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Album Reviews, Arts & Entertainment

Point-Counterpoint: Sabrina Carpenter and the thin line between submission and control

by Malika Logossou, Jamie Xie on

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On Aug. 29, Sabrina Carpenter released her album Man’s Best Friend. But the real conversation began months earlier—on June 11—when she unveiled the provocative cover art on Instagram. It features Carpenter on all fours, in a black mini-dress and high heels, as an anonymous man grips her by the hair. A second promotional image shows a dog with the album’s name on its collar, an idiom for unquestionable loyalty to one’s owner.

Critics slammed the cover as “deeply irresponsible,” “regressive,” and “insanely misogynistic,” with some saying it “set women back like 100 years.” However, such outrage misses the point. Carpenter is not glamorizing subservience but rather confronting it.

Listeners should understand the album as a self-aware journey. In “Tears,” Carpenter confesses that she gets turned on by the bare minimum: A man who does the dishes, communicates well, and listens. She is not celebrating low standards, but mocking how women are conditioned to reward basic decency. Her irony is clear—she knows it’s absurd, and still, she finds sexual pleasure in it. Digging deeper in “My Man on Willpower,” she watches a former partner prioritize his personal growth so much that he loses devotion to her. Despite her numerous attempts at seduction, he drifts. The song exposes her desperation for male attention, likening her own loyalty to that of a dog. However, the closing track, “Goodbye,” is different. Channeling ABBA’s “Voulez-Vous” and “Take a Chance on Me,” she ends on an empowered note. Her ex wants her back, but she refuses, reminding him that it was he who said goodbye. She finally chooses herself.

Both the album and its cover cynically reflect the idea that accepting the bare minimum is akin to being ‘man’s best friend.’ She ridicules her own submission to the male gaze through cheeky lines while reclaiming agency. The message isn’t inspirational, but it’s honest: Even when her standards disappoint, she maintains control over her sexuality. 

Girl’s worst nightmare: Where was the puppy love?
Jamie Xie, Staff Writer

In Short n’ Sweet, Carpenter reinvents herself, pivoting from vulnerable Emails I Can’t Send confessional pop to popstar parody. In Man’s Best Friend, she promises one whole hour of all things sex in 4/4 metre as her winking Mae West persona. It comes across as if Carpenter is a little too comfortable in her endeavours to subvert expectations and create a post-ironic, sexually-liberated, feminist image—perhaps at the expense of subtlety and substantive commentary. While her irony represents a refreshing take on the pop genre, her work lacks the intentionality needed to challenge existing patriarchal power structures. Carpenter’s album does very little to engage thoughtfully with criticism of commodified sexuality, falling victim to a lack of creative direction.

The album’s only lead single, “Manchild,”  delivers a performance that comes across not only as formulaic but also derivative of her previous works. Echoing “Busy Woman” musical motifs but falling upon himbo cliches established in “Sharpest Tool.”“House Tour,” and “Sugar Talking,” display the album’s core through retro 80s Nu-disco synths—a safer genre direction than she seemed to be promising with the country elements used in “Slim Pickins” and “Manchild.”

Her strongest songs—“Go Go Juice,” “We Almost Broke Up Last Night,” and “My Man on Willpower”—barely tease this idea of developing Carpenter’s persona by making light of herself. What if Carpenter didn’t have all the answers? Could it be possible that she might not have as much control over her relationships as she would lead us to believe? On “Go Go Juice,” Carpenter is at her apex with her lyricism, creating a vignette of a messy but sympathetic woman running on boozy brunch and pure hope, all in a tight three-minute timeframe. 

Worse than being regressive, Man’s Best Friend suffers from the true crime of a distinct lack of imagination in the audience’s taste—symptoms of a desire to shock and please. Underlying the album are notes of insecurity that Carpenter is aware that the public’s adoration is difficult to hold. The current pop fixation on her may possibly be as short as it was once sweet.

Arts & Entertainment, Books

The search for the perfect summer read

by Annabella Lawlor on

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Soft gusts of breeze billow through loose hair as the sun reflects off bleached book pages. There is a prodding sharpness of salty seas and a deep odour of oak groves. A blow of wheat and pollen caresses overgrown fields; wind fights the fluttering pages of a book.

The beginning of summer often marks a return to reading for joy, without the impending doom that seeps into the pages of my literature assignments. Easing back into the comfort of real life, I rekindled my love of reading. But a real tragedy befell me: Glancing at the piles of books that awaited my return home, I felt stunted, overwhelmed by the number of options that lay before me. 

The question of what books are perfectly suited to the airiness of summer’s lingering months plagues both the internet and my mind. To fill the long-winded days with narratives unlike my own would be the ideal outcome, but wherever I started seemed to be the wrong path. After searching for my perfect summer read in a drug and sex-ridden memoir of New York’s 70s punk scene, a historical fiction book about misogynistic witchcraft accusations, and whatever Miranda July considers the plot of her new novel, I finally found my answer in Ben Shattuck’s short fiction.

A book most suited for summer isn’t just something light—a work requiring no thought in the process of reading—but rather one that bathes in the quaint beauty of its seeming nothingness. Its atmosphere is earnest and reflective. These contemplative, character-driven books hold a mirror to the surrounding world, picking out its complexities and documenting the nuances of human experience. 

In the windy greenery of Vermont hills, I perched with Shattuck’s short story collection, The History of Sound, only glancing up at howling birds or the whispering of dirt roads. It is one of the finest collections of short stories that I have ever had the delight to read. Set amidst the backdrop of New England, the collection explores the interactions of people in the region throughout time. 

Thoughtful and intense, each anecdote flows in like a budding wave, crashing and easing into the shore, slowly drifting back out with a turn of the page. “The Auk” follows a man’s quest to comfort the idle days of his wife with Alzheimer’s, while “Edwin Chase of Nantucket” sees a meeting between old lovers—a painter and his first love, Laurel—told from the perspective of her young son. The eponymous story, the first of the collection, details two men’s budding romance en route to tape folk songs of the American Northeast, and the eventual fallout of their forbidden love in the early 19th century. Shattuck rounds out the collection with “Origin Stories,” a return to the men’s narrative almost fifty years later, wherein a woman discovers these recordings and seeks to return them to their rightful owner.

In these quiet reflections of temporal transience, Shattuck’s narrative demonstrates how history scars the present with evidence of its past. His stories come in pairs, as if rhyming couplets in a poem. Often shifting from past to present—or vice versa—in the complementary stories, these odes to humanity serve to remind us that although history feels distant, it remains alive in everything around us. 

Shattuck captures a moment in time as if a storied set of narrative paintings, waiting to be made sense of alongside its companions. Though we pass through each world only momentarily, we witness the charms and weaknesses of those encountered with breathtaking nuance. 

I left his work with a profound sense of gratitude, recognizing the menialities and quaintness of life through which we are all connected. We all have felt the anxiety of making new conversations, the internal ache of a love unrequited, the panging uncertainty of decision. We are all simply waves crashing against stone, combusting and receding, making way for waves soon to follow. It is ultimately in these quiet ruminations that summer is most suited.

Montreal, News

“Rogue Archives”: QPIRG’s School Schmool agenda returns in 2025-2026

by Basil Atari on

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The Quebec Public Interest Research Groups (QPIRG) at McGill and Concordia launched the 2025-2026 edition of their annual daily planner and guide for students, School Schmool on Sept. 4. The agenda’s goal is to inform students of practical anti-oppressive resources on both universities’ campuses and around Montreal. School Schmool also highlights student-made articles, art pieces, and poetry. 

In an interview with The Tribune, Leila Salazar, a fourth-year anthropology student at Concordia and School Schmool co-coordinator at QPIRG-Concordia, explained that QPIRG’s mandate is to find anti-oppressive ways of connecting Montreal’s wide-ranging communities of university students.

“[School Schmool has been published annually] since 1994 to start the year right, bring new students into knowing the resources that they have access to, [and provide] a way for artists and writers to have their work published,” they said.

This year’s School Schmool theme is “Rogue Archives.” The agenda explains, “Rogue Archives do not sit quietly on a shelf [….] Archives created and preserved by Indigenous, Black, […] Queer and Trans, low-income, and disabled people are often absent […] or reduced to fragments [which is why] we offer this Agenda as a rogue archive.”

At the launch event, Olivia-Jeri Pizzuco-Ennis, a final-year journalism student at the Université du Québec à Montréal and co-coordinator of School Schmool described some of McGill students’ contributions to the planner.

“In the context of […] Rogue Archives, […] [a McGill] author named Jane […] put headlines from emails [sent by Provosts Deep Saini and Suzanne Fortier] about Ukraine and the encampment in conversation with each other,” she said in an interview with The Tribune. 

Pizzuco-Ennis noted that this contribution reflects how McGill students are using the agenda to critically engage with frustrations over the university’s inadequate response to a variety of issues, such as Palestinian and Queer liberation, the former of which has led to contractual disputes between QPIRG and McGill.

“There is a lot to say about QPIRG-McGill and QPIRG-Concordia’s continued existence, but obviously their position at McGill is much more threatened than at Concordia,” Pizzuco-Ennis stated. 

In January 2025, McGill University sent QPIRG-McGill a notice of default of their shared Memorandum of Agreement (MoA), due to QPIRG-McGill’s support for Students for Palestine’s Honour and Resistance (SPHR). As one of QPIRG-McGill’s working groups, SPHR receives financial and administrative support from the organization, which McGill alleges is a breach of its MoA with QPIRG as SPHR has violated McGill’s Code of Student Conduct.

Nelly Wat, an outreach coordinator at QPIRG-McGill, shared why the School Schmool launch event itself is so significant in an interview with The Tribune. 

“In the beginning of the [MoA] arbitration process, […] we weren’t allowed to book spaces […] [and] host events [on campus], which obviously impeded our activities,” they said. “As of now, that’s been lifted, we are technically allowed to book events on campus again, [but it] created a lot of barriers for us, especially when it came to our big events [….] So, to be able to put together this agenda […] and have [an] incredible launch […] was really inspiring.”

Despite their MoA challenges, Wat highlighted how School Schmool provides a glimmer of hope to QPIRG by indicating that ongoing communal resistance is unfolding at McGill.

“I’m really happy to see just how many students there are who are interested in [getting involved in] activism, contributing to the agenda and putting out such beautiful artwork, poetry and articles,” they said.

A previous version of this article listed Olivia-Jeri Pizzuco-Ennis as only a Université du Québec à Montréal student. In fact, she is also a coordinator of School Schmool, alongside Salazar. The Tribune regrets this error.

Science & Technology

All ages aboard: Making public transport more accessible for older adults

by Antoine Larocque on

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A city’s public transit system should serve the needs of all its inhabitants and leave no citizen behind. However, many older adults living in Canadian cities are reluctant to use these services, relying on their cars instead.

Meredith Alousi-Jones, a PhD candidate in McGill’s School of Urban Planning, and her collaborators investigated the barriers preventing older adults—those aged 65 years and above—from using public transit. This research was conducted as part of the Aging in Place Challenge program, which aims to help aging populations thrive in their own homes and communities—an alternative that many prefer to nursing home care.

“Older adults are a segment of the population that is typically less studied in research, especially concerning transit,” Alousi-Jones said in an interview with The Tribune. “We know that it is a growing population.”

Their study surveyed residents across six Canadian cities—Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Victoria, Saskatoon, and Halifax—encompassing a wide range of urban contexts, from metropolises to smaller urban areas.

“The gap that [the study] was trying to address is mainly from a policy point of view of giving some tips to the agencies in each of the six research contexts,” Alousi-Jones said.

To form targeted initiatives for public transport agencies, the researchers grouped people who avoid public transit into four categories: Non-users who are transit-inclined, those who use it as a last resort, those who are not considering it for now, and those who are transit-averse.

They found that many older adults do not use public transit simply because it often fails to meet their day-to-day requirements.

“It is not a mode [of transport] that suits their needs,” Alousi-Jones elaborated. “A lot of them, especially in the more rural areas, like the suburbs or even smaller cities, where public transit is not as expansive over the territory, do not find that it is efficient, do not find that they can carry groceries easily, or things like that.”

A lack of knowledge about how to use public transport also deters many, especially those who are new to a city or unfamiliar with its transportation system. Among the 491 survey respondents, many cited poor reliability and discomfort as key concerns. Alousi-Jones highlighted that reliability, comfort, and access to information on how to use public transit are solutions readily actionable by public transport agencies.

“Things like adequate seating and seating at bus stops were common suggestions from our respondents for how they could use public transit a bit more,” Alousi-Jones said.

The researchers noted differences in survey answers between cities. For instance, non-users from larger cities—Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver—wanted transit services to run more frequently, while people in Saskatoon, a colder city, demanded more bus shelters for comfort while waiting. 

While older adults in Montreal appreciated free fares, the researchers noted that this measure did not necessarily incentivize them to use public transit.

Taking the results together, Alousi-Jones’ main recommendation was to make transit more accessible by improving the reliability and proximity of public transportation services.

“A lot of older people do not necessarily have the physical ability or the desire to walk a long time to get to transit, so they do not mind transferring as much as [one] would think,” Alousi-Jones said. “They do not care if they have to go from a bus to a metro or so on, as long as the bus is reliable and it is close to their house.”

Alousi-Jones stressed that her recommendations would not only benefit older adults but also other users in the population. She presented her research to public transit agencies across the six cities to ensure that her results were communicated to the right decision-makers.

“The [cities] really want to make sure that the transit is well adapted to their needs,” Alousi-Jones observed. Moving forward, Alousi-Jones now studies how to improve satisfaction among current transit users, as well as the barriers that prevent them from using it more frequently. She believes that public transit may improve if it is treated as an essential service that enhances life quality as opposed to a money-generating service. Applying this philosophy will not only enhance people’s well-being as they age but will also contribute to achieving Canada’s net-zero emission target by encouraging people to choose low-emission car alternatives.

Behind the Bench, Sports

Beyond the court: The Ostapenko-Townsend dispute

by Alex Hawes Silva on

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On Aug. 27, tennis players Jelena Ostapenko and Taylor Townsend got into a verbal altercation after the second round of the 2025 US Open. After an intense matchup where Townsend defeated the Latvian in straight sets 7-5, 6-1, Ostapenko initiated a heated conversation that ended in her saying that Townsend had “no class” and “no education.” Ostapenko’s remarks sparked major outrage online and amongst fans, with many claiming the comments had racist undertones and that Ostapenko should be penalized accordingly. 

Ostapenko has apologized since the incident, saying that English is not her first language and that she did not have malicious intentions and meant no harm. With a history of racism within the sport of tennis, many wonder what the truth is behind this incident, and whether Ostapenko should be held accountable for her actions. 

Tennis has long been shaped by exclusionary practices, making any discussion of potentially racist remarks amongst athletes reflective of the sport’s history. For decades, professional tennis was dominated by wealthy, predominantly white individuals, with clubs and major tournaments often banning and excluding Black athletes. Althea Gibson broke barriers in 1956 as the first Black player to win a Grand Slam title, but her success did not shield her from discrimination and prejudice both on and off the court. 

In the 21st century, Venus and Serena Williams have endured similar treatment, facing racist behaviour from crowds and accusations that their competitive fire is “angry” and “unladylike.” These stereotypes speak to a broader pattern in tennis, in which Black women have been portrayed as lacking composure or “class.” With this deep-rooted history of racism, Ostapenko’s words—even if they were born of frustration rather than racism—resonate with a long history of discrimination that has targeted Black women in tennis specifically.

While Ostapenko apologized, her comments cannot be separated from this history. Her words “no class” and “no education” parallel language traditionally used to demean and dehumanize Black women, which explains why many saw them as racially charged. Even if Ostapenko’s remarks were less about race and more about venting frustration after a difficult loss, the fact that Townsend, a Black American player, was the target means the impact was different than if Ostapenko had directed her words at someone else. Athletes like Ostapenko must consider the effects of their actions and see how their comments risk reinforcing harmful stereotypes that have persisted in tennis for decades. The situation as a whole highlights how racism in sport is not always explicit and overt, but can also emerge through language that carries different meanings depending on history, context, and audience.

Ostapenko’s remarks towards Townsend were more than a heated post-match dispute: They serve as a reminder of how deeply history shapes the present in tennis and in society. Acknowledging this context does not mean automatically condemning Ostapenko as malicious, but it does highlight the need for awareness and accountability in tennis. 

The next steps for the United States Tennis Association (USTA) should be not just responding thoughtfully to address this single incident, but committing to education and policies for their athletes that prevent racist behaviour before it occurs. Tennis has progressed toward inclusivity, yet moments like this show there is still work to be done. Ensuring that every player, regardless of race or background, competes in an environment free from discrimination is not just the USTA’s responsibility—it is essential to the sport as a whole.

Off the Board, Opinion

Sleep to dream: In defense of napping

by Ella Bachrach on

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If you know me, you are aware that I suffer from a serious problem—one that strains friendships, disrupts schedules, and even alters the very fabric of reality. 

I am too often caught with indented lines strewn across my cheek like battle scars, my hair a knotted mess, and drool crusted near my mouth, when I should be hard at work in the library. I lose hours every week, entire days each month, to sweet, blissful unconsciousness. 

I can’t help it—I love napping.

Allow me to set the scene. My feet drag as I forge through Milton-Parc, the blocks lengthening until my apartment appears like a flickering mirage in the distance. When I finally arrive, I manage to haul my aching body up the stairs, kick off my boots, and collapse onto my bed. I really should open a book and get to reading: Jacob’s Room requires my attention, as do 20 chapters of an 18th-century bildungsroman to be discussed in detail tomorrow morning. 

Instead, I close my eyes. My muscles relax, from the crease between my eyebrows and the tension just above my shoulder blades, down to the knot in my stomach. I am like one of those mattresses you order online that comes vacuum sealed, the kind you have to throw in a corner and let expand for a couple of days. I let out a final exhale and drift into a limitless escape.

Napping is not thought of as a productive pastime. Instead, it is seen as lazy—the act of a slacker who lacks motivation or a procrastinator aiming to avoid afternoon obligations. However, while the body rests during sleep, the brain remains active.

As an English major, I spend considerable time pondering literature’s role in escapism. Reading permits the mind to wander outside the confines of the reader’s physical reality; they journey to new spaces and lives by accessing the depths of their imagination.

Is napping any different? It allows the mind to explore, unrestrained by consciousness.

Sleep offers the mind freedom it cannot experience while awake: Freedom from laws of rationality and physics. Time warps and stretches during sleep, growing thin and sticky like taffy. Two hours pass like two minutes—or two years. I have dreamt of giving birth and raising a child into adulthood, only to wake and find that I have been resting for a mere segment of the day. 

Of course, I am not the first to consider the nature of dreams. 

Sigmund Freud called the interpretation of dreams “the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.” 

In one of many diaries, Virginia Woolf wrote, “I will dream today; for I must unscrew my head somehow.” 

Woolf cannot be called mentally well, and Freud was on his fair share of powdered stimulants. Still, these famous thinkers nonetheless concurred that dreaming provides an escape from daily life and allows access to paths otherwise untrodden. 

Shakespeare, who crafted an entire play about the mysterious happenings of dreams, would surely agree. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, fairy trickster Puck even tells the audience to reflect on the performance as a dream if they struggled to comprehend the extraordinary events that occurred: “Think but this and all is mended, / That you have but slumber’d here / While these visions did appear.” Like literature, sleep breaks down boundaries and enables cognitive exploration.

Overnight sleep serves a function: To rest and rejuvenate the mind and body for the coming day. It is a part of daily order, a logical ritual. 

Napping, however, is not a basic need. Instead, this form of sleep is an intellectual pursuit; it demonstrates a belief in the expansive, generative power of the unconscious. 

Next time you make the endless odyssey home from class, pause before pulling up your endless list of readings and allow yourself the freedom to relax. Flop onto your bed. Kick off your shoes. Close your eyes and let your mind wander. I hereby grant you permission to do the unthinkable, the slothful, the temporizing: Take a nap. 

Only when napping can your mind break free from inhibition and explore the depths of consciousness, perception, and imagination. Sleep, not to rest, but to dream. 

McGill, News

McGill seeking a public relations agency for rebranding support

by Devdas Hind on

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McGill is expected to select a public relations agency this September to help it carry out a rebranding campaign, attempting to reposition how the Quebec government and McGill’s students and donors perceive the university. The potential rebranding deal could cost McGill up to $6.7 million CAD. 

Student protests, tuition hikes, disputes with Indigenous communities, labour strikes, and conflicts with the Québec government have greatly impacted McGill’s reputation in recent years.

In a written statement to The Tribune, Co-President of the Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill (AGSEM) Emma McKay commented on the public backlash McGill is facing from its responses to conflicts on campus. 

“McGill believes its reputation has been damaged by widespread pro-Palestine activism (ironically worsened by their own security response), the Quebec government’s moves against anglophone universities, and labour strikes,” McKay wrote. “We believe the more serious issues are their funding of genocide, overwhelming and alarming use of private security, poor responses to reasonable asks from workers, and their immense turn toward austerity.”

From hunger strikes to solidarity encampments, McGill’s downtown campus has been the site of years of student activism for Palestine. The Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) ratified a three-day student strike in April 2025 to pressure the university to divest from companies complicit in the genocide of Palestinians. During this strike, protesters blocked classrooms and demonstrated across campus. In response, McGill temporarily severed ties with SSMU for “[supporting] a three-day strike that further divided a campus community already deeply cleaved and hurting,” according to Interim Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Angela Campbell.

Critics of the termination called McGill’s decision an attack on freedom of speech and assembly, which damaged the university’s brand in the public’s eye.

McGill has also recently been the site of multiple contentious labour struggles. In March 2024, the AGSEM went on a three-week long strike to demand better pay conditions for teaching assistants. In August 2024, the Association of McGill Professors of Law (AMPL) also decided to strike in response to McGill’s failure to meet their demands regarding faculty governance and pay conditions. The AMPL accused McGill of implementing a strategy of delaying their collective agreement negotiations, and thus denying employees their right to unionize. 

McKay said that McGill is prioritizing its administrative executives’ paychecks over students and staff. 

“[McGill cares] more about lining pockets of upper admin and maintaining the interest of wealthy donors than the education they offer,” McKay wrote. “[McGill’s] response to budget constraints from the government has been to hand them down to workers through the 60 layoffs this past spring and cuts to hours and functions across the university.”

In a written statement to The Tribune, McGill’s Media Relations Office (MRO) asserted that the university is reviewing its marketing strategy to make sure it is productive.

“We are engaging in a competitive process to help ensure that the resources dedicated to [marketing] initiatives are used as effectively as possible,” the office wrote. 

The MRO also specified that McGill is undertaking its public relations efforts to bolster enrolment. 

“[Marketing efforts are] particularly to support student recruitment,” the MRO wrote.

McGill’s enrolment has been impacted by the Quebec government’s announcement of a $3,000 CAD tuition hike for out-of-province students at English-speaking universities in Fall 2023. Although a Quebec judge ruled that the rationale behind the tuition increases was faulty, Higher Education Minister Pascale Déry announced that the government would move forward with the financial decision. McGill is planning to cut its 2025-2026 budget by $45 million CAD as a result of the Quebec government’s actions. 

In light of tuition hikes targeting English universities, Ernan Haruvy, a professor of marketing in the Faculty of Management, emphasized in an interview with The Tribune that McGill has already shifted to being more bilingual, but has not communicated this effectively.

“The issue [was] messaging. [McGill] did not control it, [while] the government did,” Haruvy said. 

Commentary, Opinion

Quebec fines LaSalle College $29.9 million CAD over anglophone student quota

by Julie Raout on

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LaSalle College overenrolled 716 and 1066 students in its English-speaking programs in 2023 and 2024 respectively. In response, the Quebec Government imposed a $30 million CAD penalty on the college, forcing the institution to postpone the school year kickoff, initially scheduled for Aug. 25.

The cost of such substantial defunding calls into question the Quebec government’s strategy in preserving the French language. LaSalle’s disregard for the quota has been treated as an attack against the Charter of the French Language. The province has defended this legislation vehemently within the last couple of years, aiming to preserve French as the sole official language of the province.

By the time Quebec introduced these quotas, LaSalle had already accepted students for the 2023 school year. The school was unwilling to break contracts with students in 2023 and 2024, to avoid letting down students who had enrolled before the announcement of caps on English-speaking programs.

LaSalle stressed the damage caused by the cut, noting that subsidies cover about 40 per cent of each Quebecois student’s tuition bill. This penalty impedes the provision of quality resources to college, threatens staff jobs, and compromises the education of all its students.

While Quebec’s penalty on a law violation is legitimate, refusing to give the college a grace period for quotas and punishing non-profit institutions in ways that jeopardize their viability is not. Targeting LaSalle College over the school-wide language of instruction speaks more broadly to an inflexible and destructive aggressiveness in this endeavour of cultural preservation. 

Quebec’s ambition to preserve francophone heritage is understandable in an increasingly globalized world. Linguistic conservation is vital as the province anchors its identity and culture in French, using the language to differentiate itself from the surrounding English-speaking provinces. However, Quebec’s sanctioning of LaSalle fuels resentment against the government’s goal. Quebec’s coercive measures cultivate a hostile environment that is counterproductive to the promotion of francophone culture. 

The Quebec government updated the Charter of the French Language through Bill 96 in 2022. These updates incorporated policies encouraging French over English—for example, through quotas on anglophone students in collegiate institutions—but also implemented austere policies against non-French-speaking foreigners. For example, immigrants are now given only six months to learn French, after which they must use it exclusively in official government communications. Measures that pressure immigrants to learn French so quickly make Quebec appear less attractive for immigration, although the province largely relies on it.

English-speaking universities are impacted because international students represent a significant share of their student body—for instance, 30 per cent of McGill’s students come from abroad. In 2023, Quebec started to cut subsidies for English-speaking institutions like McGill, forcing a tuition increase for out-of-province and international students in its effort to preserve French linguistic dominance. As a result, prospective students are financially discouraged from moving to Quebec, and made to feel unwelcome by the fervent pushing of a French agenda.

Policies to enforce the Charter create downsizing by diminishing Quebec’s capacity to attract international talent. Provincial funding cuts forced McGill to announce approximately 99 layoffs for the 2025-2026 school year. The administration’s strategy to defund educational and research entities proves to be harmful to the province in the long run, as it hinders the province’s ability to provide resources and curbs development—especially considering that the higher education sector grew research and development from +$715.0 million CAD to $16.6 billion CAD in 2021. 

This subsidy-cut strategy affects immigrants, workers, and students, while disheartening people from learning French instead of promoting the language. The harsh implementation of the Charter for the French Language undermines the province’s strengths—particularly its multiculturalism, which has long been a source of social, economic, and cultural vitality. Instead of using public services to pressure individuals into francophone culture, Quebec should aim to foster a community invested in preserving French out of cultural curiosity and gratitude for the province’s openness. 

In its heartfelt intention to protect its heritage, Quebec lost sight of what it sacrifices by antagonistically enforcing French, forgetting that the true goal is to promote French as means of furthering, not suppressing, linguistic diversity.

Arts & Entertainment, Books

 ‘One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This’ shatters the Western liberal ethos

by Mairin Burke on

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This is going to be a poor book review. It is impossible to adequately editorialize upon Omar El Akkad’s One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. Every line demands that its readers confront the Western liberal enterprise’s absolute apathy towards human suffering. If I had not expected to lend the book to everyone I know, my copy would be almost completely highlighted. Each of its incisive, revolutionary sentences speaks to our urgent obligation to walk away from systems of privilege that will always disregard humanity in favour of self-interest.

El Akkad began his career as a journalist for The Globe and Mail, which deeply informs both his acclaimed novels and One Day. Much of the latter is explicitly dedicated to condemning Western journalism’s repeated failures to indict neo-colonial and imperial perpetrators of violence until after they have already devastated entire populations. It is, moreover, a personal reckoning with authorial responsibility, as El Akkad grapples with how to balance the financial precariousness of a creative career with the core artistic need to fight injustice—even if its doers sponsor the awards and grants these artists earn, making them complicit.

One Day is also, as El Akkad posits in the book’s first chapter, “an account of an ending.” As an Egyptian and Qatari immigrant to Canada and now the United States, he describes the fable of the tolerant, the just West he was promised, and now sees for what it is: An empty shell. El Akkad argues that liberal politicians simply provide a less bad alternative for marginalized groups than the right, who are at least honest about their discriminatory natures. This dynamic exposes the deep hypocrisy at the heart of Western liberalism.

“The system […] was never intended to work for you, but as an act of magnanimity on our part, you may choose the degree to which it works against you,” El Akkad writes, describing the United States Democratic Party.

One Day’s argumentative power against Western liberalism’s performativity does not overshadow its literary elegance. Written as a series of vignettes, the work is overflowing with novelistic prowess. It is also bitingly funny: El Akkad recounts how, when living in Montreal, a university-aged peer informed him that Naked Lunch was “the finest novel ever written” (a very McGill-esque exchange). This familiarity enforces readers’ connections to the modes of action and resistance El Akkad argues we must assume to combat the malice of empire.

Moreover, El Akkad’s gorgeous prose deeply strengthens One Day’s calls for a journalistic reckoning. Rather than the “linguistic malpractice” Western legacy outlets engage in when they describe atrocities as happening without cause—in vague and lukewarm language that eschews blame—El Akkad’s prose asks us why we only feel “safe enough to venerate resistance in hindsight.” It reveals how the polite language Western society endlessly litigates is only possible when alienated from violence and suffering. While The New York Times avoids use of the words ‘Palestine’ and ‘genocide’ for fear of hurting those in a world “not reduced to rubble,” Israel wields literal weapons to destroy Palestinian lives.

Through its deeply personal, unflinching commitment to truth and compassion, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This challenges tidy narratives about Palestine that make the dead “pay the moral debt born of their killing” to protect the Western world from the discomfort of acknowledging Palestinian humanity. El Akkad’s ultimate call is to walk away from a liberal system that cannot fathom the true love for the ‘Others’ he depicts—in the Palestinians who mourn their families while continuing to document atrocities, in the Jewish activists who condemn Israel, in the artists who reject clout to reject genocide—is an antidote to the insanity El Akkad, too, feels while watching genocide unfold in silence.

“You are being asked to kill off a part of you that would otherwise scream in opposition to injustice,” El Akkad writes. “[….] Forget pity, forget even the dead if you must, but at least fight against the theft of your soul.”

Album Reviews, Arts & Entertainment

‘Essex Honey’ is a perfected orchestra of love, loss, and grief 

by Kaitlyn Schramm on

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Devonté Hynes, under the alias Blood Orange, entered the mainstream several years ago when his 2011 song, “Champagne Coast,” gained viral popularity on TikTok. After a six-year hiatus, he released a new album on Aug. 29, Essex Honey in which he contemplates grief, loss, and growing up. Within each song is a series of ellipses tying itself together, as though he is intertwining several different sounds—fragmented, yet harmonious. The songs are free from the imprisonment of iconic sound and catchiness, acting rather as a surrender to a sense of measured choppiness. The lyricism reads like poetry, balanced amongst sounds of conversation and bursts of instrumental ad libs. Exhibiting a symphony of reality, Essex Honey is a phenomenal album that travels through the journey of grief with grace. 

“Look at You,” the first track of the album, is a touching song about grief that sets the tone for the songs that follow, representing Hynes’ fear of the inevitability of change and death. The ebbs and flows of the song represent the ebbs and flows of loss: The feeling of staring at your ceiling trying to sleep when all you can think about is the sound of their laugh or the crinkle of their eyes. The rest of the tracks don’t explicitly confront human death, but rather the death of the hometown, the death of childhood. Hynes’ uncertainty surrounding these losses is palpable beyond the words he sings. In each track lie multiple songs, with abrupt shifts from solemn collaborations of flute and piano to harsh, staccato cello notes. He conveys the anxiety that at any moment, your loved ones could die, your hometown could become unrecognizable, and without realizing it, you stop being a kid. 

As someone who has experienced grief and loss, the album is incredibly touching. And as a musician, it is a commanding work of art. Hynes places each instrument, including the various features—namely Caroline Polachek and Tirzah—in conversation with one another. As he voices his lyrics, a flute chimes in with agreement. A bass line delivers some harsh news, and a crowd of seagulls offers condolences. In a way that feels incredibly tangible, the sounds are woven together in communication like a lively debate at the dinner table. Essex Honey is the kind of album that leaves a lingering desire to watch the music in action, to watch the instruments bounce off one another. 

The concluding track, “I Can Go,” pulls the album together such that the listener themselves feels Hynes’ journey with grief. He does not leave the listener hanging: It is not open to interpretation. Following the thirteenth track, “I Listened (Every Night),”—a liberating love letter to music as therapy—“I Can Go” settles into everyday grief. It is the light at the end of the tunnel, the acceptance that the only way forward is through. Hynes sings, “Now, what you know / Is nothing I can hold / I can go.” Whereas earlier in the album, he is clearly distraught, hanging on to what no longer exists, the final track is a surrender, an acceptance. 

Rejecting the instant but fleeting gratification of TikTok virality, Hynes has created a beautiful and encapsulating album, free from overused and stereotypical fifteen-second sound bites that have become all-too familiar amongst popular artists. Essex Honey is not clippable nor catchy—it is raw, a breath of fresh air. It is jazz, classical, and R&B. It is the experience of eavesdropping on the metro with one earbud in, studying in a cafe comforted by the clinking of silverware and overlapped conversations, walking on a busy street surrounded by your own contemplative thoughts of love and loss. A gleaner of everyday noise, Hynes has yet again proved himself to be a master of the medium, finding freedom and solace in the vicissitudes of life. 

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