The upcoming Nov. 13 special General Assembly (GA) will seek to address issues that could not be settled during the October GA due to its failure to meet quorum. One of these issues will be to ratify appointments to SSMU’s Board of Directors (BoD).
Without a BoD, the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) is unable to purchase stocks to add to its collection of investments—worth approximately $2.65 million. This means SSMU cannot add potentially lucrative investments to their portfolio, which hinders its ability to generate revenue.
The portfolio is currently managed by Lester Asset Management (LAM), a Montreal-based portfolio management firm owned and co-managed by three individuals, including McGill Management professor Ken Lester.
The National Bank is LAM’s custodian bank, which means that they are responsible for safeguarding SSMU’s portfolio. National Bank can effectively prevent LAM—and by proxy SSMU—from ordering new purchases on stocks or bonds until required paperwork, such as corporate resolutions voted at SSMU Council or General Assemblies (GAs), are updated. The forms are related to SSMU’s corporate resolutions, which detail SSMU’s financial decisions.
“We have to refresh our forms every two years, but it just so happened that we [changed] our custodian [last year],” Lester said. “National Bank said […] that they’d respect the paperwork from the old custodian for a year and let us trade for a year, but now they won’t let us buy until we get all the rest of the paperwork in.”
Lester said the decision to switch custodians from Fidelity, LAM’s previous bank, to National Bank last year was based on a number of factors.
“The main reasons for choosing [National Bank] over Fidelity were price, service, size, and current client satisfaction,” he said.
According to SSMU Vice-President Finance and Operations Tyler Hofmeister, SSMU’s investments are currently fiscally modest, and so he does not expect the current portfolio’s value to change drastically while SSMU remains unable to make new investments.
“[The portfolio] looks conservative,” Hofmeister said. “Most of the holdings are in more secure investments, such as utilities, telecommunications, and fixed income securities.”
Although the National Bank places restrictions on SSMU because they lack a BoD, they do not limit the selling of shares, according to Hofmeister. This means that SSMU can continue to pursue their intention to divest from certain companies—plans that arose from concerns about unethical practices.
SSMU’s Financial Ethics Research Committee (FERC) is responsible for establishing policies that guide and maintain the social responsibility of SSMU’s investments. Last year, the committee drafted a checklist of companies deemed unacceptable for investment.
“We gave this filter to LAM [and gave them] 10 [companies] we [wanted] to divest from,” last year’s FERC coordinator Adam Winer said. “SSMU policy dictates that we can’t be invested in companies that derive a large share of their profits from fossil fuels, or whose core business activities involve the extraction and distribution of fossil fuels, whether in connection to tar sands in Canada or globally.”
At the Winter 2013 Midpoint Review of SSMU’s investments, FERC researched the companies and determined which ones violated SSMU’s bylaw for socially responsible investment—for example, SSMU is committed to avoiding companies associated with environmentally harmful areas or human rights abuse.
In one instance, the committee recommended that the FERC further research Bell Alliant Inc., a telecommunications provider that has partnerships with companies involved in the tar sands, rather than divesting from them.
“Though their partnerships with tar sands companies sparked some discussion among the committee, our conclusion was that providing networks to tar sands companies is unavoidable for a telecommunications corporation,” the review said.
On the other hand, FERC recommended that SSMU immediately divest from Fortis Inc., a distributor of natural gas and electricity, due to their high level of association with the tar sands.
Hofmeister explained that the policies shaping the decisions SSMU makes are listed can be found in the SSMU policy book on their website. According to Lester, two divestments remain to be made, which he will make when a “trigger moment” occurs for the stocks, to allow him to sell them at an optimal price.
In terms of future outlook for the portfolio, Hofmeister explained that in light of SSMU’s projected budget deficit for upcoming years, SSMU is considering utilizing the investment portfolio as part of a long-term solution.
“[We are looking to change SSMU’s] investment portfolio to an endowment fund,” Hofmeister said. “This means that a certain amount […] decided upon with the SSMU General Manager, SSMU Comptroller, myself, and LAM will be taken from the portfolio each year to help pay for capital expenditures.”
In order to break from the current state of financial limbo facing SSMU’s investments, the upcoming GA will need to meet quorum of 100 students to officially appoint the BoD.
with bagpipes and traditional academic robes marked the installation of Suzanne Fortier as McGill’s 17th Principal and 13th Vice-Chancellor on Nov. 5.
Fortier, who is the first female McGill graduate to hold the positions, officially started her term Sept. 5. The installation is a symbolic ceremony in which Canadian Governor General David Lloyd Johnston presented the university’s Royal Charter and seal to Fortier’s keeping.
The Governor General has been the official Visitor of McGill since 1852, which means that he represents the founder, the public, and the Crown’s connection to the university. Johnston also has deeper ties to McGill, having served as the university’s Principal and Vice-Chancellor between 1979 and 1994.
To complete the official installation, McGill Chancellor Arnold Steinberg invested Fortier with the titles of Principal and Vice-Chancellor, after which Fortier took the Oath of Office, where she pledged to “faithfully carry out [her] duties.”
Other attendees included Quebec Minister of Higher Education Pierre Duchesne; members of the National Assembly and Canadian Senate; McGill faculty members, students, administrative, and support staff; and members of other academic institutions such as Harvard University and the University of British Columbia.
Université de Montréal Rector Guy Breton welcomed Fortier to her new position on behalf of all Canadian universities.
“I know that you will take the best possible care of [McGill], because I know your passion for knowledge,” he said.
McGill chemistry professor Hanadi Sleiman, who gave an official greeting speech as a representative of McGill’s faculty members, expressed hope that Fortier’s leadership would promote the development of research and teaching at McGill.
“McGill has been able to attract an unusually large number of superb new faculty members who have joined our excellent current faculty members over the last 10 years,” Sleiman said. “[Fortier] arrives at a very special time of growth and optimism at McGill when world-class research and teaching initiatives are under way in every department and every unit of this university.”
Sophia-Maria Giannakakis, a SSMU Councillor who spoke on behalf of McGill students, asked Fortier to keep students in mind throughout her term as principal.
“Remember, that within our playful youthfulness lie serious scholars, ready to make a contribution to the upcoming world and to society any which way we can,” she said. “Even if [our] beginnings may be unique and diverse, we are students eager to learn from amazing people and to continue learning for the rest of our lives.”
Fortier used an analogy to describe McGill’s current status as a university at a crossroad of change as it reinvents itself for the 21st century.
“It is not easy to push ourselves with questions for which there are not neat solutions,” Fortier said. “It is not easy to accept that sometimes it is not our answers that are wrong, but our questions. It can be a challenge to cultivate this highly dynamic culture filled with intense debate and intense confrontation of ideas. We are the great collider, and even if the collider sometimes overheats, physics tells us that this is where you find the most exotic particles; the new ideas, the new paradigms; the discoveries.”
She described the direction in which she wants to take the university under her leadership.
“Our sights are set high,” Fortier said. “We want our university to be a place of choice for the brightest talents [….] We want a teaching and research environment that is dynamic and innovative. We want an educational experience that resonates a lifetime, and a university that responds to the needs of its neighbourhood, its province, its country, its world.”
The first time I performed at a poetry slam, my hands began shaking the moment I stepped onto the stage and didn’t stop until the car ride home. I was out of breath as I recited the last lines of my poem, and continued to sound as though I had ran a marathon until well after my piece was over. Yet, this was one of the most prolific experiences I’d ever had and did not deter my interest in the world of spoken word.
Due to my longstanding interest in spoken word, I was thrilled to hear that the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word (CFSW) was going to be hosted here in Montreal this year. The CFSW is an annual celebration of spoken word and poetry featured in various cities across the country. In past years, it’s jumped from Ottawa to Vancouver, Toronto to Halifax, and Calgary to Victoria. Divan Orange, Cabaret du Mile End, and a handful of other venues—which usually hold slams and showcases throughout the year—welcomed 44 spoken word artists from all across Canada this past week to share their work with other spoken word enthusiasts. This year, the CFSW was directed by Moe Clark, who coordinated programs, panels, and an array of workshops such as “Safer Spaces in Slam” and “Career and Community in Spoken Word.”
Spoken word is often defined broadly as a word-based performance of storytelling, or more frequently, of poetry. Although similar perhaps to the term ‘slam poetry,’ spoken word differs in that it encompasses poetry as well as multiple other forms—including but not limited to rap, stories, and monologues. Unlike spoken word, slam poetry originated from the ‘poetry slam,’ which focused on a competition of prop-less, music-less performance poetry.
GAINING POPULARITY ONLINE
Although spoken word is by no means a new art form, it has recently garnered a great deal of attention on the internet, with spoken word performance videos passed around on some of the most viral networks used today. These videos have gained traction on sites like Youtube, Facebook, and Upworthy, a site that curates specific videos almost destined to go viral.
Adam Mordecai, an Editor-at-Large of Upworthy, explained that the first time he realized the virality of spoken word was when he posted a poem written and performed by Shane Koyczan called “To This Day,” which is an autobiographical recount of being bullied as a child.
(Cassandra Rogers / McGill Tribune)
“Once it gripped me, I was in complete thrall, and didn’t even realize what I had while I was tearing up and watching it on repeat,” Mordecai said. “If I were to tell people they were watching spoken word before they clicked it, they would run screaming to the hills [….] It’s only when they see it, […] the humanity, raw emotion, and powerful words combined into an amazing performance do they understand what they just watched was powerful [….] Authenticity is what makes it shareable.”
Though Mordecai explained that there hasn’t exactly been a conscious decision to share more spoken word videos, he noted that once shared videos receive a lot of attention, and a curator will “try to recreate the magic. Once a curator has success with spoken word, they hunt down more.”
“We just love that it resonates and performs well,” Mordecai emphasized.
Jeremy Loveday, a performance poet, director of Youth Outreach for the Victoria Poetry Project and Concordia graduate who helped run Youth Roots Day during CFSW, said that people who had not been previously exposed to spoken word can easily be drawn in by these videos.
“I think it’s so rare in your day-to-day life that you hear people eloquently speak their truth,” Loveday said. “I think that that’s what these spoken word videos allow—they allow for people to poignantly speak their emotions.”
Chris Masson, who performed at CFSW and is a member of the Throw Poetry Collective, a Montreal organization dedicated to celebrating spoken word, explained how people’s interest in spoken word is often piqued by a thirst for a more genuine voice.
“So much of the poetry you hear […] is so sincere,” Masson said. “There’s a hunger for that in our lives today. We’re much more accustomed to irony and sarcasm—some sort of meta-commentary—than we are to sincerity and metaphor.”
Loveday attributed the length of these videos to their viral nature as well. “In the poetry slam format, [the performances are] three minutes. A viral video is usually a short video. That [short length] really lends itself to people listening to the message [of the performances.]”
Masson noted that he was by no means surprised by how much attention spoken word and slam poetry has received.
“I think [slam poetry] really speaks to people,” Masson noted. “To me, it’s no surprise that these things are getting shared. This is the point of why they’re made—to say things that matter in an artful way that just amplifies their meaning and their impact.”
For many, just watching the videos is not enough once they’ve been introduced to spoken word. A more engaging way to expose yourself to even more great performances is to see a live show.
With spoken word festivals—such as the CFSW—and regular poetry slams and showcases, the focus is at a much more personal level, with viewers sitting in the audiences as the performers on stage bring their carefully crafted words to life through a potpourri of slant rhymes, alliteration, and blank verse. Most believe that a live experience is much more electric than just sitting in front of the computer.
Patrick Ohslund is a performance poet from Oakland, California and is currently working toward his MA here at McGill on spoken word and its ability to create culturally relevant curricula. Ohslund reflected on the unmatchable atmosphere that exists in a venue during a slam.
“[The audience feels] like they had a really genuine experience with humanity that wasn’t pre-planned, pre-packaged. [It is] much more a synthesis of what was in that room in that moment,” Ohslund said.
(Cassandra Rogers / McGill Tribune)
Jonah Himelfarb, a U2 physiology student and spoken word artist who performed this past week at CFSW, explained the uniqueness of a live show.
“The electricity from the audience and the other poets [is] distinctly noticeable [….] It’s impossible to attend a poetry slam and not feel moved,” Himelfarb said.
But it’s not just the meter and rhyme of a spoken word piece that makes the audience erupt with snaps and murmurs of agreement. Perhaps the largest contributor to the ‘buzz-worthy’ quality of spoken word is the theme of each particular piece. The focus is often to provide a personal perspective on issues at large in society or to recount an experience that holds a substantial amount of meaning to the performer.
ENSURING A SAFE ENVIRONMENT
Due to the volatile nature of many of the topics presented at these performances, the question of ‘safe space’ is often discussed both within and outside the community. Performers and poets deal with heavy and frequently controversial matters that can both spark interest in some audience members while troubling others.
Ohslund explained that the definition of ‘safe space’ comes with its own set of complications.
“The concept on safe space in slam is flawed,” he said. “It’s a free speech space, which is categorically not a safe space. [But] there are some times where free speech […] can cross over to a place where it’s just blatantly disrespectful. [So instead,] it’s a free speech space with a notion of mutual respect.”
Masson explained the way he starts off each of the workshops he runs in order to foster that sense of respect.
“What I always start out with is saying that this is a space of acceptance. And if someone is sharing something, you need to respect that,” he said.
Loveday believes that showing everyone that he too is willing to open up and share helps to create that space of acceptance.
“I start every classroom workshop with a performance,” Loveday said. “[It shakes] things up a bit, showing them that this isn’t a normal day in the classroom. You’re creating an atmosphere where you’re showing a vulnerability, which will allow them to feel safer to do that as well.”
With such an intimate setting for these performances, it’s natural to find spoken word enthusiasts cultivating a tight-knit sense of community amongst themselves.
“There ends up being a community around the event and that ends up being really valuable and what keeps a lot of people coming back,” Masson said. “And since it’s a community based on expression, inclusion, acceptance, [and] mutual encouragement, it ends up being, almost always, a really wonderful community to be a part of.”
(Cassandra Rogers / McGill Tribune)
Montreal in particular, for a variety of reasons, helps to foster an even more unique flair within this community. Throw Poetry Collective embraces Quebec’s bilingualism in their slams. As an English speaker with less fluency in French, Masson explained how something that might be conceived as a burdensome language barrier is actually quite valuable to a slam listener.
“The bilingualism forces me to hear other things that they’re saying,” Masson said. “Even if I miss some of the literal meaning, I can pick up on emotion and body language.”
Beyond the city’s bilingualism, Montreal also boasts another unique aspect in its slam poetry scene.
“Montreal seems to have less of an established slam culture compared to Toronto or Vancouver,” Masson said. “There’s less of a defined genre or style that exists, so there’s a lot more experimentation, a lot more variety of what you see up on stage.”
McGill has also done its part in promoting the spoken word scene on campus. Coffee houses and open mic nights have featured poetry readings, and students like Himelfarb have reacted positively to the increased interest.
“I hope that more McGill students become involved in the spoken word community [….] I think it’s fantastic that people are taking initative to organize spoken word events geared toward McGill students.”
The last time I performed at a slam, my hands were no longer shaking the way they had before. I was still out of breath, but this time, from the sheer exhilaration I felt over being able to share my poems. Both during my performance and after the event, it was immensely rewarding to hear the audience’s reactions to my pieces. It was incredible to be able to have conversations with all the other poets who had just shared a piece of themselves by being up on that stage. It has only made me realize that whether you are a writer or a listener, whether you attend slams every other weekend or post riveting performances on your Facebook news feed, you will likely find spoken word and the community it fosters ready to welcome you with open arms.
The Kraken lurked next to the Engineering Café for the first few months of the school year, unbeknownst to most students. Created by McGill’s concrete canoe design team, the Kraken competed last May at the Canadian Concrete Canoe Competition (CNCCC). The competition started in 1995 and aims to allow university students to gain design experience in a non-academic environment.
According to Steven Cerri, co-captain of McGill’s concrete canoe team, over 200 teams and 3,000 students have competed since the start of the Canadian competition. “Every year, thousands of spectators come to watch as students demonstrate the research, design, testing, and leadership skills that they have gained from the building of their concrete canoes,” he said.
The team consists of 70 undergraduate students, most of whom study Civil Engineering, although there are also students present from other Engineering programs, as well as from the Faculties of Science and Education. The team is responsible for designing, building, and casting a canoe completely out of concrete that is buoyant. To succeed, students must create an effective concrete mix, design a canoe shape, and build a mould.
Cerri admits that he has often been asked why anyone would want to build a boat out of concrete. Heavy, brittle, and weak in tension—concrete is not a conventional boat-building material.
“So why do we do it?” Cerri said. “To use the world’s most common building material in an unconventional sense? Perhaps. For the design challenge? Maybe. The way I see it, the concrete canoe team is much more than these challenges, and [this is] more than simply building a boat. The team is a way for young engineers to tackle problems, be innovative, build friendships, and teach each other. These qualities will be indispensable once the students become practicing engineers
The competition is divided into four events: the design paper, the oral presentations, the final product, and the races—each of which are worth equal points. Races consist of male and female endurance and sprint races, but they also include a final co-ed race.
Last year, the team competed for the first time since 2009. They look forward to competing again this spring with more experience under their belt—this time hoping to make the podium.
“The team is [currently] in the development and testing phase of the year,” Cerri said. “We are experimenting with new innovative materials in our mix design, and are making about 25 new mix designs a week.”
According to Cerri, the team is composed of six different sub-teams that focus on different tasks requiring different skill sets. These include the mixing, construction, aesthetics, design and analysis, and sponsorship and procurement groups.
In addition to working on creating a successful concrete mix, the construction team is in the process of building a quarter scale mould, which will allow the team to test and prove new design ideas before implementing them on the full-scale canoe.
“The design and structural analysis team has created over 25 prototype shapes for the canoe and now are developing a mathematical formula which rates the performance of a canoe based on certain geometric parameters of the boats shape,” Cerri added.
Cerri, and his co-captain Joseph Yazbeck decided to start up the team to fill a void in Civil Engineering at McGill.
“The other Engineering department had multiple design teams but nothing that involved Civil Engineering,” Cerri explained, “So it was an easy decision be a part of this new team that gives Civil Engineering an opportunity to have a design team oriented towards it. The concrete canoe team led the path, and now, there are three Civil Engineering oriented design teams including Concrete Canoe. But really, what could be cooler than a boat made of floating concrete?”
While many of the sub-teams are not accepting new members at this time of the year since they are too deep into their work, the construction and aesthetics team are still open to new members.
Students are encouraged to contact [email protected] for more information.
With cold and flu season upon us, we all remember the saying, “Don’t go out in the cold or you’ll catch your death.” However, this phrase is a widespread misconception.
According to Thomas Tallman, doctor of osteopathic medicine and emergency medicine physician at Cleveland Clinic in an interview with WebMD, there is no correlation between cold weather and catching a cold.Tallman explained that even though some people believe that hot, dry air makes the mucous in your lungs dry up—increasing your susceptibility to catching the cold—humidity is irrelevant to getting sick.
This myth originated from the ‘symptoms’ shared when one is cold and when one has a cold. A person in cold weather tends to feel dryness in the nose, throat, and could develop a cough.
Likewise, the common cold is an upper respiratory tract infection caused by over 200 viruses—the most common of which is the rhinovirus. Symptoms of the cold include coughing, sneezing and a sore throat—similar to what happens when you’re stuck in the cold for a long time.
Rhinovirus stimulates an inflammatory immune response, resulting in symptoms after as little as 20 hours. Usually, this inflammatory response is sufficient to eliminate the infection after a week, on average.
Some wonder whether a compromised immune system is what gives you a cold. One of the biggest misconceptions associated with cold and flu is the belief that a stronger immune system makes you impervious to these germs.
“You can be as healthy as an ox and still get a cold,” Tallman said. In other words, the cold and flu don’t only affect immunocompromised patients.
So how does one cure the common cold? You can’t. There is no cure.
“There’s nothing you can do but wait it out,” Tallman says. Several medications are available to relieve symptoms, and garlic juice, lemon juice, ginger, and tea with honey are also great methods to reduce coughing.
Quite simply, washing your hands is the best method of prevention from catching the common cold.
The flu, however, is another story. While it’s possible to develop cold-like symptoms for a day, these symptoms do not compare to the fever, muscle soreness, or nausea commonly associated with the flu. The influenza vaccination is particularly recommended for immunocompromised patients—those with asthma, chronic lung disease, the elderly, or pregnant women—as they are all at high risk of developing pneumonia during the flu.
Furthermore, Tallman explains that while some people take vitamin C and zinc to prevent coming down with the flu, there isn’t enough evidence to strongly support this claim. Some studies are available, however, that show these measures shorten symptoms.
As far as treatment goes, Tallman warns cold and flu patients to avoid antibiotics.These products are used to treat bacterial infections—not viral infections—meaning they will cause more harm if used improperly. In fact, unnecessary use of antibiotics is one of the leading causes of a growing problem of antibiotic resistance among microbes, and the proliferation of ‘superbugs.’
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends the use of antiviral medications as early as possible upon the sign of flu symptoms—they are most effective when taken within the first 48 hours.
The CDC also recommends the use of oseltamivir and zanamivir—both are neuraminidase inhibitors that minimize the duration and severity of symptoms associated with the flu.
In the end, these widespread cold and flu misconceptions have become almost culturally transmitted from generation to generation. To set the record straight, although you might not enjoy it too much, braving that cold air won’t necessarily land you home on the bed for a week.
Graduate students at McGill are seeking once more to leave the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS).
On Nov. 6, the Post-Graduate Students’ Society of McGill University (PGSS) heard from a group of graduate students who have started a petition to withdraw from the national student association.
“Individual PGSS members […] have mobilized to demonstrate to CFS once more that the members of PGSS do not want to stay within CFS,” PGSS Secretary-General Jonathan Mooney said. “We support this effort to get CFS to recognize that PGSS is no longer a member.”
PGSS Councillors Ge Sa and Matthew Bouchard, two organizers behind the petition, started the petition to leave CFS because they said it lacks transparency and because PGSS’s interests are already represented on a provincial level by the Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec (FEUQ).
“As a member of PGSS, I do not believe our membership to CFS is a trustworthy, efficient, nor productive relationship,” Bouchard said. “There are certain things that you can lobby for on a federal level, but we’re already affiliated with other organizations on a federal level that would lobby in our defence, like […] the U15 Group of Canadian Research Universities.”
Sa also cited financial reasons behind their desire to leave.
“[CFS] never publish their budget […] so we have absolutely no idea how they operate, how they use our money,” Sa said.
PGSS, which has been a CFS member since 1993, has attempted to leave the organization before. On Oct. 19, 2009, members submitted a petition to CFS asking to hold a referendum to leave, also citing issues regarding CFS’s transparency. Although PGSS’s petition acquired the mandatory number of signatures required to hold a referendum, CFS did not set the dates for the referendum within the required 90-day-period.
Consequently, PGSS filed court proceedings to ensure that the referendum would take place. One day before the court hearing was set to take place, CFS set the referendum period to take place Mar. 31 to Apr. 1, 2010. Eighty-six per cent of the 869 PGSS members who voted were in favour of leaving CFS at that time.
“CFS has consistently refused to recognize the results of this referendum and the matter is currently before the courts, with PGSS seeking a declaration that it is no longer a member of the CFS,” PGSS’ executive summary of the case reads.
The new petition aims for CFS to recognize that PGSS members have considered themselves to not belong to CFS since the 2010 referendum.
According to Mooney, PGSS is prepared to pay any necessary court fees through their Special Projects Fund and a Contingency Fund, although these funds were not created with the purpose of paying CFS-related costs.
Since the first unsuccessful attempt to leave in 2010, PGSS has not paid CFS fees but has continued collecting an equivalent fee from students to hold in the Special Projects Fund.
“CFS sends the PGSS letters claiming we continue to owe them dues even after PGSS members voted to leave in 2010,” Mooney said. “All told, we estimate their claim to amount to around $400,000 over the years. Although we are very confident in our legal case, to be responsible we have to plan for every scenario.”
If PGSS wins the legal case, Mooney said the accumulated Special Projects Fund could instead be used to construct a daycare or to modernize Thomson House.
Association of Postdoctoral Fellows to receive grant
A motion passed at Wednesday’s Council meeting will allocate a grant of $1,500 to the Association of Postdoctoral Fellows (APF).
“The APF is a semi-autonomous association which frequently organizes events and activities targeted at and responding to the needs of postdoctoral fellows at McGill,” the motion reads.
Mooney said the motion would facilitate the allocation of funds for events and activities targeted towards postdoctoral fellows.
“Currently, the APF has no budget and must apply for a grant each time from the executive committee of the PGSS for every activity and event they wish to plan,” Mooney said.
According to the motion, the grant will create a better situation for postdoctoral fellows since neither PGSS nor McGill can fully accommodate their needs.
“Postdoctoral fellows have specific needs and problems which neither the PGSS nor McGill is fully capable of responding to,” the motion reads.
Opportunities for student engagement in the Quartier de l’Innovation (QI) development project were a topic of a Nov. 6 webcast that allowed professors, alumni, and students to pose questions to a panel of experts on the project.
Launched in May 2013, the QI is an initiative that aims to turn Griffintown, a Montreal neighborhood, into a hub of research and innovation. Panellists at the event included McGill Principal Suzanne Fortier and three other representatives from École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS) and McGill.
McGill Vice-Principal (Research and International Relations) Rose Goldstein said students have contributed to the QI from its beginning and will continue to be an important factor in the development of the project. For example, last month’s Community Engagement Day events included activities to inform students about the QI project and the Griffintown neighbourhood.
According to Goldstein, certain QI projects will offer more opportunities for student engagement—for example, the Montreal Creativity Hub facilitates meetings between professionals, companies, and professors with a focus on generating innovative ideas and management strategies.
However, some students questioned the ability for them to become involved in QI due to travel limitations. Justin Leung, a McGill student, drew attention to the physical distance between the QI and the university.
“What different strategies, procedures, or different projects will McGill be undertaking in order bridge that gap?” Leung asked.
According to Fortier, the distance between the campuses is not necessarily a disadvantage.
“The challenge is because we’re not quite in an environment that is totally familiar to us,” Fortier said. “That distance from the McGill campus to the QI in fact can be a real opportunity, a real advantage, because we are going to get out of our campus and into this quartier [….] We want to offer our students this opportunity to learn outside of campus.”
As part of its initiative to promote creative solutions, the QI has already brought artists from the Montreal community together with small businesses and students to contribute to its goal to infuse the arts and creativity into all sectors of the project.
“Students are already involved and this is a platform where anyone can come—including students—to use creativity tools to solve problems,” Goldstein said.
Goldstein also spoke on a project named the Centre for Culture and the Arts, which is led by Will Straw, an art history professor at McGill. According to Goldstein, the project aims to bring artists together with other artists, students, and creative small businesses, to develop creative solutions to issues businesses may face.
“So they’ll be looking at kind of a creativity hub—an urban culture hub where artists will also come together with other actors in the area to problem solve and to work with our students,” Goldstein said.
Fortier said the QI will be integrated into student life and academic curricula by implementing it as a learning platform.
“There will be a whole spectrum of activities, from research projects to bringing what students learn in the classroom into practice in the QI,” Fortier said. “Let’s make it as dynamic as possible.”
The Kennedy Suite, an All-Canadian collaborative album written by Scott Garbe and produced and arranged by the Cowboy Junkies (Margo Timmins, Michael Timmins, Peter Timmins, and Alan Anton), as well as Andy Maize and Josh Finlayson of Skydiggers, is an ambitious song cycle centred around the assassination of former U.S. President John F. Kennedy. It chronicles the tragedy through the personal narratives of a number of interconnected characters all somehow implicated in the event through a combination of songs, excerpts of recorded news, and speech clips from the incident.
As the time-frame (in relation to the assassination) and the emotional tone of the songs shift throughout the album, so too does the musical style. Harlan Pepper’s “Secret Spy Decoder Ring” is a cheeky upbeat rock song told from the perspective of a young boy who accidentally witnesses Lee Harvey Oswald preparing his assassination rifle, but who is not taken seriously when he tries to tell authorities. “Disintegrating,” the only track featuring Margo Timmins’ iconic sleepy voice at the fore, is narrated as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, post-assassination, and takes on the Cowboy Junkies’ usual hauntingly beautiful tone. When the Skydiggers sing “every girl and boy can grow up to be the President/ Or grow up to be the President’s killer,” in the folk-rock ballad “The Truth About Us (The Ballad of Lee and Marina),” the mixed sense of hope and hopelessness is reflective of the album’s overall message.
The resulting effect is a diverse musical range, masterfully woven together throughout the narrative. In the album’s epilogue, Sarah Harmer sings with tender vitriol “World won’t change if he don’t look/ He’s got his hand over his heart/ And his head stuck up his hole;” we are forced to wonder if these words are not even more relevant to today’s population than they were in 1963.
Blue is the Warmest Colour has attracted a lot of critical attention. This could stem from its accolades at Cannes this summer for its seven-minute long sex scene. What I found interesting were the comments that arose from the portrayal of the women in the film.
Manohla Dargis, writing in The New York Times, takes issue with the film because of its ìpatriarchal anxieties about sex, female appetite and maternity that leach into its sights and sounds and the way it frames, with scrutinizing closeness, the female body.î This conclusion, however, misses the complexities of the other social and political anxieties in the film, such as class conflict, relationships, and true happiness. Blue, or its original French title La Vie díAdele: Chapitres 1 & 2óis the story of a womanís life through love, food, and sex. The film takes you from 15-year-old Adeleís romance with Emma, an older art student, to Adele becoming a schoolteacher and finally, to the end of her long-standing relationship with Emma.
Director Abdellatif Kechiche focuses on Adeleís body throughout the film, especially her mouth. Adeleís mouth, ever open and ready to consume, is constantly in frameódemonstrating her characterís ìvoraciousness,î as Emma says. Adeleís openness, and the closeness of the camera, imply that Kechiche is going deep under the protagonistís skin to explore her by physically placing the viewer in a position to do so. The focus on Adele is intense and constant, and it achieves its purposeóto condition the viewer to Adeleís experience.
Dargis mentions the amount of time that Adele’s ìderriereî was shot, alone and center on the screen. I counted three times within the first 20 minutes of the film. Undoubtedly Adele’s rear end gets a lot of attention, but what does this mean? Dargis uses the attention given to Adele’s rear-end to cement her argument on the patriarchal representation of women in this film. I think the film points us elsewhere.
The most obvious source of tension in the film, besides the patriarchal one that Dargis discusses, is the difference in class between Adele and Emma. The two scenes of the women meeting each others parents mirror their discomfort. Emma’s family reflects her more cultured inclinations they eat oysters and question Adele’s desire to be a teacher because of the job’s economic security. Adele’s parents similarly question Emma about her art, wondering what she will do to make money with such a career, while they eat a simple pasta dish. Kechiche’s focus on the food they served framing the actresses’ faces as they eat is another way for him to show the conflicting reality of their social positions.
What does this have to do with Adeleís backside? Kechicheís focus on the female body from a distance, in scenes such as where Adele is sauntering down a hill towards her bus stop, is an objectification of her body, but perhaps not a solely patriarchal objectification. Adeleís face is constantly framed on the screen in a way that makes you feel as if you could delve deep into her mind. Pairing this with her bodyóopenly and without obstructionógives a full image of Adele: body and soul. What could be called a superfluous exhibition of Adeleís body is rather a purposeful display of her own anxieties about her lifestyle, her appetite, and her body image.
Blue depicts an internal struggle of living and loving. The film loses its impact when one focuses solely on the film’s images of the beautiful women in it. As a viewer it is a struggle in itself to watch Blue, with its constant focus on Adele pushing us to empathize with her unique life. That’s what makes it so relevant–struggle just as Adele does, trying to wrap our heads around what is happening around us.
Canada has the most concentrated media ownership of any liberal democracy in the world—more concentrated than America’s, or even Britain and its Murdoch empire. In 1999, our five largest newspaper chains accounted for 93 per cent of all daily circulation. Today the number is 82 per cent—lower, but still very high.
Just how pervasive is this concentration? In print, Postmedia (formerly CanWest) controls 31 per cent of total newspaper circulation, while Quebecor takes up 23 per cent, and holds 27 of Ontario’s 38 daily newspapers. Also involved in telecom, Quebecor has dominated the market in Quebec since buying Vidéotron in 2000.
Bell sold its common share in the Globe and Mail in 2010, but acquired the CTV network in the same deal. It grew even larger this past July when it bought Astral Media for nearly $4 billion. Rogers, the largest communications company in Canada, has diverse interests from wireless service to Maclean’s and other magazines. Shaw bought the broadcasting arm of CanWest in 2010, and now operates Global TV in addition to its distribution infrastructure.
The biggest casualty of centralization is editorial independence. In 2001, CanWest, owned by the Asper family, ordered all its papers to publish editorials written at its Winnipeg headquarters. This led to a byline strike at the Montreal Gazette, in which reporters refused to allow their names to appear in print. This ended when the reporters were threatened with termination. In 2002, an Halifax Daily News editor resigned due to interference from CanWest headquarters. That summer, Russell Mills, veteran publisher of the Ottawa Citizen, was fired after running an editorial calling for the resignation of Jean Chrétien, an old friend of Israel Asper. In 2003, the Globe and Mail reported on a leaked CanWest memo that laid out plans for a centralized news desk in Winnipeg—they called it “this country’s most aggressive attempt to centralize editorial operations across a newspaper chain.” But not even the clearest violation of journalistic independence in contemporary Canadian history would lead to more regulation. The 2006 election brought Stephen Harper to power—his heritage minister, responsible for media regulation, was a former CanWest executive named Bev Oda.
The Citizen debacle was a big missed opportunity. Political appetite to even discuss media regulation is seldom present, because controversies like the Asper disaster rarely happen. Given the firestorm that ensued, similar realizations will only be rarer in the future. However, editorial control still happens—it has just taken on subtler, more insidious forms. Executives have moved from overt statements of editorial policy to indirect control through hiring, firing, and promotion. Stories that go against policy are no longer pulled, but are ‘slanted’ through omission and preferential placement. The result is what academics call social control, where a journalist’s perks and career chances depend on writing to the company line. Ultimately, this leads to self-censorship and avoiding stories contrary to corporate interests.
Why is this a problem? Across the country, corporate media gives ‘free rides’ to those it likes, and no ride at all to those it doesn’t. In New Brunswick, for example, the Irving family holds all of the English-language daily newspapers. Like most media families, the Irvings have other large interests—they own, among other things, the largest oil refinery in Canada, forestry operations, and a frozen foods company. Their papers are known for failing to report on the sometimes-questionable activities of their sister companies.
On the West coast, look at the example of former BC premier Gordon Campbell. In January 2003, when Campbell, Premier at the time, was caught driving with a blood alcohol content more than double the legal limit while vacationing in Hawaii. In confidence, a Vancouver Sun reporter called Campbell’s grinning, rosy-cheeked mugshot the scoop of the year—but the Vancouver Sun, known for running massive headshots, ran a tiny thumbnail. Later that year, when the provincial NDP released its environmental policy, only one paper carried the story, and even then it was buried in the middle. All of these papers were owned by CanWest at the time.
So, is editorial independence likely with media concentration? Absolutely not. As the 1981 Kent Commission on newspaper ownership wrote, “For the heads of such organizations to justify their positions by appealing to the freedom of the press is offensive to intellectual honesty.”
The only body with the power to restore the freedom of the press is the federal government. After a Royal Commission and two Senate investigations, we know the problem and the solutions. The Harper government must act before our media—and our democracy—slip further towards oligarchy.
