restricted by its club status. Although the club team has had podium success in the Tennis Quebec league, only varsity teams are allowed to travel to nationals, regardless of their season records. 

Labrunie says the most important part of being a varsity team would be recognition and media attention. Being posted on McGill Athletics’ Instagram account would spread awareness of the men’s and women’s Tennis teams’ existence, which would be a positive change from the current environment in which “you have to be passionate about tennis to know McGill has a Tennis team.” 

Labrunie shared that the McGill Tennis coaches—who are volunteers—have been “tenacious” with their petition to make the club a varsity sport. They email McGill Athletics every month—a reminder of their success and drive to represent McGill more formally. 

Labrunie said that being a varsity team would also introduce players to a more connected community than club sports, which rarely hold inter-sport events. 

“I feel like every varsity athlete knows each other. They go to each other’s matches, they have a ceremony at the end of the year for awards,” Labrunie pointed out. “[We are] kind of being left out, and we don’t even know why. We have the level, we have the structure, we have the professionalism, we have everything to be varsity. The only thing missing is the title.”

Ultimately, each team interviewed expressed a desire for more transparency, clearer communication, more institutional support, and stronger recognition throughout the process of McGill Athletics’ restructuring. 

Despite differing positions within the McGill Athletics’ program, athletes voiced a desire for fairness and community amidst the cuts. With a Town Hall update meeting scheduled for early November, student-athletes across the board hope the discussion will shed more light on McGill Athletics’ decision-making process and provide reassurance that their commitment, performance, and passion will be valued when shaping the future of sport at McGill.

Sports Editor and co-author of this piece Clara Smyrski is captain of the McGill Women’s Field Hockey team. She was not involved in the writing, editing, or publication of the ‘Field Hockey’ section of this article.

Conference Reviews, Science & Technology

Can Canada uplift AI innovation while keeping Canadians’ data safe?

by Soraya Ghassemlou on

Canadians helped pioneer the field of artificial intelligence (AI). Researchers like Geoffrey Hinton of the University of Toronto and Yoshua Bengio of Université de Montréal, known as the ‘godfathers of AI,’ laid the groundwork for technologies now reshaping economies and geopolitics. Yet as AI and the race for data become the new frontier of national power, Canada finds itself fighting to keep pace.

At the ALL IN 2025 Conference, government officials, researchers, and tech leaders gathered to confront a pressing question: Can Canada reclaim its AI edge while keeping its data and its values under Canadian control? The conclusion: Probably not.

It is no secret that the United States leads by wide margins in AI industry research, notable models, compute capacity, and capital. While participating in a panel at the conference, Aiden Gomez, co-founder and CEO at Cohere, commented that Canada’s contributions to the field were notable nonetheless.

“Canada led the development of this technology. We were the first ones to invest in the research when no one else believed in it. There was Geoff, there was Yoshua,” Gomez said. 

In a press conference at ALL IN, Evan Solomon, Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation, preached about the current needs for innovation and turning ideas into businesses. Solomon specifically referred to Martha White, a University of Alberta machine-learning professor who raised 7 million CAD in her first round using AI for global water treatment solutions. Is this enough to compete with the American AI industry?

Other countries have already begun implementing AI to make government processes more efficient. In a keynote speech, His Excellency Mohamed Bin Taliah, Chief of Government Services of the United Arab Emirates (UAE)—the country of honour of the conference—explained how his government is making the most of AI. 

“94 per cent of our court proceedings are all done online. People do not need to visit courts. [….] We use artificial intelligence here to summarize the proceedings between all parties and simplify the process on the judge to get the information and make a decision on the spot,” he said. “We have reduced 33 percent of the time taken to complete court proceedings by using artificial intelligence in courts.” 

Bin Taliah also explained how the UAE government employs biometric scanning in their airports. 

“People travelling through the UAE airports can get through the airport without even getting their passports out of their pockets.” 

The Canadian government’s implementation to make AI more efficient looks a bit different. Lucy Hargreaves, co-founder and CEO of Build Canada, announced the release of its first “AI member of parliament.” It ingests bills that are introduced in the House of Commons as well as the Senate and analyzes them. Given that this AI MP just makes OpenAI GPT-5 calls, Canada has essentially announced employing ChatGPT in parliament to help parse bills. Minister Solomon referred to models from Cohere, a Canadian company, as “our strategically important LLM[s]” during the Canada AI Strong panel, emphasizing the need to use sovereign models and to support Canadian innovation. This is surprising given that the AI MP uses an American company’s model.

Canada also recently signed a memorandum of understanding with Canadian AI company Cohere to explore deploying their technologies within the government, aiming to expedite public service operations and build Canada’s commercial capabilities for domestic use and export. 

Beyond internal governmental implementations, what is more economically relevant is the need to compete with both AI products and AI-powered products, while also maintaining data as a resource. At the Canada AI Strong panel, Minister Solomon emphasized the demand for tools to keep up with the shifting times, as well as the need for Canadians to trust the new tools being developed. He also referred to the idea of  “Sovereign compute”, which would keep Canadian data under Canadian Law. 

Computational sovereignty emerged as a recurring theme during the conference. Canadian companies and individuals often outsource cloud computing to American servers. For example, if someone wanted to train a model they designed but did not have the computational resources to do it, the task would often be outsourced to servers with graphics processing units (GPUs) in the United States. If compute resources in Canada were used instead, data would not need to flow across Canadian borders, making it less vulnerable to international security risks. 

Minister Solomon was one of the most prominent voices on this topic, supporting innovation while implying the need for data protection. However, in some cases, innovation comes at the cost of weaker data security.

“Data is king. Whoever controls it, whoever uses it, whoever governs it will determine our collective prosperity and our security and sometimes our values. [….] The EU, a couple years ago went ahead and they tried to regulate, and they have found and they’re quite open about it that it’s done some good things, but it’s constrained a lot of innovation,” Solomon said.

Canadians are concerned about cybersecurity risks, and loss of privacy and intellectual property when it comes to AI; however, distrust in how the government uses Canadians’ data could be misplaced in comparison to how data is being used by companies abroad. During Minister Solomon’s press conference, he was asked what qualifies as sensitive personal data that must be protected versus non-sensitive personal data that can be exported as a resource and sold. While not explicitly drawing the line between sensitive and non-sensitive data, Solomon mentioned the need to make Canadians feel safe and protected. 

“[It is important to make] sure that Canadians have control over their, you know, on privacy issues and our data,” Solomon said. “That doesn’t mean restricting data flows across borders. People need that.” 

While Canadians’ concerns about the government’s use of their data are valid, this mistrust ignores how their data is already being employed by companies abroad. Most Canadian data already flows freely across borders—with Canadians’ consent. Every day, Canadians willingly supply personal and behavioural data to foreign platforms that train and deploy AI models at scales far beyond government oversight. 

For example, Facebook’s privacy policy indicates the routine extraction of less frequently considered data for a variety of purposes, such as personalizing user experiences. It tracks created content, time spent on their products, friends/followers/connections, device characteristics and information, content users interact with and how, ‘device signals,’ location-related data, among other information. This data is transferred globally to their data centres and externally to Meta’s partners, third parties, and service providers. The average person does not think twice about accepting the user agreement and consenting to supply this data; with Canadians already having such low AI literacy, this is quite concerning. 

After 2018 reports showed Cambridge Analytica used Facebook user information to build systems that profiled individual American voters, targeting them with political advertisements, Mark Zuckerberg testified at a U.S. congressional hearing. This led the Privacy Commissioner of Canada to investigate Facebook’s compliance with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). The Commissioner concluded that simply clicking agree to lengthy terms and conditions does not imply that the average reasonable person would understand the nature and consequences of data collection. 

This remains true today. It is unlikely that the average Canadian takes the time to understand how their data is being essentially fracked for use by foreign app providers with the click of an agree button. Moreover, it is unlikely that the government will control data that Canadians freely sign away as a condition of the foreign services they rely on. It is also unclear what security risks it imposes on the nation as a whole. 

Ultimately, Canadians helped invent modern artificial intelligence, but now Canadian industries struggle to compete in the international market. At the same time, while policymakers emphasize sovereign data and safe innovation, Canadians continue to export their data daily through foreign platforms that operate beyond the jurisdiction of the government. 

Canada’s next chapter in AI will hinge on more than regulation—it will depend on whether the country can cultivate literacy and the technical backbone to achieve independence. The challenge is reconciling the vision of digital sovereignty with the truth that accepted privacy policies do not respect borders.

Arts & Entertainment, Film and TV

‘Le Train’ is a dream-filled Quebecois coming-of-age film 

by Siena Torres on

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This October, Festival du Nouveau Cinéma wrapped up its 54th edition, featuring a robust program of 200 films over 12 days. The Montreal-based film festival prides itself on showcasing diverse international features and short films, while spotlighting a strong selection of Canadian films. This edition’s closing film, Le Train, is a mesmerizing debut from renowned Quebecois playwright and actress, Marie Brassard. 

Le Train follows Agathe, a young girl in 1960s Quebec, who dreams of a fantastical world where she is not plagued by severe asthma. As she grows into adolescence, she meets a man who shares her same longing for something more than their reality. Rising stars Thalie Rhainds and Electra Codina Morelli, who play Agathe at various ages, deliver captivating performances that hint at promising careers ahead. The exquisite Larissa Corriveau, who plays Thérèse, Agathe’s eccentric mother, shines in her portrayal of a woman balancing professional life, single motherhood, and creative pursuits. 

In an interview with The Tribune, Brassard reflected on the experience of writing and directing her first feature film, noting how it differs from theatre. She described theatre as ephemeral: An experience that creates unique experiences each time. It lives only in our memories because it takes place in the ‘real’ world with ‘real’ people, as opposed to cinema. 

“Cinema is different. At one point, you have to stop [adding on] for it to exist as an object, and from that moment on, it’s gonna be that. You have to let it go,” Brassard said. “And at the same time, what’s beautiful is that you can look at it again and again, and eventually have a different experience as well, but the thing is that it will persist in time.”

Inspired by her own childhood experiences with asthma in the Quebec suburbs and her coming-of-age in 1970s Montreal, Brassard sought to recreate the feeling of hope she felt at that time, contrary to today’s cynicism and increased isolation. 

“I wanted to make a film that would state that there was a time [in Quebec] where people were dreaming. People were dreaming of a better world, a more equal world,” Brassard said.

As someone who admires the aesthetics of the 1970s, I found the visuals of Agathe’s teenage years a feast for the eyes. Brassard mentioned that she remembers the aftermath of Montreal’s Expo 67, a world’s fair in which there was a liberating spirit in the air, both politically and creatively. Le Train recreates these artistic communities and countercultures that she found in the city, where intellectual and creative thoughts were freely exchanged. 

Brassard grew up listening to the sound of trains running through her town, dreaming of the places they would go. In Le Train, these dreams recur and contrast the rest of the film in their black-and-white stylization, as Agathe tries to figure out both their meaning and the other world that intrigues her. Brassard used these childhood dreams as the starting point of her script.

“I imagined that it was a lumberjack there [by the train], who was cutting trees and protecting our world, and that he was standing at the frontier between us and the world that we don’t know,” Brassard said.

The themes of identity, dreams, and a blend of fantasy run through much of Brassard’s work. 

“There’s something fundamental that is part of you that you cannot escape from. And I think that for me, it is a very thin layer between dream and reality, or between the imagined and reality,” Brassard said. “And somehow, it intersects with [the] science worlds. When we think of quantum realities, where scientists reflect on the possibility of parallel worlds that we cannot perceive.” 

As Le Train rolled its final frames, it left audiences with a resonant message that speaks to both nostalgia and hope, reminding viewers of a time, and perhaps a place, where dreaming of a better world still felt possible.

Student Life

All you think about is how you look

by Maria Hamdaoui on

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Many women are preoccupied with how they look, not because they’re shallow, but because that’s what they’ve been taught to value. From a young age, girls are celebrated as ‘cute’ or ‘pretty’ before they’re praised for being smart or brave. Those comments add up, shaping the belief that their value lies in their appearance rather than their minds and personalities

“I think this pressure tends to affect women more because they’re held to a higher standard by society than men. There are certain clothes men and women can both wear, yet a woman is more likely to get criticized for it,” explained Abby George, U2 Arts, in a written statement to The Tribune. The awareness of how women look starts early, and for many, it never goes away.

“I definitely think there is some kind of ‘look’ for students, mostly to be dressed relatively well and less just whatever you can find in your drawers,” George added. 

Her comment captures a shared understanding: On campus, effort is expected to look effortless. It’s not about dressing up, exactly; it’s more about looking like you belong here. That awareness extends beyond clothing. Small insecurities can become constant background noise.

Sukaina Haider, U1 Science, shared in a written statement to The Tribune that when her skin breaks out, it makes it harder for her to focus on anything else. “[My acne] honestly distracts me from paying attention to a lecture. Not the end of the world, but it does affect me to a certain extent.”

Even something as common as acne can impact a student’s focus. And while it can be inspiring to be surrounded by people who take pride in how they carry themselves, it can also pressure you to do the same, even on days you just want to show up in crocs or sweatpants.

“There is definitely a social media impact, especially in our generation,” Mihade Mastour, U2 Science, shared in an interview with The Tribune. 

That illusion of effortlessness becomes its own kind of work, one that seeps quietly into daily life. You scroll through social media and see a constant stream of ‘must-have’ skincare routines, outfit ideas, the next thing you apparently need to feel complete. Trends circulate so quickly that it’s almost impossible to keep up.

George explained that fleeting viral trends add another layer of stress to self-presentation on campus.

“I feel like these trends definitely do affect students, and probably those at McGill. I find I do see it in certain students—there are actually many that wear sweatpants and sweatshirt combos, but they have the clean girl hair and makeup to make it seem like they did this effortlessly but actually put a lot of care into their outfit.”

Still, students are finding ways to resist these pressures. Girls are distancing themselves from any kind of expectation about how women should dress by remembering that the priority is how they feel in their clothes. Instead of dressing according to trends, they dress for how they feel that day, and choose clothes that make them comfortable, grounded, and able to focus on themselves rather than how they appear. Worrying about your appearance steals time and energy that could be spent chasing ideas and ambitions. The challenge for young women today is to break away from these cycles. 

The truth is that no reflection or appearance defines you the way your mind, your work, and your passions do. Young women at McGill are some of the most creative, capable people, and it would be disheartening to see them feel any sense of insecurity about how they look.

Research Briefs, Science & Technology

Stop-and-go: How male and female hockey players move differently

by James Levitsky on

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Hockey is a key component of Canadian culture, as it is our national sport and a great source of joy and pride. Whether played competitively, in gym class, or just for fun on a frozen lake, hockey unites players across the country. Yet despite its importance to many across various ages and identities, variances in the mechanics of skating between males and females remain largely understudied.

Female participation in ice hockey has been increasing steadily, with a 34 per cent increase in registered players from 2007 to 2018, according to the International Ice Hockey Federation. While there is ample research on male player movements, female players remain underrepresented in the scientific literature, despite fundamental anatomical differences that impact the way they move, play, and train.

Shawn Robbin, associate professor in the school of Physical and Occupational Therapy, leads a lab working to develop this knowledge base, diving into the science of movement in ice hockey and exploring how equipment and player traits influence performance on the ice. The lab partners with Bauer Hockey and uses federal funding to help athletes move efficiently and reduce their risk of injury, with McGill students playing a key role in the research.

In a recent paper published in the International Journal of Performance Analysis in Sport, Robbins explored the kinematic differences between male and female athletes who participated in a stop-and-go task.

McGill varsity hockey players were asked to perform traditional hockey stops, then take a few strides in the opposite direction at different speeds. The researchers then used motion capture technology to study how males and females differ in stop and start movements on the ice. The researchers found that females tend to stay more upright relative to their starting position, while males get much lower to the ice when they stop.

“We found that male players tend to lower themselves faster and have more flexion in their hip and knee joints, which helps them absorb and explode out of stops,” Robbins said in an interview with The Tribune.

Another study found that female ice hockey players reported proportionately more soft tissue injuries, strains, and sprains, while males experienced more fractures. 

Although sex-specific injury types were not the focus of this study, Robbins noted that several factors contribute to differences between sexes. However, it is difficult to parse exactly how much each factor contributes. 

“It’s a bit more clear, in other sports like soccer, that movement plays a role in injury, especially in female athletes. That’s not as clear in hockey,” Robbins said. “Obviously, there’s other differences as well, in terms of hormone levels [and] muscle strength. I think that biomechanics may have a piece in injuries, […] [and] how players move will have a piece in terms of injury, but it’s [related to] the other factors too.” 

Robbins emphasized that the study requires a collaborative effort. While his role during the experiment was mostly to process and analyze raw data on the computer, McGill students at the lab, such as master’s student Aiden Hallihan, conducted many of the actual tests under professors’ supervision. In other words, successful research requires a dedicated community of scientists, including everyone from undergraduate research assistants to lab directors.

Moving forward, the lab will continue to test new and advanced motion capture systems to expand its research. While this study focused exclusively on elite varsity-level players, their current research is aimed at younger and recreational players. 

“With the data from elite players, [we] can compare it to recreational players and see if there are similar [sex] differences and how [players] can improve their game,” Robbins said.

Overall, Robbins’ research challenges traditional gender bias in sports research. His work advances player development and safety across genders, making the world of hockey research more equitable.

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