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Arts & Entertainment, Film and TV

‘Annihilation’ feels like a video game but hits like Kubrick

by Caleb McKend on

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Unlike for other escapist genres, it’s been a long time since “taking itself seriously” could be considered enough to validate a science fiction film. While the 2000s saw Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings) and Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight) transforming traditionally “low genres” into Oscar-winning milestones, filmmakers have used futuristic technology to tell complex, human stories for as long as there have been sci-fi films. With this in mind, it’s only natural to expect more from modern sci-fi than technical competence. Writer/director Alex Garland has proven himself capable of straddling the line between hard science and more humanist fiction before with AI thriller Ex Machina (2015). With his latest release, Annihilation, he revisits similar themes of technology and identity, albeit with mixed results. While the film features staggering visual and philosophical set pieces, it falters by approaching characters with the same didactic coldness as its science.

Annihilation follows Lena (Natalie Portman), a biologist and former soldier whose husband Kane (Oscar Isaac) has recently returned from a top secret military mission under mysterious circumstances. As time passes, Lena is drawn in by the same shadowy government organization that employed her husband. His mission is revealed to concern “the Shimmer,” an enigmatic, expanding region apparently unhinged from earth’s physical rules, from which Kane is the only person to have ever returned. Lena embarks to the Shimmer herself, along with a team of fellow scientist-soldiers played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tessa Thompson, Gina Rodriguez, and Tuva Novotny.

In addition to his film resume, Alex Garland has worked on several video games in the past, an experience that shows in  Annihilation’s pacing and dialogue. After entering the Shimmer, events play out much like a game: The characters venture into a new area, discover clues and items related to the overarching mystery, and then encounter a new monster several times over. The repetitive pacing has the same potential as a well-made adventure game to produce a more fleshed out world, but it is held back by a reliance on dialogue that sounds more like a gameplay tutorial than real conversation. Garland’s screenplay promises a gorgeous, expansive world, but, instead of actually showing this universe, relies on exposition and description. This is perhaps most glaring in a scene that opens with Lena describing the Shimmer’s beauty with a foreboding, wide-eyed fascination, only for the camera to be dragged back down to two characters reciting their minimal, clichéd, tragic backstories.

Despite Garland’s crutch of Halo-level dialogue, the film’s final half-hour does finally grasp the scientific and philosophical potential it promises. The world’s science becomes clear enough to stand on its own and the exposition finally melts away, allowing questions to become visual and more complex. The recent buzz surrounding Annihilation has made overt comparisons to heady films like 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Solaris (1972), but it is only Annihilation’s climax that truly warrants those comparisons. It’s a shame that viewers must first plod through so much underdeveloped dialogue, but it’s hard to imagine anyone walking out of these operatic final scenes feeling anything less than astonishment.

Annihilation benefits from taking its headier philosophical concepts seriously, something that boils over beautifully in its climax. Unfortunately, it chooses to also treat its characters like scientific theories that need broad definitions. For a film with such an awe-inspiring outer world, it is hard to understand why characters’ interiorities need to be stripped down to groan-inducing lines like “all work and no play,” or, shudder, “you don’t hate me, you hate yourself.” The theoretical side of Garland’s film makes it ultimately rewarding; but, in a cruel irony, this same approach applied to its narrative holds it back from being a truly successful work.

Montreal, News

Liberal’s Budget 2018 invests heavily in research

by Nina Russell on

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In the Liberal Party of Canada’s Budget 2018, the government of Canada announced that it would invest heavily in research, allocating a total of $6.6 billion to science and innovation. This is a $1.2 billion increase from the 2017 budget. For students at McGill, the increase in funding will allow more students to pursue research, earn federal grants, and receive compensation for their work.

According to Canada’s Finance Minister Bill Morneau, this is the largest investment in investigator-led research in Canada’s history.

“We’ll make sure that the new money for research supports the next generation of researchers, so that we can build a science community that looks more like Canada, more diverse, and with a greater number of women,” Morneau said during his remarks following the release of the budget.

This increase in spending is based on recommendations from the Naylor Report, a document written in 2017 by a panel featuring researchers from universities all across Canada, including McGill’s Martha Crago, current vice-principal of Research and Innovation. The report mainly advocates for increases in government funding for research, and recommended a $1.3 billion increase in investigator-led research for science, given the fact that Canada’s research output has been declining since 2005.

“Canada’s performance in winning international prizes is trailing traditional powerhouses such as the U.S. and U.K.,” the Naylor Report reads. “It is also well behind Australia, which now outperforms Canada on several other measures. In recent decades, twice as many Canadians have won research-related Nobel prizes while working in the U.S. as have been awarded to Canadian-born or foreign-born scientists working in Canada.”

The report also addressed the need to attract more young people to research in Canada by eliminating funding barriers. Currently, the odds of securing a federal grant are only eight to 12 per cent for projects in health research, which discourages students from pursuing research in this field. The budget attempts to remedy this by increasing the money available to finance grants, resources, and technology available to researchers.

The new budget greatly increases allocations to fundamental research in particular, which refers to studies  directed at understanding the fundamental features of observable facts without a specific application in mind.

“[Fundamental research is] basically making the foundational discoveries that allow you or others to then seek application of them,” Crago said. “It’s the basis, discovering anything in any field that is underlying [and] not done as an application that is investigator-driven. In past budgets, though there has been increases to councils, it’s always been for [specific] areas. This is whatever the investigator feels like studying and can convince through peer-review people that they have the capability and capacity to do it and do it well.”

Researchers at McGill have recently expressed concerns about the possibility of continuing to do their research in light of budget cuts, despite McGill’s strength as a research institution. The increase in budget allocation means that more researchers will have the opportunity to pursue their studies without worrying about how to finance their projects.

“I think [the increase in funding] will be very helpful because there were a lot of people because in the council who were beginning to feel really nervous about [the lack of money for this kind of research]. [….] With this injection of money, this should really help the number of people that get funded,” Crago said. “It will have an influence on students because [about 50 per cent of research grants go to] graduate students and [postdoctoral researchers], so the more grant money there is, the more money there is to attract graduate students and to pay them.”

 

Arts & Entertainment, Film and TV, Pop Rhetoric

The Academy still hates women

by Katia Innes on

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There was a moving moment during the 90th Academy Awards where Ashley Judd, Salma Hayek, and Annabella Sciorra stood onstage to deliver a message. Their connection? All have accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual misconduct. In a year of watershed moments for transparency and accountability, the #MeToo and #TIMESUP movements have ascended, guided by the voices of survivors like Judd and Hayek, allowing for discourse on abuses of power and privilege in Hollywood. As these four women stood onstage at the Dolby Theatre, a short montage highlighted meaningful advances in representation and equity in the film industry. Yet, when it came down to the moments that matter—to the envelopes and the hardware—the Academy failed to stand for the beliefs it claimed to exemplify. Kobe Bryant, accused of rape in 2003, and Gary Oldman, a known Mel Gibson defender who was accused of beating his ex-wife Donya Fiorentino in front of their two children in 2001, both walked away with statues. The Academy showed that it remains as hypocritical and self-congratulatory as ever.

It’s no secret that the Academy awards abusers. From Casey Affleck, to Roman Polanski, to Woody Allen, if you’re a straight white man, and you make an acclaimed movie, the Academy is willing to forgive you for any number of past crimes. After the Year Of Weinstein, and the turning tide against abusive men in power, there was hope that the cultural zeitgeist could seriously affect the awards circuit. To a certain extent, it did—James Franco was left off of the Oscar ballot after sexual misconduct allegations from five women emerged, and Weinstein was expelled from the Academy. Still, Bryant and Oldman won Best Animated Short Film and Best Actor in a Leading Role, respectively.

What makes these men immune to the fates that have befallen Weinstein and Franco? Why are they, alongside Affleck and Allen, who continues to work in Hollywood after decades of abuse allegations by his former step-daughter Dylan Farrow, exempt from the same exclusion and public shaming? The Academy can pat its own back for kicking out Weinstein, but silently ignore the fact that he remained on the Academy for years, continuing to abuse women with no consequence. The small segment devoted to the #MeToo movement—a fraction of the screen time devoted to the War Movie Appreciation montage, or the more general Movie Appreciation montage—sought to cover up the fact that at the end of the day, the Academy cares about its members’ behaviour only to the extent that it affects ticket sales. The Academy selectively chooses who is culpable, co-opting activism to appease the general public.

In the opening monologue, human carpet bag Jimmy Kimmel quipped “But what happened with Harvey, and what’s happening all over, was long overdue. We can’t let bad behaviour slide anymore. The world is watching us. We need to set an example.” What example is that? That feminism is only useful to increase revenue and save the face of an outdated and out-of-touch organization? During Hollywood’s most important night of the year, the Academy had the chance to provide a platform for the under-represented. Instead, two known abusers walked off the stage carrying statuettes.

Consultation
McGill, News

Students question CAMSR’s transparency at BoG student forum

by Laura Oprescu on

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McGill’s Board of Governors (BoG) held its fifth annual Board-Student forum on March 1, giving students and Governors the opportunity to discuss their respective roles at McGill. In the first part of the forum, Board members were assigned tables while students rotated, giving students a chance to debate issues with every board member.

Following this conversation period, six student groups, including the Black Students’ Network (BSN), McGill Student Emergency Response Team (M-SERT), and Divest McGill gave short presentations on their objectives and logistical needs for 2018. Some used the opportunity to voice their concerns about students’ ability to stay informed about the BoG’s proceedings—particularly concerning the Committee to Advise on Matters of Social Responsibility’s (CAMSR) terms of reference, which are currently under review.

 

BSN presents its mandates and a forthcoming fee levy campaign

The BSN is a Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) service that aims to make McGill safe and accessible for black students and to support their academic success, mental health, and physical well-being. Next year, BSN will push for the implementation of an Africana Studies program at McGill. This year they will hold a fee levy referendum, aiming to increase their student fee from $0.40 to $1.00 for full-time students.

“[The fee levy] will support the institutionalization of our service,” Christelle Tessono, vice president political for BSN, said in their presentation at the forum. “It’s very hard to continue providing so many services when you’re not paid.”

 

Discussion with Divest McGill over the CAMSR Terms of Reference

Divest McGill’s presentation primarily focused on their concerns regarding the proposed changes to the CAMSR terms of reference, which would prohibit it from endorsing investments based on social or political considerations. CAMSR meets on an ad hoc basis and is tasked with advising the BoG on investing in a socially responsible manner.

Divest McGill previously interrupted the BoG’s meeting on Dec. 12 to protest the proposal. More recently, on Feb. 15, the BoG held a community session in which members of the McGill community were able to ask questions about the changes to the mandate. However, questions related to the wording of the new mandate were rejected and referred to CAMSR during its confidential meeting several days later. Associate Professor Edith Zorychta, who sits on the Nominating, Governance and Ethics committee, explained during the forum tabling session why CAMSR’s meetings are not open to the public.

“Every institution has to have some kind of watchdog to make decisions about the finances,” Zorychta said. “It’s a conflict of interest if you [have an open meeting] and you’re making decisions about hiring administration, what their salaries are going to be.”

However, Divest McGill members present at the meeting asserted that CAMSR’s mandate is not about finances or hiring decisions. They called upon CAMSR to hold open sessions and make its minutes public, like the BoG does.

“[CAMSR’s] argument [for holding closed sessions] is that people express their truest ideas in private,” Divest McGill member Jed Lenetsky said. “But they are decision-makers for the university and they are accountable to students.”

Divest presented several recommendations for the proposed changes to CAMSR in a letter, including keeping the frequency of CAMSR reviews at every three years rather than the proposed every five years and removing the proposed change to the mandate. Lenetsky and Annabelle Couture-Guillet believe that the BoG did not conduct thorough research before submitting the proposed changes.

“[The BoG] consulted six experts,” Lenetsky said. “It was only after [Divest] held a week-long sit-in outside Suzanne Fortier’s office that the BoG released [the experts’] names and testimonies, and only five out of six [were released].”

In addition to greater transparency, Divest is pushing for more informed discussions.

“These experts were from McGill, with expertise in their own fields, people from the economics department, a green chemist, experts in sustainability,” Lenetsky said. “But not experts in ethical investing, which is what CAMSR is all about.”

Alice Lefebvre, student representative to CAMSR, assured during the forum tabling session that student voices have been heard through community consultations.

“I’ve been talking to students and other members of the McGill community about the proposed changes, and really listening to why the changes were made,” Lefebvre said. “I’ve seen both sides [of the issue], so [we can] make the best decision.”

Lefebvre explained that, although only one student representative sits on CAMSR, this position is sufficient to convey student interests.

“There aren’t many students on the BoG, and CAMSR is a small committee,” Lefebvre said. “I feel that CAMSR received a lot of comments on the changes from students. Even if I was the only student representative on the committee, there’s still openness.”

CAMSR will meet again on March 21 to discuss the changes to its mandate.

News, PGSS

PGSS and McGill Athletics’ tensions addressed at Council

by Elizabeth Strong on

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At the Post-Graduate Students’ Society (PGSS) Council meeting on Feb. 21, councillors addressed the tenuous relationship between student federations and McGill Athletics and Recreation.  Francois Miller, manager of the McGill Office of Sustainability, also briefly presented the Vision 2020 sustainability strategy.

Following this, Council moved on to reviewing and approving the reports of PGSS financial affairs and member service officers. Finally, new business was briefly discussed, including the approval of a motion to ratify the Innovation Commissioner’s resignation.

 

Post-graduate involvement in McGill Athletics and Recreation

The McGill Athletics and Recreation Advisory Board (MARAB) is one of several committees advising various student services on campus. Jason Blakeburn, the PGSS representative on MARAB, opened the floor to discussion of what Athletics and Recreation can do to improve its services for the graduate student population. He cited the failure of the Winter 2017 fee levy referendum, which proposed a three per cent increase, raising the fee to $3.63 per term for postgraduates, as an indication of a tenuous relationship between Athletics and Recreation and the student body.

“[McGill Athletics and Recreation] realized last year, after the failed referendum, that there was a lack of trust, or transparency, or just communication going on, so they want to hear from grad students how we can better serve them,” Blakeburn said.

PGSS Financial Affairs Officer Matthew Satterthwaite, a former employee of McGill Athletics, voiced his concerns regarding the department’s organization and unnecessarily large employee costs.

“I would really like to see athletics […] maybe going through a process of really looking at their organizational structure, who’s accountable to who, [and] how many people do you actually need to do the jobs,” Satterthwaite said. “From an organizational standpoint there’s a lot of money wasted.”

Blakeburn closed the conversation with an invitation to PGSS members to reach out to him personally with further concerns.

 

Discussion concerning the prioritization of QSU over AVEQ continues

At its previous meeting on Jan. 17, PGSS tabled a discussion on affiliating with the Quebec Student Union (QSU) or the Association for the Voice of Education in Quebec (AVEQ), two provincial student federations that represent university student governments at the provincial and federal level. External Affairs Officer Hocine Slimani reopened the issue, standing firm in his position that, after careful review of both organizations, the QSU is better suited to serve the interests of members of the PGSS. Slimani also expressed his desire for PGSS to prioritize QSU affiliation in its upcoming referendum.

“It’s a bad idea to put two options on the ballot because people are not informed enough,” Slimani said. “Referendum questions […] should be yes or no questions. I think it is our job here, all of us as representatives, that we choose the option that will serve the best interests of our constituents.”

Slimani’s assertion that the graduate student populace is uninformed was met with criticism from members of the audience, including Bradley Por, a graduate student in the Faculty of Law. Por questioned Slimani’s impartiality and argued that the most democratic course of action would be to invite both groups to present before the PGSS at its annual general meeting (AGM) on April 11. Jacquie Safieh, a member of the Family Medicine Graduate Student Society (FMGSS), motioned to invite AVEQ to speak at the AGM but it failed to pass.

“My mandate was to prioritize the QSU,” Slimani said. “My frustration is that I am at the end of my mandate [which was] to come up with a referendum question […] and yet we are running in circles [….]”

After nearly 50 minutes of debate on the matter, Satterthwaite motioned to postpone discussion until the next PGSS Council meeting, to be held on March 21.

Science & Technology

Uncoiling the accuracy of DNA ancestry tests

by Emma Gillies on

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DNA ancestry tests from services like 23andMe, AncestryDNA, Family Tree, and MyHeritage are becoming increasingly popular methods of delving into our genetic histories,  often at steep prices. While their methods used to retrace an individual’s ancestry may vary, each compares the genomes of their customers using DNA databases.

Ancestry tests owe their existence, and success, to genome sequencing that allows scientists to discover the order of the nucleotides that make up the DNA of an organism.

“The human genome can be thought of as a long molecule which forms a chain of three billion letters, which we label A, C, G, and T,” Simon Gravel, assistant professor in McGill’s Department of Human Genetics, said in an interview with The McGill Tribune. “Most of those are the same across […] every human on the planet. There are a few differences here and there, about one in a thousand, roughly, between any two genomes.”

The human genome was first sequenced successfully in 2003. Since then, hundreds of thousands of human genomes have been sequenced. This practice has in turn allowed scientists to identify places in the genome that are variable across individuals.

Larger companies like  23andMe and AncestryDNA use genotyping chips—a technology that measures the genome of one person at around one million positions along a chain of nucleotides. Genotyping chips allow one person’s DNA to be compared to another’s. Other companies, such as the San Francisco-based startup Genos, sequence the person’s entire genome instead.

Unfortunately, the industry overall does not always operate in the interest of providing customers with their genetic history. Companies often sell genetic information to pharmaceutical companies for research. Good companies will disclose all potential uses, so it’s important for customers to look at the contractual clauses of the service they’re using.

“It’s a race between [AncestryDNA] and [23andMe] about who’s going to get the most customers,” Gravel said. “And the more customers you have, the better your results are for ancestry and things like that, but also the more you can make money on the back end.”

Accuracy is assured by using simulations of genomes that are developed and then reproduced after accounting for possible issues in the system. A good way of testing for fraudulent companies—which often return random results and don’t ask for their clients’ permission to sell their genetic data—is by comparing the results that they give for twins, who should receive identical results. If the company is committing fraud, the twins’ results will not be the same.

Generally speaking, genetic testing companies attempt to guess where an individual’s ancestors might have lived hundreds of years ago; before diasporas and diffusion. According to Gravel, this works well when tracing ancestry at the continent-level. Matching an individual’s DNA with that of people who come from or live in Europe, for example, leads to the reasonable conclusion that the individual has European ancestors. At the country-level, however, there is some inaccuracy—after all, people move around in Europe quite a bit.

“You have to go back 600 years and know exactly where all the ancestors of this person lived,” Gravel said. “And usually for the vast, vast majority of people, we don’t have this information.”

Accuracy also varies based on the individual’s background. For example, commercial tests don’t have a large record of genomes from First Nations individuals, so the accuracy in retracing the ethnicity of customers with First Nations history is not very high. The same is true for medical research.

“Because genetic researchers have tended to focus more on people of European ancestry, […] if you try to predict a disease from genetic data, you’re going to do a better job in Europeans than in other populations,” Gravel said.

Ultimately, companies like 23andMe and AncestryDNA have similar accuracy overall, but differ slightly in their results because they use different DNA databases. And while you may be 35 per cent South American, a genetic test won’t be able to tell you that your great-great-grandmother’s side of the family hailed from a tiny town in Uruguay. However, with the help of personal family records, genome sequencing might help you reach similar conclusions or confirm your suspicions.

Arts & Entertainment, Books

Red Colored Elegy is the perfect introduction to gekiga manga

by Dylan Adamson on

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Ichiro, the male lead of Red Colored Elegy, repeats a sort of young-male-tortured-artist catch phrase throughout the manga: “I want to draw comics.” Fortunately for readers, Seiichi Hayashi, Red’s author and illustrator, has a more realized sense of vocation. His cornerstone of the gekiga manga–the adult manga, or alternative manga, subgenre–Red, plots the doomed romance of live-in couple Ichiro and Sachiko in 1960s Tokyo.

Originally serialized in 1970 in the legendary alternative manga magazine Garo, Hayashi’s work is reprinted in English by Montreal comic book publisher Drawn & Quarterly, complete with an afterword from comics scholar Ryan Holmberg. With this 2018 paperback translation, following a hardcover first issue in 2008, Hayashi joins the ranks of gekiga legends Yoshihiro Tatsumi (A Drifting Life (2009)) and Shigero Mizuki (Kitaro (1960-69)) in Drawn & Quarterly’s ever-expanding catalogue of Japanese manga-kas.

Red’s influence at the peak of gekiga manga is pretty well unparalleled. It inspired at least one song in 1971, and it’s difficult to imagine Murakami’s Norwegian Wood (1987) not taking at least a few cues from Hayashi’s melancholic, dreamlike romantic flare. On the North American side of things, David Mazzucchelli’s 2009 masterwork, Asterios Polyp, in turn seems inconceivable without Hayashi’s trailblazing work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCDMlYSygWc

Critics have frequently drawn comparisons of Red to the French and Japanese New Wave cinemas, and for good reason. Ichiro and Sachiko are two financially insecure but romantically-engrossed 20-somethings, casting aside the morals of their parents’ generation in favour of days spent atop futons, complaining about writer’s block and laughing hysterically about nothing at all. Though the story itself is sexy in ways that an urban romance starring two young people smoking indoors can scarcely avoid, Red’s emotional heft derives from its stunning visual innovations. Ichiro and Sachiko don’t say too much, but to reduce their relationship to language would be to neglect the expressive weight of Hayashi’s images.

Akin to the French New Wave’s emblematic use of jump cuts and episodic sequencing, Hayashi’s panel-to-panel relationships seem to function on the principles of free-association, often requiring the reader to reorient themself before advancing in the narrative. Intense arguments and tender reconciliations alike are interrupted by abrupt, full-page spreads of waves or light fixtures. If the anti-establishment gravitas of a dōsei (Japanese for an unmarried live-in relationship) in 1960s Japan has been somewhat lost to the years, Hayashi’s freewheeling and poetic approach to storytelling maintains every ounce of its subversive potential.

While many of Hayashi’s more naturalistic, larger panels have a grandeur that is sure to bring to mind the 19th century ukiyo-e prints of High-School-Art-Boy-Facebook-Cover-Photos, Red’s wealth of contemporary reference points places it in a larger context of modernizing Japanese visual culture. Ichiro and Sachiko are both cartoonists struggling to earn fair wages in the increasingly-mechanized Japanese animation business. Hayashi himself was a young animator with Tōei Animation, the self-proclaimed Disney of Asia, where he worked under the same factory-like conditions as fellow animator Hayao Miyazaki. While Ichiro feels artistically unfulfilled in his animating work, Sachiko barely earns a living as a celluloid animator, several rungs down the ladder, where she is repeatedly harassed by her male superiors. At one point, as the two lovers rush together, Hayashi suddenly illustrates Sachiko and Ichiro as Sleeping Beauty and the Prince, dually reflecting the fantastical element of their romance and the fixation on Disney in the early days of “Japanimation.”

Unlike much of gekiga manga—Tatsumi’s work specifically, being preoccupied with pollution and urban degradation—Red finds beauty on the streets of Tokyo. While Ichiro and Sachiko’s life in Tokyo is represented as fragile, Hayashi’s wandering gaze never fails to depict a Tokyo brimming with life and possibility. Even in the face of the couple’s slow and painful heartbreak, Red’s visuals maintain their kinetic energy. Red breezes through its 235 pages, but it’s the manga’s re-readability that has brought its influence overseas almost 40 years after its original publishing.

Student Life

Montreal’s four most drinkable wines under 10 dollars

by Gabriel Helfant on

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Since the great Four Loko ban of 2017, many of McGill’s students, staff, and administrators have found themselves dazed and confused, hopelessly searching for an affordable alcoholic substitute to take the edge off. For some, the end of the sugary and colourful malt beverage era is an opportunity to delve into the world of sophisticated drinks—and what’s more sophisticated than a glass of vino? To help students explore the wonders of wine while sticking to a budget, The McGill Tribune has compiled a list of Montreal’s four best wines available at the Société des Alcools du Québec (SAQ) for under $10.

Astica Sauvignon Blanc: $8.60

Let the price speak for itself—this fruity white wine belongs in a bag and should only be consumed during Frosh week. Although Astica is more traveled than your friends on exchange, claiming to come from Argentina, it seems more at home in an Upper Residence dorm room. At first smell, you can tell this is a cheap wine—simultaneously very watered down and sickeningly sweet. But with its 13 per cent alcohol content and low price, this bottle has a high bang-to-buck ratio, making it the best choice if you’re looking to drink wine in large quantities. Just be careful, it’s probably not the type of wine you would want to bring home to your parents.

Domaine La Hitaire Les Tours: $9.25

Like many at McGill, La Hitaire sells itself through its pride in its French roots. Although the bottle presents itself more seriously then Astica, La Hitaire could still be confused for spiked fruit punch based on its citrusy taste. If you are looking to avoid the bitter taste of alcohol, La Hitaire is your best choice for a white wine, coming in at an unimpressive 10.5 per cent alcohol content. Buyer beware though: Sugary wines like these almost always guarantee a pounding headache the next morning.

Vila Regia: $8.95

At the sight and taste of Vila Regia, one could say that Portugal has truly outdone itself. This red wine perfectly combines subtle fruity flavours with a bottle aesthetic that wouldn’t offend a real adult. Vila Regia represents the best of both worlds—it’s perfect to drink at a cheap pizza party or to use in sangria at a more formal dinner gathering.

 

 

Firriato Nari Nero d’Avola / Petit Verdot: $9.50

This red wine tastes like what we can only imagine adulthood feels like—dry, stressful, and painfully serious. With a whopping 13.5 per cent alcohol content, the beverage smells like the McGill medical clinic, and does not taste much better. This wine’s redeeming factor is the bottle’s fancy design, which makes it somewhat acceptable to present in sophisticated environments.

Out on the Town, Student Life

Moving on in the Mile End: How gentrification is changing Montreal’s music scene

by Janine Xu on

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 In November 2017, Divan Orange, a popular music venue on St-Laurent Boulevard, announced that it would be permanently closing its doors due to financial hardships. Divan Orange was a staple of Montreal’s independent music community for 13 years, having hosted over 10,000 shows and kickstarting the careers of many popular artists such as Coeur de Pirate, Arcade Fire, and Patrick Watson.

Several months later, in February 2018, iconic Mile End coffee shop and live music venue Le Cagibi announced that, due to rent hikes, it would be moving from its location on St-Laurent and St-Viateur to a space five blocks north on St-Zotique Street in Little Italy. Operating for over 10 years, Le Cagibi’s vegetarian menu and small stage in the back room made it an inclusive, intimate space for musicians and music-lovers alike.

Divan Orange and Le Cagibi are both small music venues that showcase under-the-radar acts. As the Mile End gentrifes, intimate music spaces like these are being forced out of the neighbourhood due to financial strain. Not only is this a loss for local artists and regular show attendees, but the closure of these venues is leading to a loss of cultural tradition in Montreal’s vibrant music scene.

In a letter to culture site Urbania, the Divan Orange team cited difficult relationships with neighbours, rent and tax hikes, and a lack of support from public institutions as major factors contributing to the establishment’s closure. More specifically, in 2014, Divan Orange was fined roughly $18,000 due to excessive noise complaints made by a neighbour living above the bar, who reportedly phoned the police 85 times in two months. In response to the fine, members of the Divan Orange cooperative launched two crowdfunding campaigns to get the financial support to pay off the charges, but ultimately, this wasn’t enough to allow the bar to stay afloat.

Julien Senez-Gagnon, a spokesperson for the Divan Orange team, explained to the The McGill Tribune that the bar had been struggling to survive financially for over a year, and that the decision to permanently shut down was due to a lack of resources.

“We mentioned [online] that our financial situation is untenable,” Senez-Gagnon said. “The [noise complaints] hurt us very much.”

Senez-Gagnon noted that Divan Orange’s monetary problems were indicative of a larger issue that other small venues in Quebec are facing. For example, Le Cercle, a restaurant and music venue in Quebec City has also closed its doors due to financial issues.

“[This] is a systemic problem,” Senez-Gagnon said. “It’s not unique to Divan Orange. You see small alternative music venues closing down. We want to [raise awareness] that [other venues like Divan Orange] need support, [whether it be] finance or subsidizing. Montreal holds such a great identity towards its culture.”

Similarly, Le Cagibi is being pushed out of their Mile End location due to financial strain from rent hikes. The Montreal Gazette’s T’cha Dunlevy revealed that the building hosting the café changed owners in 2017, and the new owners increased the rent from $3,417 to $7,500 per month.

“That’s a huge increase,” Pamela Hart, president of Le Cagibi cooperative, said to Dunlevy. “We proposed $5,000 [for the whole space], but [the new owners] said that was absolutely not enough.”

The building is co-owned by Jeremy Kornbluth and Brandon Shiller, who also own the Jean-Talon Market building where a Starbucks was controversially opened in 2015, prompting complaints of gentrification, which led to its closure in 2017. Shiller is the son of Stephen Shiller of prominent real estate firm Shiller Lavy Realties, which has now bought seven commercial properties along the iconic St-Viateur Street in the Mile End. According to Dunlevy, Shiller Lavy Realties has been instrumental in replacing other small businesses along the street, including small locally-owned Pâtisserie & Boulangerie Clarke, which closed in 2015 and was replaced with a chain sushi restaurant.

In the end, Hart explained that the decision to relocate Le Cagibi was not an easy one. The café has been a staple in the Mile End for years, and it has maintained the history of its space (which was previously Café Esperanza, and before that, a pharmacy), by using vintage wood drawers and shelves from its previous occupants. Having lived in the Mile End on and off for over eight years herself, Hart is especially sad to see the cultural environment of the neighbourhood change.

“I’ve seen [the] Mile End change a lot,” Hart said. “What we’re looking at right now is basically a small group of men [coming in] and curating our whole neighbourhood. To me, [that] doesn’t feel right.”

With its new location, Le Cagibi is making big changes. Not only does its management plan to expand its menu options, they are also currently transitioning to a worker’s cooperative structure, in which a team of 10 founding members and five board members work collectively to run the new location rather than having one person in charge of everything. Hart explained that a co-op would allow for employees to have more agency and flexibility in making decisions.

“[The co-op] is much more secure for us in the long run,” Hart explained. “When you have a group of people who are all equally committed, when everyone’s voice is worth the same, it allows you a lot of diversity [and] freedom for individual workers.”

Le Cagibi is also hosting a crowdfunding campaign, seeking $35,000 to cover 40 per cent of moving costs. Unfortunately, the new space has only one room, leaving live music performances out of the question for now.

Emmett McCleary, U3 Arts, has performed at both Le Divan Orange and Le Cagibi. As a musician, he has felt the importance of keeping small music venues alive firsthand.

“Both [Divan Orange and Le Cagibi] are great,” McCleary said. “Le Cagibi in particular. When I was getting started in Montreal, it was good because it was incredibly cheap to book […] at $75 per night. [As a musician just starting out], you can [easily] book shows and play live. It makes the whole bureaucracy [of booking shows] more accessible, and you don’t have to […] know someone who knows someone.”

McCleary acknowledged that while McGill students may feel helpless as they watch their favourite cafés and music venues close, it is important to continue to go see live shows to support both the acts and the venues.

“Continue to seek out live music in non-traditional places, and support local music wherever it exists,” McCleary suggested.

Both Senez-Gagnon and Hart confirmed that public support for the venues has been overwhelming, with people expressing emotional and financial support through social media and crowdfunding.

“People had [Divan Orange] really close to heart,” Senez-Gagnon said. “People really loved it, musicians as well as the general public. Even when [we] were going through hard times, the public has always been there for us. It’s actually what kept us going for so long, to see that support.”

Hart also believes that raising awareness on social media is an important way to support venues such as Le Cagibi if donating isn’t an option.

“The community has [really been] there for us,” Hart said. “[Students can support us by] sharing our events and coming to our shows. We want to see all our favourite students [at our new location, whether] it be studying with their laptops or [enjoying] a cup of coffee. We want everyone to feel welcome and invited.”

Divan Orange’s last show is set for March 18, and Le Cagibi plans on relocating in April.

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