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Campus Spotlight, Student Life

Campus Spotlight: McGill Design Collective

by Miguel Principe on

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Purposeful design determines the user-friendliness of websites, the efficacy of advertisements, and the accessibility of buildings—and McGill is home to many students who are passionate about it. For Carrie Rong, U2 Science, graphic design is both an interest and an outlet for her creative side, which is often otherwise neglected during the school year. A year ago, she began to tinker with graphic design software to create promotional material such as posters and a website for the Physiology Undergraduate League of Students (PULS), where she is currently the Communications Director. Her interest even led to a summer internship in product design. Rong lamented the lack of a community for design-minded individuals like herself at McGill.

“I realized [that] there seemed to be no one to talk to about design with,” Rong said. “I wanted to bring creative people together to show McGill what good design is [and use our foundation of skills to] change the design here.”

Sensing this lack of space for creatives on campus, Rong founded the McGill Design Collective as a home where designers at McGill could congregate. The first goal of the club, which aspires to be “McGill’s premiere creative agency,” is to advise other clubs on good design. Rong wants to work with student groups on campus because she noticed that many groups made posters and websites that were not effective or aesthetically pleasing. She hopes that she and her fellow Design Collective members will soon be able to take requests from both clubs and local startups to create material that incorporates their clients’ requests into while applying smart design principles.

The collective also aims to teach and challenge its member base, which is currently composed of 20 people with experience in various forms of design such as graphic design, web design, and photography. For beginners, the Design Collective will host workshops introducing common design software such as Adobe Illustrator and Figma. For more advanced members, the collective is giving a monthly design challenge to help foster creative growth. With these initiatives, Rong hopes to achieve the slogan of their group: “Let’s Make McGill Beautiful.” 

“A designer’s mindset is to iterate upon things that can be improved,” Rong said. “The Design Collective aims to enable its members to go out [on campus], take projects from clubs, and make them more beautiful.”

For the group, beautifying McGill’s clubs means creating design that has meaning and purpose. An example of purposeful design is choosing colours that express a certain sentiment or characteristic, such as using blue to convey tranquility. Rong envisions that the collective sets a precedent to incorporate good design principles for promotional materials at McGill, such as complementary colours and thoughtful use of negative space. She also hopes to have the collective’ members inspire others to strive for more meaningful use of design. 

With the goal of making McGill a place with more deliberate design, the club is starting this fall with weekly meetings that alternate between workshops and “Design and Donuts,” an event for like-minded creatives to come together and evaluate each others’ design pieces. A permanent meeting place and time has not been set, but students can keep up with this up-and-coming design club on their Facebook page. 

Out on the Town, Student Life

La Cale: A greener way to stand out

by Yara Shaheen-Abuelreish on

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The recent Montreal climate march and ensuing conversations about climate change have prompted many students to reexamine their consumption habits and reduce their waste. Four friends in Rosemont are ushering in this change with their new zero-waste pub, La Cale. Located on Rue Saint-Hubert, the bar prides itself on its strict adherence to environmentally-friendly business practices while still offering patrons a full bar experience. 

Walking into La Cale, the industrial ceilings and dim lighting create a rustic aura. There is still a ‘new bar’ feel, as co-owners Gab and Luca Silver Fox rush about making their homemade sodas and prepping vegetarian poutine. Josh Gendron, who has been with La Cale since the beginning and goes by Gend, described La Cale’s journey from its beginning to opening day. 

“It’s hard to make it a short story, because it was a long process,” Gend said. “Me and some friends […] wanted to open a bar for a while but […] lacked the inspiration to do so. There’s so many [similar] bars out there. So when we came across this book by Bea Johnson about zero-waste lifestyles it just inspired us to [implement] that style of operation into the bar system. It’s a way for us to be different from other people while also making a difference in the bar industry. Most of us nowadays, we like to care about what we eat [and] what we serve.”

Gend does not believe La Cale has faced obstacles so much as challenges. 

“It’s just finding the right suppliers and thinking outside the box,” Gend said. “It’s not an obstacle, it’s just a bit more work [and] a bit more research. [Our juices and sodas are made in-house], which most bars buy premade. We made the bar. The chairs and tables are second-hand furniture from auctions or restaurants that closed. Zero-waste is all about reuse, and we like to give things a second chance.”

Gend continued to support this claim as he talked about the message they would like to send to the Montreal bar community. 

“This is not a difficult thing,” Gend said. “Sometimes, things are more costly or time-consuming, but that’s really what makes your bar stand out more than other places. When you buy a Coke at another bar, it’s always the same Coke [….] I think it’s worth all the effort if you want to be different.”

Gend recommends that business-owners forgo printing the second extra receipt and stock their businesses based on what they can reasonably sell. To consumers, he urges people to stop ordering bottles of water and fill their empty pint glasses instead.

“Say no to straws,” Gend said. “My main advice is just try your best to make the least waste as possible [….] When a business goes zero-waste, the impact is multiplied, [and it pressures] other businesses […] to do the same [to avoid being] seen as the polluting business. You’ll have to make the switch eventually, [so] why not now? You just need to think outside the box, and [with all the literature], it’s getting easier and easier.”

Gend reports an overall positive response to the bar and hopes for further support from the community at its upcoming events, including Thursday comedy nights and a wide array of musical acts. 

With significant strides and major community support, La Cale is setting the stage for some long-awaited and exciting changes to the Montreal bar scene. Gend reported that the pub raised $22,000 through online campaigns, which shows the high demand for waste-conscious businesses in the city. This will likely mark the beginning of more conscious business practices and will urge business owners and consumers alike to start thinking outside the box.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

Mashrou’ Leila echoes voices of Arab resistance at Club Soda

by Abeer Almahdi on

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Mashrou’ Leila celebrated their 10th anniversary this year; to commemorate the occasion, the band released The Beirut School, their fourth studio album. The band have begun international superstars, with their tour covering Europe, the Middle East, before making  stop in Montreal at Club Soda on Oct. 9. Singer Hamed Sinno, violinist Haig Papazian, keyboardist and guitarist Firas Abou Fakher, and drummer Carl Gerges brought powerful Arab energy that radiated through the venue. Sinno and Mashou’ Leila have been Arab 2SLGBTQI+ activists and trailblazers, completely flipping the script on the homophobia and heteronormativity that plague much of mainstream Arab pop music. The band, whose name translates to either ‘The Night Project’ or ‘Leila’s Project’, played a set full of warmth and inspiration. 

The night began with a performance from one of Montreal’s own Iraqi-Canadian alternative hip-hop artist Yassin “Narcy” Alsalman. Through his show, Narcy also shed light on current protests in Iraq against corruption, rising unemployment, and poor public services. Besides his career in music, Narcy is also an actor, professor, and multimedia artist, currently teaching one of Canada’s only hip-hop courses at Concordia University.  Narcy’s performance and call to action created an intense and impassioned atmosphere in anticipation for the main act.

Mashrou’ Leila’s Hamed Sinno opened with a spoken word poem, followed by a performance of “Roman,” an ode to rebellion and hope. Sinno’s ardent and energetic call for resistance inspired a fiery energy in the crowd and was a fitting way to inaugurate the concert. 

Another standout of the night was “Jinn,” written after Sinno’s father passed away. In the song, Sinno detailed his struggle to mourn, using drugs and alcohol as a means to cope. Sinno’s soothing but strong voice allowed the audience to feel the pain, but also his resilience. 

Throughout their set, Mashrou’ Leila was accompanied by audiovisuals that enhanced the deep lyrical meaning behind many of their works. During “Radio Romance,” a projection of two male-presenting lovers tried to embrace flooded the screen with the impending night and many protestors blocking their way. 

The band’s set was filled with thoughtful and political calls to action; the dreamy and multidimensional ballad “Tayf,” Sinno explained, is about the Lebanese government’s crackdown on queer clubs and bars in the country. 

The band’s outspoken activism has led to multiple controversies, including the government of Egypt banning Mashrou’ Leila from ever performing in the country again. Sinno explained that the song “Cavalry” highlights those struggles against government oppression and calls to fans to continue supporting resistance. Additionally, the accompanying music video echoes the same sentiments, resembling the protests by Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi in the year prior. The images portrayed a young girl attempting to fight soldiers who are invading her home, arresting her family, and cutting down their olive trees, . 

In the encore,  the band closed off the night with “Marrikh.” Sinno explained that the song was about his struggles with mental illness and the stigma that comes with it; therefore, he asked the audience to put down all their phones, and the venue to turn off the lights. “Marrikh” was a powerful, dreamy, and bittersweet end to the night, with audience members closing their eyes and drifting into the finale.

Arts & Entertainment, Film and TV

‘Hron, a Country of Ghosts’ dares to be different

by Patrick Gilroy on

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 Hron, A Country of Ghosts, a new independent film from director dani Tardif, is a self-described anarcho-queer sci-fi movie about love and war. The film centres on Dydo Horacki (Noé Larose), a journalist who is assigned to a military camp to cover the expansion efforts of the fictional Borolian Empire, an imperialist regime intent on domination. After writing an article that criticizes the war effort, Dydo is sent by the militia’s commander to accompany some soldiers on a dangerous mission. Realizing too late into the expedition that they were set up, the party is attacked and Dydo is taken by one of many militia groups that reside in the mountains. Herein lies the twist: The “captors” quickly make it clear that they aren’t taking Dydo as a prisoner. They do not seem interested in pointless cruelty. Instead, they give Dydo the option to be left behind, but for lack of a better option, the journalist joins them.

Drawing inspiration from Michel Foucault’s idea of heterotopias—spaces which exist within but apart from the contexts that surround them, and as such reveal hidden values of the cultures they exist in—the bulk of the film’s 60-minute runtime juxtaposes this small group of anarchists with the violent imperialist state. The anarchists, who refer to themselves as the Free Company of Mount Heather, are depicted as warm and authentic. The imperialists are not. It is a clever political twist on the classic sci-fi war epic: Rather than having democratic rebels try to take down an autocratic empire, socialist anarchists attempt the coup. However, this film is more interested in the political battles taking place than the physical ones.

For the rest of the film, we are treated to a look into the life of this free collective. The viewer is invited to imagine a classless, genderless society where decision making is shared. There are many overt critiques of capitalist hierarchies throughout the film, but the subtle digs are the most effective. For example, Dydo reacts with childlike disbelief when they learn that people choose to work freely to benefit their collective. Coming from the empire, Dydo has only understood work as the product of coercion by a superior. Hron, A Country of Ghosts plays as a social critique simply by showing the merits of its subject: The confederation, unlike the Empire, is very, very good. 

Though the film prides itself on tidy politics, core elements of the story that would have strengthened Hron‘s impact are sadly absent. The relationships between characters are what drive the film, but they lack conflict and tangible development. The close bonds that form between Dydo and the militia members develop for no discernible reason beyond narrative convenience, and the viewer has no cause to root for these characters. Many of them are given extended and intimate monologues over the second half of the film, but their emotional impact is limited by the lack of narrative development. The film privileges its political message over traditional storytelling techniques; which is ultimately unfortunate.

The film does a good job with costumes and setting, and manages to create a distinct universe in an impressively short span of time. The ski masks, bandanas, and ragged clothes of the anarchists immediately register as rebellious as well as being of this planet, while the imperialists’ orderly and uptight outfits are classically sci-fi. Attention is drawn to the dress frequently, and watching both kinds on screen at once makes this sci-fi feel timeless and distinct.

The film’s crew introduced the work suggesting that although something is not perfect, that doesn’t mean it is not worth making. There are merits in the film’s production, acting, and design—and there is a charm and depth to the rogue politics on display that makes the film work as a conceptual piece examining the effects of politics on interpersonal relationships. 

Whether or not you agree with its message, the film has an unabashedly independent spirit. And it’s a welcome breath of fresh air from whatever has been clogging up your Netflix queue. 

Arts & Entertainment, Theatre

‘Honour: Confessions of a Mumbai Courtesan’ brings the world of sex trafficking closer to home

by Asha Bittenbender on

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Before Honour: Confessions of a Mumbai Courtesan begins, the audience is plunged into complete and total darkness in the Montréal Arts Interculturels (MAI) theatre. When a spotlight comes up on writer and performer Dipti Mehta—her face partially obscured from our view by a colorful, bejeweled scarf—her figure is the only limb of reality extended to us in the alien space. The beginning of her one-woman show is not the only time the audience feels that Mehta is rescuing us.

The plot chronicles the life of a young girl named Rani, during the days leading up to her ‘first sale.’ Hers is the world of the courtesan, and she is about to join the adults who work in the trade.

Secondary characters include Rani’s mother, Chameli, a veteran prostitute sold by her own father at age 13. Now as an older woman, she presides over the little world of her daughter; their family friend Meena, a eunuch who helped raise Rani; and Shyam, whom Chameli raised but who now aspires to pimp out both Chameli and Rani.

Mehta plays all these roles herself, and those of prospective buyers. Her extended solo makes the isolation of the world she portrays palpable —alone onstage, her characters live isolated from men and women leading ‘civilian’ lives of marriage and babies, careers and education.

Her main character, Rani, sharply feels this isolation: Her youth and inexperience is impossible not to find endearing. The tensions of the world Mehta explores are present in her titular character as well–Rani is also streetwise, using the kinds of words that young women are not supposed to use,  understanding the desires of lecherous men she meets on the streets.

The supposed isolation of the world onstage is challenged by the presence of the audience in the Montreal theatre. As mature and capable as Rani seems, the audience very much wants to intervene: To stop the sale, to whisk Rani away, to rescue her. But we cannot.

The powerlessness the audience feels watching the plot progress is not the lesson to be taken away–rather it is the coal with which Mehta hopes to light a fire in audience members. The play’s program included research from the United Nations estimating that 24.9 million individuals are in forced labour situations, largely women who have become the victims of human trafficking. For every girl whose fate is sealed, there are thousands more who can be saved by intervention from those with the resources to do so. Panelists at a talkback after the show included an advocate for human trafficking and forced prostitution in Montreal. Her inclusion emphasized the message of the play: This issue is both locally and universally urgent.

Honour is not a lament, but rather a call to action. The issue of human trafficking, though dire, is not hopeless. Mehta’s performance, encompassing seven characters throughout the play, stands in stark contrast to the coerced position of her heroine. Her agency is exercised every time she slips out of a character and into a new one.

In her first appearance as the mother, Chameli, Mehta states: “This is the reality of a woman’s life: She pays for the sins of others.”

But each time her female characters do so, Mehta pulls a scarf from the lines suspending them around stage. By the last scene, she has gathered them in her arms, bearing their weight just as women are expected to bear debts; as the lights come down for the final time, she turns her back to her audience, and lets them fall.

 

Science & Technology, Student Research

A new era of precision medicine to start at McGill

by Owen Dunkley on

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There are three things that get doctors jazzed up: Sleep, coffee, and precision medicine. Caricatures aside, the next stage of medicine will likely include increasingly accurate diagnoses and personalized treatments that consider patients’ genetics, known as precision medicine. Large tissue sample collections and big data on tissue donors have been at the forefront of a new wave of medical research around the world, fuelling this progression. These annotated repositories, termed ‘biobanks,’ are commonly used for associating abnormal cellular or molecular biological markers—biomarkers—with disease. 

Although large biobanks exist in countries such as the UK, US, and China, smaller, local studies are critical validation tools for any healthcare system with distinct genetic diversity. Ayat Salman, a PhD student in the Department of Family Medicine, believes that Quebec’s medical record-keeping infrastructure is limiting the ability to track chronic diseases in the population. Currently, a large portion of medical write-ups in Quebec are stored as scans of doctors’ scribblings on paper, and fax machines govern most communication between hospitals. According to Salman, this antiquated system limits researchers from searching for or codifying data from years of tissue donors’ previous visits to their doctors, potentially letting important flags of chronic disease to go unnoticed. 

“Each tissue has a story associated with it,” Salman said in an interview with The McGill Tribune. “The family doctor who keeps a record of regular visits is a good source to tell that story.” 

To gain access to this resource, Salman is pushing for the implementation of standardized electronic medical records across family doctors’ offices in Quebec, so that biobank researchers need not go on furious fax chases to gain knowledge on patients. 

Although much information could be gained from the general practitioner’s office, donors might soon be able to help draw connections between lifestyle and disease by contributing data collected from health-tracking applications to certain biobanks. Montreal has seen a recent boom in app-based health startups. 

“There are so many small companies with great software out there that can be put together and used [in a centralized] biobank,” Salman said. 

When performed in a calculated, secure, and ethical way, data collection on a large scale could catapult Quebec into a new age of understanding chronic diseases.

The information that we gain from biomarker research is only half the battle in providing the public with quality medical care. Professor Vincent Mooser, the new Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Genomic Medicine who joined McGill’s Department of Human Genetics in August, wants to apply biomarker research to develop new therapies.

“[The other half] involves clinical trials to show that [the information gained from biobanking research] can be used for drug discovery and drug development,” Mooser said.

With the help of more than $25 million in funding over the next seven years and an enterprising research program, Mooser hopes to catalyze the world-class biomedical infrastructure at the university and move genomic research-based therapies into the doctor’s office. 

“[Many studies] have already linked biomarkers with disease,” Mooser said. “I am hoping to show that what they found is clinically useful and can actually be translated towards new drug discoveries.”

Mooser is hoping to solve the quandary that if a doctor identifies a disease biomarker in a patient but does not have a proven way to adjust his treatment accordingly, then the initial test for the biomarker serves no clinical purpose. If Mooser and his team succeed in their ambitious goals for the coming decade, McGill may soon be at the centre of a new era in genome-based drug development.

The biomedical field is at the cusp of a revolution in the way that disease is treated, and McGill appears to be keeping with the times. Salman and Mooser have different approaches to precision medicine in Canada, but they share a strong drive to advance evidence-based care towards a future of precision and prevention.

Art, Arts & Entertainment

Le Cartel’s gallery opening is an homage to street art

by Vanessa Barron on

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Montreal-based clothing brand Le Cartel hosted its first gallery event at their brick and mortar store in the Mile End on Oct. 11. In addition to their Fall 2019 clothing line, the event had multiple DJ sets, a cocktail bar, and a flash tattoo station. The work of visual artists, such as William Houde, Aurelien Saly, and HRVB, were prominently featured on the walls, posters, t-shirts, and tattoos. Through all these forms, the event connected street art with streetwear as a style that permeates public space.

Founded in 2015, Le Cartel produces streetwear collections in collaboration with Montreal artists. Their past collections feature works from artists like illustrator KRUMP and muralist Monosourcil among many others. Their purpose as an organisation, according to their Instagram bio, is to explore the intersection between fashion and art. Le Cartel’s Fall 2019 collection features the intricate and groovy artwork of Epithumia Rose, a multidisciplinary artist known for her tattoo work, which she has practiced in studios across the world. Her designs feature on the backs of simple t-shirts, with the brand’s logo on the front. The art on these shirts is as sophisticated as that which would appear in a painting in a gallery.

While Le Cartel hosted the event, their clothes were hardly its focus: A throng of PBR drinking young professionals mingled near a dozen t-shirts hanging on the wall, but most patrons were there for other types of art that decorated spaces and bodies. A makeshift tattoo parlour in the corner of the room complemented the designs on both the t-shirts and on the walls. 

Large graffiti pieces and duplicate posters by the German artist, HRVB, adorned the walls of the large event space. Originally from East Berlin, HRVB’s art is an homage to ‘90s rave culture, heavily influenced by the cultural and political climate that accompanied the fall of the Berlin Wall. Aptly titled ‘Berlin Calling,’ his work often includes pop culture characters like Mario and Lego figurines. As a nod to East Berlin’s history as a socialist state, these symbols of Western consumer culture are manipulated into high art, only to be plastered across buildings like advertisements. The format of the works themselves pertains to the setting of the street: Graffiti is often site-specific, whereas posters are designed to be reproduced and hung in a location of the owner’s choosing. Surprisingly, one of the highlights of the event was the bathroom stalls, where pop art style posters lined every inch of the walls; patrons could take these posters home with them as memorabilia. This process of art reproduction parallels streetwear itself: Taking artistic ideas from someone else on the street, and repurposing it in another space. 

Street art, like graffiti and posters, is heavily informed by the space that it occupies. Similarly, streetwear has a sense of locality because it incorporates local influences and pop culture. While Le Cartel market themselves as the link between art and fashion, the art featured on the shirts is far more important than the garments’ construction. The fact that t-shirts are a staple of streetwear around the globe shows that the visual print design is essential to making an artistic statement, rather than the way it is worn. To some, it might seem excessive to pay so much for just a shirt or a hoodie but at least you know where that money’s going–directly into the pockets of Montreal artists. Streetwear like Le Cartel speaks to a city’s pride in its own artistic scene in the form of wearable art.

Fact or Fiction, Science & Technology

Fact or Fiction: The impact of hunting on animal populations

by Margaret Wdowiak on

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Hunting has often been suggested as an effective means of controlling animal populations. Yet, hunting can be beneficial in some instances and harmful in others. 

Hunting can actually help fund conservation: In the US, hunters generate millions of dollars for conservation efforts through excise taxes and licence fees. In Sub-Saharan Africa, trophy hunting, the government-licensed shooting of big-game animals such as lions, raises more than 200 million dollars a year for conservation purposes. 

Another benefit of hunting is its effect on local communities, which profit off of increased revenue from hunting. This gives them an incentive to preserve animals and the environment. 

According to Kyle Elliott, an associate professor in the Department of Natural Resource Sciences at McGill, hunting can also help improve the health of certain animal populations.

“In some cases, hunting prevents overpopulation and [its] associated diseases and hardships, so individuals may be in better condition because they have less competition from other individuals,” Elliott wrote in an email to The McGill Tribune. 

Hunting is also a useful mechanism for controlling populations of invasive species.

“Hunting can clearly help increase the populations of species that are in competition or predated by the species being hunted,” Elliott wrote. “For example, hunting […] wolves can increase deer and moose populations.”

Yet, despite the good that hunting can do, it can also create environmentally harmful consequences, the most serious of which are overhunting and species extinctions. 

“Most species of animals that have gone extinct in North America have gone extinct due to overhunting,” Elliot wrote. 

One of the most notable examples of overhunting in North America is the extinction of the passenger pigeon. In Africa, too, regulated hunting can drive species closer to extinction. Trophy hunters, who are responsible for killing 600 lions each year and tend to target males, often destabilize lion populations. They also kill animals from populations that are already declining, which is particularly alarming given that 75 per cent of the African lion population have been killed in the last 20 years. 

Trophy hunting often provides a cover for, and consequently increases, poaching. To continue reaping the financial benefits of this practice, groups inflate animal numbers and even pressure the government to raise hunting quotas. 

Furthermore, hunting license fees can adversely affect ecosystem health. The revenue from these fees often increases the population size of big game target species, leading to overpopulation at the expense of countless non-game species. This results in reduced biological diversity, genetic integrity, and ecological balance. 

While hunting invasive species is often a management strategy to save native populations, it can also put these species at risk. 

“Some groups encourage the hunting or harvesting of invasive species to control populations,” Elliott wrote. “This can be effective, but can lead to a market for related species or species in their native range.”

By creating a market for invasive species in their natural habitat, humans endanger these species and degrade these native ecological systems beyond repair. For example, the overhunting of frugivores—fruit-eating animals—hinders seed dispersal, thus reducing tree diversity and overall forest biodiversity. 

Ultimately, using hunting as a management strategy is the result of previous human intervention. In North America, white-tailed deer populations are now abundant, after humans hunted down predator wolf populations. Hunting is often seen as a way to manage these deer populations and prevent habitat destruction, though research shows that it is not always successful. Other options include culling, or selectively killing individuals; translocating individuals; and preventing reproduction through sterilization.

Whether hunting is a useful conservation tool depends heavily on geography, species, and who you ask. In some circumstances, it is appropriate and beneficial. In others, it does much more harm than good.

wives and girlfriends
Behind the Bench, Sports

Behind the Bench: More than her husband

by Kaja Surborg on

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Internet personality and wife of English professional soccer player Wayne Rooney, Coleen Rooney, rocked Twitter on Oct. 9 with her claim that Rebekah Vardy, a competitor on I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! and wife of Jamie Vardy, had been leaking personal details of Rooney’s life to British tabloid paper The Sun. The Guardian almost immediately released multiple articles covering the scandal and breaking down Rooney’s scheme to catch Vardy in the act. The whole affair raised the question of why this was getting so much media attention from both tabloid and news outlets. 

Rooney and Vardy are both married to professional English soccer players. While Rooney and Vardy have large social media followings and have appeared on reality television shows, there are plenty of female partners of male professional athletes that deliberately avoid the public eye. Regardless of their online or public personas, many of these women are continually reported on by tabloid news, gossip sites, and even fan accounts on Instagram and Twitter, simply because they are married to or dating famous athletes. The obsession with male athletes’ wives and girlfriends has even led to a colloquial acronym: WAGs, short for “wives and girlfriends.” Rooney was even referred to as “Wagatha Christie” on Twitter–a title that essentially reduces her to being the wife of Wayne Rooney. 

In October 2018, The Daily Star published a story about an Instagram post from Anna Lewandowska, a Polish national karate champion who happens to be married to Robert Lewandowski of FC Bayern Munich and the Polish national soccer team. The story covered a series of negative comments left on the post, most of which seem to blame her for her husband’s team losing a game shortly after the photo went up. Covering the online hate that women receive seems harmless at first glance, but continuing down the single-sentence paragraphs that make up all good tabloid journalism, it emerges that The Daily Star’s defence of Lewandowska is that she is “devoted” to her husband. The implication is that had she not fit the publication’s definition of “devotion,” she would deserve the hate that she received from FC Bayern’s fans. Rather than being worthy of respect because she is a human being, she is deemed worthy of respect because of her husband and her devotion to him. The article also refers to Lewandowska as a “fitness blogger”–a term that is reductive at best. Lewandowska is a retired Polish, European, and world karate championship medalist who now runs a hugely successful fitness empire in Poland with a line of healthy foods and nutrition supplements, baby clothes, and fitness programs. Her assets are estimated to be worth 47 million euros. 

There are endless examples of athletes’ wives being described as everything from “blonde beauty” to “brunette entrepreneur,” but two central themes emerge throughout all of the articles and social media posts: Their appearances and their role in their husband’s lives. Both of these trends in describing the wives and girlfriends of famous athletes dehumanize them, dismissing the possibility that they have any independence as human beings and any worth outside of their physical appearance and their husbands or boyfriends. 

The recent coverage of the conflict between Rooney and Vardy, while hugely sensationalized, was rare in that it focused the story on the actions of the women involved, not on their husbands or their hair colour. But plenty of players’ partners who have worked to build their own brands and careers are still consistently painted as having no autonomy. Unfortunately, conflict and scandal seem to be the only ways for these women to be seen as people capable of being their own person. 

Editorial, Opinion

Racial profiling in Montreal threatens safety of racialized people

by The McGill Tribune Editorial Board on

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A report released by three professors at l’Université de Montreal released on Oct. 7 found that the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) were 11 times more likely to stop Indigenous women on the street than white women, four to five times more likely to subject black and Indigenous people to street checks, and twice as likely to stop people of Arab descent compared to white people. These numbers reflect the reality of people of colour living in Montreal, who experience systemic racism in their daily lives and exist within racist institutions. Montreal and McGill have an obligation to protect the safety and dignity of racialized people and to prioritize anti-oppressive approaches to security.

While this report was one of the first to quantify it, the SPVM has a long history of racial profiling. From the SPVM’s action plan against social and racial profiling’s creation in 2017, only one third of the plan was implemented, resulting in little noticable improvement. The police service’s most recent action plan—released in 2018—was criticized for using ambiguous language that created loopholes for racial profiling. For example,  In Feb. 2019, Montreal mayor Valérie Plante and the SPVM chose not to outfit officers with body cameras, citing high costs as well as police feeling “too surveilled” while on the job. However, Montrealers of colour spoke of experiencing stress, trauma, or anxiety after facing police abuse or being “arbitrarily watched, stopped, and detained.” Body cameras have been proven to reduce violence; a mild sense of surveillance for the SPVM team is a reasonable trade-off for the preservation of the safety and wellbeing of racialized people. 

Given these past failures in accountability and integrity, it is vital that the SPVM maintain transparency with their next steps to address the racial profiling crisis.

The racial profiling report, which was commissioned by the City of Montreal, comes in the wake of the release of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls report on June 3. This report includes a supplemental document that addresses the language barrier in Quebec that endangers Indigenous peoples in Montreal during their encounters with French-speaking police officers. Following the closure of residential schools (where many Indigenous children were forced to speak only English) many Indigenous people were relocated to Montreal without any French skills. Insensitivity and violence towards Indigenous peoples in Montreal by the police has been reported countless times and language barriers only exacerbate the issue. The SPVM must heed the calls against their mistreatment and take steps to address language barriers if any real change is to occur.

Institutional racism expands beyond the SPVM and affects McGill students of colour on-and off-campus. Being a student is a temporary identity, while racial identity is permanent. Students of colour on campus face challenges that white students will never have to endure.

In Quebec, the government’s implementation of Bill 21 in June validated racism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia on a provincial level. The Bill, which prohibits public sector employees from wearing visible religious symbols, disproportionately disadvantages people of colour. In addition to validating racist discrimination, the Bill also whitens the already primarily caucasian police service’s hiring pool. By barring citizens who wear visible religious symbols from joining the police force, Bill 21 systematically weeds out people of colour. 

A rise in police-reported hate crimes following the Bill were attributed to the emboldening and legitimizing of racist attitudes by Bill 21. The Bill reinforces a culture of white supremacy within which the SPVM can practice socially-acceptable discrimination.

At McGill, systemic racism must also be addressed by providing campus security with anti-oppression and de-escalation training. McGill’s floor fellows also play an integral role in fostering a safer environment for these racialized students in residences and their anti-oppression training should be prioritized and improved to ensure a safer space for students. Moreover, SMMU’s “Know Your Student Rights” campaign could be extended to legal rights to help educate racialized students on their rights when confronted by police. While asserting these rights may not be safe in all instances, having knowledge of these rights could be useful.

While McGill is a primarily white space, all students can support student groups including the Black Students’ Network and the Indian Students’ Association in fighting racial injustice. Students can be supportive by being attentive to student movements and petitions such as the gofundme campaign that was created to assist McGill student Jean Kagame with legal fees related to an incident of anti-black racial profiling. Moreover, casting a vote in the federal election on Oct. 21 is one of the easiest ways that students can help the effort. Systemic racism, missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls and racial profiling are disturbing realities that must not be overlooked when choosing how to cast one’s vote. Moreover, blatantly racist incidents like when the Bloc Quebecois recently urged white Quebecers to elect politicians who look like them must be condemned for their statements. 

The recent racial profiling study calls for a change in culture and practice at the SPVM. Moreover, McGill and its students must prioritize anti-oppression on campus both through increased training and through support for initiatives by and for racialized students. However, none of these measures can stand alone without a government that addresses systemic racism.

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