Latest News

a, Features

Diversity unravelled

by Mayaz Alam on

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Growing up, I always knew I was different. As a Bangladeshi citizen who was born in Indonesia, I was atypical. As someone who attended the same international school for 11 years—where international schools are notorious for the amount of year to year turnover they see in their student bodies—I wasn’t /normal/. In many ways, that was the point of going to an international school. Everyone was different, yet differences were celebrated and diversity enriched both the learning and life experiences I had as a child.

Despite this, I rejected the idea that I was South Asian. Throughout my childhood I wanted to rid myself of my Bangladeshi identity. I had never lived there and I didn’t identify with many of the things that made someone ‘Bangladeshi.’ I don’t have an accent, I act ‘westernised,’ and I have very few coethnic friends.

I came to McGill because, among other things, I wanted to go to an internationally renowned university with a diverse student body. Looking back on my decision to come here, I feel as though I wanted to recreate my experiences that I had while going to an international school. Each undergraduate student that attends McGill comes in with a certain degree of naiveté. I was no different.

Deadpool
a, Arts & Entertainment, Film and TV

Pop rhetoric: Deadpool and the R-rated bandwagon a downhill ride

by Tanveer Ahmed on

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This is an age where an R-rated movie can make north of $150 million in a weekend in the United States alone. Deadpool not only smashed countless records, but also had the highest-grossing opening weekend of any R-rated film in the United States. This massive success has fans and studios jumping onto the R-rated bandwagon, calling for not only adaptations of mature properties to film, but also giving formerly kid-ified material and R-rated twist. But this impulsive reaction might not be the right strategy. 

Deadpool’s success can be attributed to many different things. Firstly, it has a huge, passionate fanbase that floods every comic book convention in costumes. This passion isn’t something that other adult-oriented properties such as The Punisher can boast. Past attempts are a clear indication of this as Watchmen, a venerated cult graphic novel-turned-movie, garnered barely more than $100 million domestically in its entire run. Other examples include the Blade trilogy, which earned a combined $200 million or the two Punisher films that made $33 million and $8 million, respectively. 

Perhaps a bigger reason for the hype created by Deadpool was its ingenious advertising campaign. From its announcement, the publicity department was bang-on with posters and videos reminding the audience of the upcoming release of the film. Add to that the self-aware nature of the social media engagement by the perfectly-cast Ryan Reynolds and you have arguably the best marketing job ever done for a movie. The faithful portrayal lured in fans of the source material while the constant influx of publicity for the film sparked the interest of general audiences. This kind of perfect storm cannot be brewed by any other property than this due to the unique fourth-wall-breaking nature of this particular character. Studios and audiences may be mis-attributing the success of this film to its rating rather than the immense work put into marketing it. 

The argument has been made for producing films with characters that have generally had a PG-13 rating as R-rated flicks. Many have called for Batman or Wolverine to be portrayed in the brutally violent fashion that certain comic books have. This approach however makes little sense for studios or general audiences who are not comic fanatics. Both of these characters have illustrious reputations in animation aimed at children, with Batman appearing in more than 60 different shows while Wolverine has had his own steady presence since the ’90s X-Men animated series. These characters have ingrained themselves into people’s childhoods to the point that they are considered idols and heroes. Representing them as ultra-violent characters is not only a betrayal of the source material, but also an unfair proposition for the younger audience who would normally be looking forward to such films. Furthermore, these studios want all demographics possible heading to the box office to ensure massive box office success. This proposition alienates a large audience to the disadvantage of studios; it’s a lose-lose scenario.

Deadpool is a wonderful anomaly in a sea of formulaic comic-book movies, but it would be foolish to conclude that the film is anything beyond that. Attempting to cash in on its success would only render it a flash in the pan. Hollywood and audiences have to realize that such a change of pace was required in the first place due to the predictable nature of the movie climate today; modelling future releases after Deadpool will only perpetuate this problem. Let it remain the breath of fresh air that it is instead of stuffing up the room with similar content.

Exhibit
a, Arts & Entertainment, Books, Music

Port Symphonies pays tribute to the “Queen of Crime”

by Miray Eroglu on

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Pointe-à-Callière Museum’s 22nd edition of Port Symphonies, featuring composer and trombonist Scott Thomson, honoured the achievements of Agatha Christie, the famed murder-mystery novelist. The concert was held in Old Montréal at Place-Royale Square, next to the Pointe-à-Callière Museum, where a current exhibition, Investigating Agatha Christie brings to light Christie’s many interests, from literature to archaeology. The exhibition paints a portrait of the woman behind the novels. For Agatha Christie fans, Investigating Agatha Christie, which includes mementos from Christie’s childhood, marriages, and life spent abroad, is a must-see as it provides the context for the purpose behind this year’s Port Symphonies concert. Together, these elements pay homage to the life and legacy of Agatha Christie and offer alternate modes in which to honour the “Queen of Crime.”

Port Symphonies opened to the sound of bagpipes and drums performed in the middle of Place Royale Square. It was not long before the space was filled with onlookers who gathered to watch the performers and hear the boats, including tugboats and ships, blow their horns in unison. What began as an initially unusual arrangement of sound came together in an interesting medley of music through the combination of the bagpipes, trains and boat horns at different pitches. Thomson’s passion for improvisation is evident in the structure of Port Symphonies as the sounds combine together in surprising and interesting ways.

The performance had a feeling of spontaneity, as the crowd gathered to listen at different points of the concert, and could be enjoyed by everyone not only at Place-Royale but throughout the surrounding area of the museum and Old Port. The sonorous tone of the horns from the boats filled the air with a resonant sound that enveloped the square. Members of the audience filmed the location and recorded the music, producing a sweeping panorama of the view looking out to the boats in the river. In this manner, the concert was unique in that there was not a single performer, nor was the performance limited to a precise location, but features a variety of elements assembled to create a cohesive sound. The spectacle was framed by the scenic location, the charming beauty of Old Montreal beside the luminous skyline, and the harbour dotted with boats. Port Symphonies was truly an immersive experience for onlookers to join together and wait in anticipation for what the next sound arrangement will be.

As the boat horns echoed one another, it seemed as if the sounds were in communication with each other, each responding in a different octave. The performance, about half an hour in duration, was framed by the sound of bagpipes, creating a sense of unity. The noise of the boats, bagpipes and locomotives throughout the symphony was reminiscent of the excitement and drama of Christie’s mystery novels. In particular, the sound of the train horn brings to mind one of Christie’s most celebrated novels, Murder on the Orient Express, published in 1934. 

Port Symphonies allowed the audience to experience their environment in another way. Sound is central to the performance, and it offers an intriguing manner in which to honour the “Queen of Crime.” As the sounds mixed together in curious and compelling ways, they mimicked the precision with which Christie developed the plot of her mystery novels. In this way, Port Symphonies delighted not only Agatha Christie fans and music enthusiasts, but remained open for everyone to come together and enjoy.

Investigating Agatha Christie is at the Pointe-à-Callière Museum (350 Place Royale) until April 17.

a, Student Life

Dear McGill house hunter

by Hailey MacKinnon on

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This year marks my fourth year at McGill, and my fourth different living situation: One year in residence and three years in three different apartments. As someone who has made many avoidable mistakes when it comes to housing, I feel it is my duty to pass on the wisdom I’ve acquired over multiple years of bad apartments and unreliable landlords. Perhaps the following are mistakes that you will only learn from if you make them yourself, but if I can prevent at least one person from living in a creaky basement bedroom with no windows and a landlord who is ‘on business’ for two months, then I feel I have made the world a somewhat better place. 

Tip #1: Be patient. If you haven’t signed a lease yet, you’re likely already doing something right. Often the leases that come up in January and February are the more expensive ones, which may lead to regret once you see all the apartments that become available in March and April. While it can seem that everyone has already figured out accommodations for the following year, don’t feel pressured to sign the first apartment you see just for the sake of keeping up with your peers. In fact, if you don’t feel like finding a summer subletter, the nicest apartment I’ve lived in was one I found in August with a September lease, and many nice apartments’ leases don’t start until June or July. 

Tip #2: Do not settle for a ‘less-than’ apartment. If you feel iffy about an apartment the first or second time you see it, chances are you’re going to be even more disappointed when you move in, and its novelty has worn off. If you’re bitter about bedroom sizes, this will likely fester. If the rooms are dark and dingy, it will only become more noticeable come winter. If it feels damp when the dryer is on, keep looking. There are better options out there. 

Tip #3: Think about the practicalities. When I was first house hunting, my only criteria was that I wanted my apartment to have a big living room and to be relatively close to campus. This kind of tunnel vision led me to gloss over all the aspects of a place that actually make it liveable. For example, do the toilets flush properly? Does your bedroom have a window to let sunlight in? Does the sink’s drain get clogged? Tiny annoyances like these can add up, and make daily life a pain. 

Tip #4: Use your resources to choose a suitable landlord. Importantly, this means knowing how to weed out the bad ones. Did you know McGill actually has a ‘burn-book’  of bad landlords? The complaints binder, which can be found in McGill’s Off-Campus Housing Office, lists landlords with whom students have had bad experiences. A landlord who is too busy to respond to calls or texts is a landlord you should skip. It’s useful to consult both former tenants about their opinions, as well as meet the landlord yourself in order to make an informed decision. Keep this in mind as there is nothing worse than the combination of a broken toilet and a landlord who is ‘extremely busy’ for weeks at a time.

Tip #5: Be informed about the finders fee. You’ve probably heard by now that if the landlord asks you to pay an extra fee for the apartment, or if the former tenants require you to buy their furniture in order to secure the lease, that this is illegal. But myself and many people I know have bought the furniture because we thought it was a good deal for getting furnishing quickly and cheaply. In fact, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Often, former tenants will try to make a profit by getting rid of their old, tarnished furniture to eager students. But remember that you can get nice furniture for way cheaper by using McGill’s classified ads, the McGill Free & For Sale group, or Craigslist. Come the end of April or the end of August, many people are in the process of moving out and are trying to get of their furniture in a hurry and will sell it for almost nothing. This is your best bet for furnishing your apartment quickly and easily—don’t be fooled by the seeming ease of other options. 

a, Science & Technology

McGill professor wins top Canadian science award

by Daniel Galef on

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Professor Victoria Kaspi, astrophysicist in McGill University’s Department of Physics and Director of the McGill Space Institute, was awarded the Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering, the nation’s top scientific honour, last month. Kaspi is one of the world’s leading experts on neutron stars, tiny stellar remnants which are only about the size of Montreal yet weigh about twice the mass of the Sun. Neutron stars are what is left when a star explodes into a supernova, but the remnants are are not massive enough to collapse into a black hole.

Kaspi also studies the fascinating subspecies of neutron stars, such as pulsars and magnetars. Pulsars are spinning neutron stars with very strong magnetic fields which shoot radiation from their poles. If the pulsar’s rotational and magnetic poles are oriented just right, the beam of radiation sweeps through Earth like the rays from a lighthouse, and scientists can detect short bursts of radio, X-rays, or even visible light at regular intervals as the poles sweep around again. This is how pulsars were first discovered in the 1960s, when the perfectly uniform unexplained periodic pulses of energy led scientists to label the phenomenon ‘LGM’ for ‘Little Green Men.’

Kaspi is also the first woman ever to win the Herzberg Prize, an accomplishment made all the more notable by the widespread gender biases and disproportionate representation in the Canadian scientific and academic spheres. Growing up in Texas and in Israel, she recalls among her inspirations her older brother and a biography of the landmark physicist and Nobel laureate Marie Curie. Her plans for the future are many and varied. The Herzberg Prize comes with a minimum grant of $1 million, which Kaspi already has earmarked for what’s important.

“I will put it primarily to training undergraduate, MSc and PhD students, as well as post-doctoral scholars,” Kaspi explained.

Her most recent project is the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) telescope, currently under construction in British Columbia. CHIME is a revolutionary type of telescope, called a radio telescope, that is hoped to offer a lot of new information on pulsars and other radio-emitting bodies. 

“CHIME has a truly novel design,” Kaspi said. “No moving parts! […] Moreover, it will have 2048 antennas and a massive software correlator that allows it to ‘point’ in different directions all in software.”

This will be extremely advantageous over current designs that can only focus on where the massive dish is physically pointed.

Right now, both the CHIME project and Kaspi are setting their sights toward perhaps the most puzzling new mystery in astronomy: Fast Radio Bursts (FRB). These ultra-quick blasts of low-frequency radiation have only just started to get noticed in the last few years, and astronomers are far from an answer. A few proposed theories involve magnetar hyperflares (immensely powerful bursts of energy put off by strongly charged neutron stars), interactions between black holes and neutron stars, or pulsars collapsing into black holes—a hypothesized event called a ‘blitzar.’

And at the forefront of this mystery has been Kaspi. She estimates that as many as 10,000 detectable—but unrecorded—FRBs occur in our sky every day. In 2014 she helped determine that the bizarre FRBs likely originate from outside the Milky Way Galaxy entirely. In the coming years, Kaspi and her researchers, with the help of the new technology they are developing, may well solve this mystery for good.

“I think there is a revolution in radio astronomy going on, and the field is extremely promising for the study of pulsars,” Kaspi said. “From CHIME to FAST [China’s under-construction 500-metre radio telescope, which will be the largest and most precise ever built] to the foreseen Square Kilometre Array, the future of the field is very bright.”

a, McGill, Montreal, News

McGill sells Redpath properties for $20.6 million

by Regina Wung on

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During the February Senate meeting, Christopher Manfredi, provost and vice-principal (VP) (Academic) announced the sale of a portion of McGill-owned land, resulting in an unanticipated $20.6 million in revenue for the university. Known as the Redpath properties and located to the west of campus near Guy Street and Dr. Penfield Avenue, the land was originally received as a donation to the university. Before its sale, the Redpath properties served as a minor source of income for McGill, as the housing units built on the land regularly paid rent to the university. The rent for the properties this year would have been between $750,000 and $900,000.

Faculty of Arts Senator, John Galaty, cited concerns related to the university auctioning off assets in order to offset its deficit.
“Here you have […] $20 million in relationship to a $10 million deficit,” Galaty said. “It’s moved a significant amount of money from the asset column over to the […] revenues being taken in by the university so we can pay our bills [….] Most of the downtown of Montreal used to belong to McGill, and one wonders, ‘If we’d only kept it and leased it rather than sold it, we’d probably be better off.’”

Manfredi assured the McGill Senate that this decision was unique and not part of a larger strategy to pay bills; however, he also conceded that the university may choose to sell other properties in the future as a method to fund different projects, including the proposed acquisition of the Royal Victoria Hospital (RVH) site by McGill.

“There is no strategy to sell property in order to pay our bills,” said Manfredi. “If we were to undertake [the RVH] project, one of the ways in which McGill might finance its share would be by looking at some of our non-strategic real estate assets on the periphery of the campus and converting those into cash that would then be reinvested into the [RVH] site, if we go down that road.”

VP (Administration and Finance) Michael Di Grappa also attested to the fact that there were no current plans to sell any of McGill’s other properties, refuting Galaty’s notion that the university was employing a strategy of selling capital to pay back debts.

“This was not an attempt to sell assets in order to pay for operating deficits or anything like that,” Di Grappa said. “With respect to the specific sale of the Redpath properties, that’s a case of an emphyteutic lease on land —[a lease] on which condominiums were built [….] The university [was] the owner of the land and [it collected] a rent for the use of the land from the owners of the condos.”
The lease for houses on the Redpath properties was created in the 1970s and included a formula for resetting rent prices every 20 years. In 2014, an offer was made to the university when the rent was being recalculated.

“The owners were faced with an issue where, in roughly 30 years, the land and whatever was built on it was reverted back to McGill,” Di Grappa said. “The owners of the condos approached us because we were negotiating the increase in rent from 2014, and they made an offer to buy the land so they wouldn’t have to pay rent for [a certain] number of years.”
According to Di Grappa, from McGill’s perspective, keeping the land was not an ideal option because it could not profitably be used for university-related purposes.

“It is not a strategic property,” said Di Grappa. “[It is] not as if we could use it for another campus or another classroom, and it would be a waste to use it for student residences because the condos would fetch a higher value and [the university] would only be able to have 85 units there.”

Di Grappa defended the university’s decision to sell the land.

“In calculating the amounts we would derive in the 30 or so years from this emphyteutic lease versus the amount they would give us up front, we thought it was in the best interests of the university to take this particular deal,” Di Grappa said. “The sale was very satisfactory for the university because we have very pressing needs. The owners were very happy; they have the freedom to do what they wish with the land.”

The revenues from the sale of the Redpath properties will be invested in a sustainability project.

“That particular sale has actually allowed us to make a provision in our budgeting […] to support a very important project in sustainability sciences, where we’ll be making a $10 million investment over the next five years,” Manfredi said. “We’re able to do that because of that kind of extraordinary revenue.”

As for McGill’s other properties, including lands on the South Shore and Macdonald campus, Di Grappa maintained that the university intends to keep these.

“There are no plans to dispose of any of that other space,” he said.

a, Student Life

Fashion for sub zero weather

by Emma Whitehall on

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Although Mother Nature has been teasing us all winter with glimpses of spring air and fluctuating temperatures, let’s not forget that we choose to live in Montreal—a place where there was never a chance of emerging from winter without a few blasts of sub zero weather and ‘stop you in your tracks’ snowfall. Coming back from Reading Week ready to finish the semester strong, it is now time for fashion trends that will step in and cover us up in looks that we feel great (and warm) stepping out in.

Layering is always a natural progression as the temperature moves further and further below zero. This idea can be utilized even in our footwear choices: Thigh high boots are not a new innovation, but their prominence in everyday street style is definitely gaining momentum. Most recently, Olivier Rousteing’s Fall-Winter 2016-2017 Paris Fashion Week show for Balmain featured a repeated focus on thigh high boots. The square heel, or even a flat thigh high boot, can add almost an entire pant-length of warmth to your daytime winter layering. Black, brown, grey, or any other neutral colour suede have been popular this season and can all be incorporated into already neutral winter wardrobes. Both aforementioned styles can easily make the cross to eveningwear, but the thin stiletto-style thigh high boot can also be brought out to make for a more dramatic evening look. It seems a fair bet that the trend will carry on into next year’s Winter season, so now is a great time to hit the mall and find a (possibly discounted) pair. 

Faux fur jackets, vests, and scarves are all bold additions to any outfit, providing a space for your creativity to run wild through your style choices. There are a multitude of quality faux fur looks on the market that add just as much glam to a look as real fur. So for the sake of PETA, the animals, and our bank accounts, working a faux option into this year’s winter lineup is a positive sum game.

With numerous brands following the trend of oversized outerwear, there has even emerged the option to layer coats. A more fitted or lighter jacket can be worn under an oversized coat—a practical option for Montreal’s multiple degrees of frigidity. 

Although many students resort to the hoodie as a safe source of warmth—but maybe not always style—the hoodie may in fact be having its 15 minutes of fame. Whether it will endure is still up for debate, but it is highly recommended to take advantage of the additional comfort factor before it has the chance to go back out of style. Statement hoodies are quickly becoming a fashion staple. Vogue even put together a creative online feature of gifs entitled 10 Fresh Ways to Wear a Hoodie. You may choose to work in a basic monochromatic hoodie right over your seemingly contrasting outfit (say, dress), or you could choose to make the sweatshirt the centerpiece of your outfit. Fashion icons from Rihanna to Kourtney Kardashian have been spotted rocking oversized sweaters as outfits themselves, opting out of pants and maybe even bringing the suggestions full circle with a thigh high boot. 

Whether you implement these trends into your wardrobe one at a time, or all at once, experimenting with more fabrics in different places and of diverse kinds is the overall take-home. Fashion is constantly evolving and forever moving towards freedom for the user. More often than not, trends, especially those with a focus on layering, can be first tried with pieces you already have in your closet—possibly even the old worn out hoodie in the back. 

a, Basketball, Sports

Blast from the past: The advent of Women’s Basketball

by Morgan Alexander on

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McGill alumnus James Naismith invented basketball in 1891 with the overarching goal of giving his restless students something to do during a Massachusetts blizzard. After the first game, his students beat each other up in an effort to score, so he instituted the 13 original rules of the sport to prevent excessive violence while still maintaining the spirit of the game. Basketball, like all sports at the time, was designed exclusively with male athletes in mind and it spread quickly across college campuses in the United States—but it wasn’t just men who were taking up the sport. 

While Naismith is rightfully crowned as the Father of Basketball, Senda Berenson Abbott respectfully earned the title of Mother of Women’s Basketball in 1892 when she introduced the game to the female students at Smith college a year after Naismith invented the sport. Abbott altered the rules slightly to make it more acceptable for ladies to play, eliminating the rougher parts of the game–like being able to slap the ball out of players hands and recentring the game on being a new form of exercise, much like simple aerobics. 

While many basketball games were played by female athletes both in college gyms and in public, the first intercollegiate game officially took place in 1896, between Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley–Stanford won 2-1. Interestingly, this matchup occurred just a year after the first intercollegiate game was played between men’s collegiate teams at Hamline University and the Minnesota State School for Agriculture, a match that Hamline won. Prior to this, most games were played between YMCA teams, an organization that adopted the game in its infancy and helped mold it into what it has become today.

The development of basketball was slow for female players primarily because it was at odds with notions of female respectability. Early players were required to wear floor-length dresses, which they would trip over, resulting in black eyes and broken bones, until bloomers were introduced to the sport in 1896. Bloomers did away with the restrictive corset and made  it much easier for ladies to breathe. Some still complained that the sport was too masculine for ladies, and parents would forbid their daughters from playing—that did not stop Spalding from publishing an official rule book for women’s basketball in 1899, nor did it prevent the sport from crossing into Canada’s borders.

Women were first admitted to McGill in 1844, and by the early 1900s they formed their own women’s college, the Royal Victoria College, which welcomed its first basketball team in 1909—four years after the Executive Committee on Basketball Rules was formed by the American Physical Education Association (APEA). The team was composed of nine players, all of whom can be seen in their team photo modestly dressed in elbow-length sleeved tops and floor-length skirts—with, presumably, bloomers underneath—their official uniform. The introduction of this sport, along with many other female sports at McGill, was spearheaded by the efforts of Ethel Mary Cartwright, who in 1919 established McGill’s Department of Physical Education and devoted her life to teaching and athletics opportunities for both male and female students.

In 1920, Cartwright invited the Queen’s University women’s basketball team, under the direction of Ruth Clark, to a matchup against her team, marking the first intercollegiate women’s basketball game in Eastern Canada. McGill won the match, which was so successful on the whole that Clark and Cartwright teamed up with Marie Parks from the University of Toronto to form the Canadian Intercollegiate Women’s Basketball League. The League included their three teams plus the University of Western Ontario in London. Three years later, the Women’s Division of the National Amateur Athletic Federation (NAAF) was formed, an organization that would pave the way for multiple women’s collegiate basketball teams and players.

a, Martlets, Men's Varsity, Sports

Martlets, Redmen see success in Reading Week Championships

by Nicholas Jasinski on

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CIS Swimming Championships

Université Laval, Quebec City

While neither the Redmen nor the Martlets went home with any medals from the 2016 CIS Swimming Championships, both teams made more of a splash than they have in recent years. twenty-four McGill athletes made it to the final heats on day three of the meet, with 10 in the medal round and 14 in the consolation round. The University of Toronto Varsity Blues won both the men’s and women’s titles while McGill came in 12th and 8th, respectively. Graduating senior Katie Caldwell led the charge for McGill, qualifying for six finals which included a fourth-place finish in the 200m individual medley and fifth-place finishes in the 200m backstroke, 400m individual medley and as a member of the 4x200m freestyle relay. For the Redmen, freshman Jean-Daniel Vallieres made finals in the 200m individual medley, 400m individual medley and 200m butterfly, coming in 8th, 9th, and 20th, respectively. 

“I am disappointed that we didn’t win a medal, but it was easily the most competitive CIS Championship ever,” McGill Head Coach Peter Carpenter said. “That said, I am proud of the team performance. The meet was filled with many pleasant surprises and some disappointments as well.”

Canadian University Synchronized Swim League National Championships

University of British Columbia, Vancouver

McGill collected its third consecutive national synchronized swimming title and their 13th of the last 15 years at the 2016 CUSSL Championships at UBC. “I am really proud of the work our athletes put in this season–they’ve been working incredibly hard since the first week of September and it is so nice to see their hard work pay off in really good performances,” Head Coach Lindsay Duncan said. 

McGill’s novice teams performed very strongly with gold medals in the novice duet trio and novice team routines, scoring 59.93 points and 59.10, respectively. Madeline Perrin and Minnie Fu placed 3rd and 6th in the novice solo routine with scores of 56.63 and 55.24. In the senior team routine, the Martlet’s 71.4 was just 0.1 point short of Ottawa’s first-place performance. McGill also earned sixth-place and 11th-place finishes in the senior duet trio, and third and sixth place finishes in the senior solo routine. McGill’s dominance in Canadian collegiate synchro competitions is even more impressive by the fact that the team receives no funds from the university for league fees, travel or uniforms. The swimmers provide the budget themselves, crowdfund using McGill Seeds of Change and organize bake sales and other fundraisers to pay the bills.

RSEQ Track and Field Indoor Championships

McGill University, Montreal

McGill used its home-track-advantage to collect 17 medals—including seven golds—at the two-day Quebec Championship meet. The Redmen and Martlets both came in third place overall and qualified a total of 11 athletes to the 2016 CIS Championships at York University from March 10 to 12. The standout performer for McGill was senior Helena Reinfels, who earned three gold and one bronze medal in addition to both Athlete-of-the-meet and RSEQ Athlete-of-the-year awards. Her first gold came in a McGill-record-setting 300m race of 39.48 seconds, followed by a 9.01 second 60m hurdles win. The Puslinch, Ontario native contributed to another McGill record in the 4x200m relay in addition to a third place finish on the 4x400m relay squad. Other McGill gold medals from the meet belong to Martlet pole-vaulter Caroline Tanguay, who cleared a height of 3.40 metres, and Redman pole-vaulter Riley van Ryswyk, whose 4.86-metre vault was good enough for a new McGill record. The Redmen collected two more wins in the 4x200m and 4x400m metre relays, with the 4x400m’s 3:14.98 setting both RSEQ and McGill records. Overall, Laval took home its third consecutive RSEQ men’s title while Sherbrooke won its second straight women’s trophy.

a, Sports

Redmen gamers compete to be crowned Heroes of the Dorm

by Luka Ciklovan on

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Adding the ‘e’ to Sports has been a long and contested road for the eSports community. eSports is a form of sport that designates a video game as the proverbial playing field. With high-end strategizing, physical execution, controversy over performance enhancing drugs, and match fixing pervading both sports and eSports, the line that separates the two can get muddled at times. Regardless of whether it is classified as a traditional sport or a ‘mind’ sport, the rise of eSports, despite significant criticism from many traditional sports commentators, such as Colin Cowherd, is undeniable. Since the year 2000 the number, scale, and coverage of eSports events has been increasing across YouTube, CBS, ESPN, in addition to prize pools have followed suit, reaching up to $16,829,613 in the case of Valve’s annual International, an eSport competition. Relatively new to eSports, however, is the collegiate scene, with Blizzard’s second Heroes of the Dorm this year being the only place for campuses to officially compete for electronic glory. Luckily, the ‘Redmen’—captained by Lucas Crea—have a fighting chance to put McGill on the eSports map this year.

The success of last year’s Heroes of the Dorm marked a watershed moment in eSports history, as it further institutionalized collegiate eSports, prompting various universities to offer scholarships for varsity-level cyber athletes, and had its Grand Finals between UC Berkeley vs. Arizona State broadcast live on ESPN, a first for the genre. Given the long match times and extensive background knowledge that tend to accompany eSport titles, Heroes of the Dorm, featuring Blizzard’s latest release Heroes of the Storm, attempts to bridge the gap between casual and competitive by offering a game that’s much quicker, simpler, and thus easier to watch without sacrificing the thrill-of-the-kill signature to video games. The result has been a tournament that has stimulated both the interest of mainstream media and the niche gamer fan base, and offers a promising future for the North American eSports scene. 

Once they’ve passed the qualifying round, standing between each player and the grand prize of paid college tuition for three years (up to $75,000) and a custom built PC gaming system (approximately $1,200) lies a grueling round-of-64 showdown between teams of five gamers and one substitute. The objective is deceptively simple: Destroy the enemy’s base. In between the goal however, stand waves of enemy units, tower defences, and five human-controlled ‘heroes’ which require tactical coordination, wired reflexes, and composure to overcome on the professional level. Crea, whose team stands as the last vestige of McGill’s representation at this year’s Heroes of the Dorm, considers the team’s lack of experience its biggest challenge.

“Most of our players haven’t had much experience, or don’t play as much as myself and other team members, so the real challenge is just to get everyone more or less on the same playing field, and not have them do those silly mistakes that new players do.” Crea said. “The first couple of games were particularly frustrating, but they got better surprisingly quickly, and pushed us to win four games in a row”

Reflecting on McGill’s prospects for the remainder of the tournament, Crea expressed concern over the academic commitments that the team faces as students.

“Most members of my team are in really different programs [ranging] from engineering, biology, and nursing.” Crea explained. “It makes for quite a busy schedule, so I don’t know if that will impact our chances.  To make it in the quarter finals of regionals, we have to win our next games this weekend, and I think we have a fair chance at that”.

Crea also commended the skill of the Concordia Stingers who sent the Redmen to the losers’ bracket last weekend with a 2-0 victory, proving that the time-tested McGill and Concordia rivalry carries over into the electronic realm.

Plagued by bouts of sexism, player exploitation, and the still relatively high barrier to entry, the eSports community still have a long way to go, but Heroes of the Dorm is definitely a step in the right direction towards a healthier and more diverse community.

Though the Redmen were eliminated from the Tournament over Reading Week, you can still watch the other teams progress through the round of 64 on ESPN3, Twitch, and YouTube, along with the Grand Finals on April 10, on ESPN2.

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