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Out on the Town, Student Life

A guide to Montreal apartment hunting

by Abby McCormick on

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With the winter semester well underway, McGill students are beginning to ask themselves the all-important question: Where will I live next year? For many, the mere thought of delving into apartment hunting amid the return to hybrid learning is anxiety-inducing, to say the least. The range of different neighbourhoods, roommates, floorplans, and price ranges can seem both endless and daunting. However, The McGill Tribune’s foolproof tips will help get you on track to finding the right apartment at the right price.

1. Deciding on your must-haves

The first step in finding your dream apartment is identifying what you’re looking for. Start by making a list of your “must-haves” and your “nice-to-haves”. For instance, if you are an avid baker, a spacious kitchen with sufficient counter space might be one of your must-haves. In particular, consider what amenities you wish to have included, the type of appliances, furniture, natural light, transit access, as well as the location of the apartment. This list will come in handy when visiting apartments and making your final decision.

2. Budget, budget, budget

Before even beginning the search, it is critical to determine your budget range. Studio and one-bedroom apartments tend to have the highest rent per person, so you might consider living with roommates to offset costs. Generally, the higher your number of roommates, the lower your rent will be. However, communal living may not be suited for everyone. Before rushing into a decision, reflect on whether you would be comfortable sharing your space with others or making compromises. Stay realistic about what you can afford to spend on rent while still having room for other expenses, such as wifi and utilities if not included. Compare your findings with the average rent prices of each neighbourhood to glean a greater perspective, and try to find lease transfer agreements for below-market prices; apartment swapping guarantees that the previous rent does not increase between tenants. 

3. Finding roommates

Not only does living with roommates help you save money on rent, but it’s also a great way to socialize and feel more a part of McGill’s student community. For those who are interested in living with one or several roommates, consider how well your day-to-day routines align. Is your potential roommate a night owl, while you need to get up before sunrise for swim practice? Do they like to party, while you prefer to stay in? How do your cleaning preferences mesh? Asking questions like these prior to choosing a roommate is key to preventing future conflicts. Though it may be tempting, remember that your best friend isn’t necessarily the best roommate for you—it’s more important to live with someone whose values and lifestyles match up with yours. For those in search of roommates outside of their immediate social circles, McGill’s Off-campus Housing Facebook group and the International Roommates in Montreal Facebook group are great resources. 

4. Searching for an apartment

Now that you have identified precisely what you are looking for, it’s time to get started with the apartment hunt! Online search engines Padmapper and Zumper are great starting points, allowing users to tailor listings by desired location, number of bedrooms, and various amenities. Refer back to your list of must-haves, as well as your number of roommates to browse listings suited to your needs. You might even surprise yourself by finding a listing you love on Craigslist or Kijiji. McGill’s Off-campus Housing Facebook group also has a variety of apartments for rent, primarily located in either Milton Park or the Plateau—the two most common neighbourhoods for McGill students due to their proximity to campus. Alternatively, you could go for a walk in the neighbourhoods that you are interested in, taking notes of places with “for rent” signs. For those new to Montreal, this is also a great way to get a feel for different neighbourhoods.

5. Making the decision

Once you have found some listings that interest you, make a list of your top few apartments. These can be places that either best suit your needs or merely speak to your design style. To start the process of renting an apartment, contact the landlord, agent, or tenant to set up visits, either in person or virtually. Touring apartments wherever possible is essential, as you may notice flaws that the listing’s photos omitted; maybe there isn’t as much lighting as you thought there would be, or the kitchen is a lot smaller than anticipated. After having seen your top choices, refer back to your must-haves and nice-to-haves. This should help you to eliminate apartments that don’t sufficiently meet your criteria. Before signing any documents, make sure to be aware of your tenant rights to avoid entering into an unlawful agreement. 

Remember, apartment hunting is tough, especially as a student. You may not find the “perfect” apartment right away, but don’t overlook the power of adding your own personal belongings, decor, and memories. Try to imagine the full potential of the space; it might only feel like home after some time settling in. 

Chill Thrills, Student Life

Sustainable projects for staying at home

by Jackie Lee on

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The end of January: Add/drop is over, winter break is but an amorphous memory, and outside is really, really cold. Instead of venturing into the frigid outdoors, try your hand at some sustainable projects to distract yourself from the gloom of 5 p.m. sunsets—all without ratcheting up your screen time or purchasing superfluous materials. 

Grow microgreens

Microgreens—nutrient-dense seedlings of plants or herbs—are often touted as exclusive to fine-dining menus or superfood listicles. But fear not: They are easy to grow at home. An ideal project for students who lack the time or resources necessary to garden, microgreens can inject some green into your home and diet during the bleak midwinter. Once packed with soil, the individual cups of an egg carton make snug homes for pre-soaked seeds. After three-ish weeks, simply harvest the newly grown shoots and start again. While at first you might baffle your roommates as your makeshift planters hoard sunny windowsill real estate, you’ll impress them with a dinner garnished with home-grown produce. 

Fold origami 

Don’t let the scribbled coursework of semesters past haunt you. Instead of chucking your old notes, try folding the scrap paper into creative creatures or bewildering beasts—origami dragons, anyone? Beginners can start with simpler patterns like cranes and stars, and eventually graduate to succulents, elephants or lanterns; the list goes on. Instructions-wise, YouTube is your friend: Video tutorials show each fold in 3D, and are often easier to follow than written steps. Once you’ve got the hang of the basics, the world is your (origami) oyster. Keep your hands busy while binging Netflix or rewatching lectures by folding butterflies or sparrows, which, when hung from a window frame, cast pretty, swaying shadows during golden hour. You could even try assembling a chess set with recycled cardstock as the board and tiny shapes as the pieces. 

Pen a letter (or many)

Tearing open an envelope to receive a thoughtful, heartfelt letter is a unique joy, a gift mutual to the writer and the receiver. Short notes can be just as novel as a dozen pages: Your family or friends will appreciate receiving a freshly stamped letter in the mail, even if it’s only a few lines. To save on expensive stationary, fold your own envelope from recycled paper, and hand-deliver your letters on campus or to their apartment. Severing an old greeting card in half yields a makeshift postcard from the front image while preserving the original message on the other. Tuck this, along with other goodies like tea bags, stickers, or even some origami, into a decorated envelope to add an extra-special touch. 

Reuse kitchen scraps

It can be difficult to conjure the hopeful optimism of spring, with all its burgeoning flower buds and delicate petrichor, during the current sub-zero temperatures. But you can summon the season early with some easy projects. Prepare for your balcony garden by planting bulbs indoors now so they are ready to transfer outside after the first thaw. For something more immediately gratifying, save the bottoms of green onions and place them in a shallow glass, making sure to submerge the roots in water. The onion will regrow quickly—just trim the tops and add to your meals. Turn a sprouted potato into a stamp by cutting it half and carving a simple design. Triage your houseplants to determine if they are nutrient deficient: If the soil lacks calcium, add crushed eggshells;  if it lacks nitrogen, add old coffee grounds or steeped tea. Just remember to carefully monitor the soil’s pH to ensure the plant thrives.

Build a birdfeeder

Help out your friendly feathered neighbours by providing them with high-calorie foods. Try crafting a bird feeder from recycled materials such as plastic bottles or hoary wooden spoons. Buy a brick of suet—rendered fat, essentially—and hang it in a suet feeder. You can make your own by melting leftover meat drippings with other ingredients like peanut butter, seeds, and dried berries. Pour the mixture into a muffin tray or container, place a loop of twine on the top, and pop it in the freezer to solidify. Hang the loops of twine on your balcony or in a tree and wait for hungry birds to flock. And if the squirrels end up devouring it first, well—they’re hungry too!

Science & Technology

Demystifying ARSACS, a rare neurodegenerative disease concentrated in Quebec

by Bryana-Alexa Liberta on

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Autosomal recessive spastic ataxia of Charlevoix-Saguenay (ARSACS) is a rare neurodegenerative disease first identified in the Charlevoix-Saguenay region of Quebec. The disease affects muscle control, making a range of activities, from swallowing to speaking to walking, more difficult. Brenda Toscano Marquez, a postdoctoral researcher, and Alanna Watt, a biology professor at McGill, along with other researchers, recently published a paper in Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience describing an intriguing discovery that is changing the way they look at the disease. 

ARSACS is categorized as a rare disease worldwide, but in the Charlevoix-Saguenay region, it afflicts an estimated one in 1,500 to 2,000 people. The disease targets the cerebellum, the region of the brain responsible for motor control and coordination. ARSACS is caused by a mutation in the SACS gene, which tells cells how to make a protein called sacsin. 

“[Sacsin] plays a role in the organizing [of] proteins from the cytoskeleton and might be involved in mitochondria health and distribution in the cells,” Marquez wrote in an email to the Tribune.

When the SACS gene is mutated, the cells make an unstable form of sacsin. While it is still unclear how this mutation prevents the protein from performing its normal functions, it nonetheless causes the neurons in the cerebellum to die. The Watt lab at McGill and labs all over the world are working together to solve this mystery. 

One unique characteristic of ARSACS is that the cerebellum does not degenerate the same way throughout—most of the degeneration happens in the anterior part of the structure, which is nearer to the front. Both the anterior and posterior part of the cerebellum contain zebrin-negative cells, these are cells in the cerebellum that are more likely to degenerate. However, from the results obtained by this group of McGill researchers, the zebrin-negative cells are only degenerating in this anterior part of the cerebellum.

  “Our finding shows that there are other molecular players in cells that have a zebrin-negative phenotype and that are located in the anterior part of the cerebellum that are making these cells more susceptible to die,” Marquez wrote. “If we can find who those players are, we could target them to treat the patients.” 

Since ARSACS is a rare neurodegenerative disease, people that have it risk being misdiagnosed. For instance, ataxia is usually identified by uncoordinated movements due to injury in the cerebellum, but given that many different conditions can cause ataxia—from stroke to alcohol use—other symptoms and family history should be taken into account during the diagnosis process.

“ARSACS usually starts very early in life, around two years old,” Marquez wrote. “It is also accompanied by other symptoms like spasticity, peripheral nerve damage and retinal hypermyelination.” 

These symptoms, accompanied by genetic tests to search for the sacsin mutation, are how doctors can confirm the presence of ARSACS. However, there is currently no treatment available.

“Rare diseases don’t get a lot of attention and it’s hard to get [pharmaceutical companies] interested in them,” Marquez wrote. 

The disease affects those with the condition while they are very young, usually when they are toddlers. As patients grow older, these symptoms only get worse. Most require a wheelchair by the time they reach early-to-mid adulthood.

“The symptoms take a big toll on family members and on patients [who] require constant help,” Marquez wrote. “That can also affect the mental health of the patient, who can’t live a more autonomous life.” 

New discoveries about the biological underpinnings of ARSACS, such as that by the Watt lab, will bring the research field closer to finding a treatment for this rare disease. 

McGill, News, SSMU

SSMU hosts virtual Activities Night, student groups cite low engagement

by Anoushka Oke on

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The Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) hosted its Winter Activities Night on Jan. 17 and Jan. 18. During the Fall Activities Night, the virtual hosting platform Gather.Town crashed almost immediately after it failed to accommodate the high volume of participants attempting to join the event. To prevent another malfunction, SSMU partnered with another platform called TriplePlay, hoping for a smoother virtual experience. 

Attendees had the option to choose between different categories of clubs, including charity and environment, athletics and recreational sports, political and social activism, and more. Once clicked, each link directed the attendees to TriplePlay. From there, they could drop into virtual “rooms” wherein club representatives were waiting. Students could choose which room to enter and could bounce between rooms at their discretion.

Karla Heisele Cubilla, SSMU vice-president Student Life, was responsible for organizing the event. Heisele Cubilla told The McGill Tribune that there were 131 groups present and  597 web log-ins on Jan. 24, and 112 groups and 597 web log-ins on Jan. 25.

Though the event was originally supposed to be held in a hybrid format, government directives forbidding most in-person school events forced organizers to hold it entirely online. According to Heisele Cubilla, the responsibility to plan the event was compounded by the pressure to find a new platform that would work better than Gather.Town. Nonetheless, Heisele Cubilla believes that the event was largely successful.

“It’s a huge project, Activities Night, but this year it’s virtual, so the main hope is to get the word out,” Heisele Cubilla said. “It is the winter semester, so we expect less attendance, but we still wanted to encourage students to come. And virtual events are not usually very successful, but we’ve been very lucky at SSMU to have a big attendance.”

While many clubs and services looked forward to Activities Night to reach new students, many representatives, like HeForShe president and co-founder Aakshi Puri, acknowledged that in-person Activities Nights allowed for more dynamic interaction than a virtual version could.

“Activities Night is a great way to reach out to as many diverse groups of people as possible,” Puri wrote to the Tribune. “This was especially true when it was held in person in previous years, which would allow us to have open discussions about gender inequality, particularly with those who aren’t typically involved in the feminist movement.”

Many clubs, however, reported relatively low attendance rates to their booths. Puri estimated that about 10 people showed up to the HeForShe booth throughout the two-day event. Socialist Fightback Club president Lucas Marques told the Tribune that a total of six people attended the club’s virtual booth. This low turnout, Marques argues,  is a testament to a persistent issue within SSMU that runs much deeper than just Activities Night.

“I think this [problem] even goes into stuff like elections,” Marques said. “This is a reflection on the student union itself, certainly not the students, and I think that it’s because SSMU doesn’t present a fighting leadership, so students don’t actually look up to it as something that will fight for them.”

Some clubs, including Socialist Fightback often elect to host their own events to draw in members because they are not confident that participating in Activities Night will expand their membership. 

“Last semester we hosted two events, and 90 people showed up to both,” Marques said. “We find that [independent events are] better for growing membership as opposed to Activities Night. Obviously we would never discard any avenue for people to be interested, so we do partake in Activities Night, even if it is not the most efficient.”

News, SSMU

SSMU Legislative Council passes motion to address doxxing of students

by Ella Fitzhugh on

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On Jan. 20, the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) Legislative Council held their first meeting of the winter semester, discussing several annual reports and announcements, including the AUS Town Hall on the return to classes, and approving five motions. One motion will require SSMU executives on SSMU’s Divestment and Demilitarisation Campaign Mandate to provide progress updates; another motion sought to create an anti-surveillance master plan to protect McGill students who, because of their anti-colonial activism, have been doxxed and harassed on websites such as Canary Mission and Campus Watch. This master plan would institute a SSMU anti-surveillance commissioner to lead an anti-surveillance committee under the Council. 

During the question period, vice-president (VP) University Affairs Claire Downie spelled out how SSMU organized their campaign to facilitate a safer return to campus on Jan. 24, including measures such as making respirator-style masks available.

“On Monday we announced that we’re going to be providing respiratory-style masks on a pay-what-you-can basis to students who are especially vulnerable to COVID,” Downie said. “We’re hopefully going to be announcing details about this in the coming days.”

VP Finance Éric Sader engaged in several back-and-forths with councillors regarding president Darshan Daryanani’s continued absence. Sader told inquirers and the broader gallery that it is in the BoD’s “fiduciary duty to act in ways that benefit the company,” which includes, according to Sader, the “responsibility not to answer these questions” surrounding the president. 

Councillors Ghania Javed and Yara Coussa then presented the Motion Regarding the Creation of an Anti-Surveillance Master Plan within the SSMU. Coussa spoke of public websites which blacklist and expose personal information about advocates and activists, including pro-Palestinian McGill students and staff, students involved in Uyghur, Tibetan, or Hong Kong liberation advocacy, as well as Muslim students since the enactment of Bill 21.. 

“These forms of intimidation and attacks impact students’ mental health, physical health, and discourage their involvement on campus,” Coussa said. “Some students have reported that it has prevented them from applying to leadership positions on campus [….] These examples […] highlight how students have been victims of racist surveillance.”  

The motion, passed with 24 in favour and two abstentions, will mandate VP Internal Sarah Paulin publish a master plan by April 7, 2022 detailing how SSMU will help combat and end racist surveillance and doxxing at McGill.

Moment of the meeting:

During the announcement period, VP Finance Sader made a public apology to Councillors Coussa and Javed for his “unprofessional comments” toward them during the Nov. 25, 2021 Legislative Council meeting. Sader also noted that, going forward, it is important for him to acknowledge power dynamics at play, given his position as a white man speaking to two racialized women during the incident. 

Soundbite:

“I think it’s important to point out that McGill Athletics and Recreation are not funded by the university […] and [are] not in a position to take a stand regarding divestment [….] It’s outside of the scope of McGill Athletics and Recreation. I just want to point out that what’s happening right now is students are losing out on services [….] Basically, Athletics and Recreation has their hands tied.”— Member of the gallery Chloe Parsons, U3 Education and chair of the Student Athletics Council, on how the SSMU moratorium on auxiliary fees impacts the McGill Athletics and Recreation facility services available to students.

Album Reviews, Books, Poetry

Literary theorist Jeff Dolven pays a virtual visit to the English department

by Ella Gomes and Suzanna Graham on

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On Jan. 19, the McGill English Department held its 2022 Spector Lecture, an annual event that highlights contemporary work in the literary field. This year, the department welcomed Jeff Dolven, a poet, literary critic, and Princeton professor of English. Later, students and faculty had a chance to hear several of his new poems at a virtual reading hosted by Poetry Matters on Jan. 20. Originally planned to take place in McGill’s Wilson Hall on Mar. 24, 2020, organizers moved the lecture online after the pandemic prompted numerous reschedulings. 

To start it off, Dolven introduced attendees to his most recent area of study: Poetry and simultaneity. Dolven explored how human conversation is naturally inclined toward turn-taking—a tendency that poetic structure can disrupt to create metaphors that form overlapping connections. 

Dolven then explained the importance of taking turns during conversation. No known human language prefers both parties to speak simultaneously during a conversation; overlapping speech often leaves us disoriented and overwhelmed. However, English poet Sir Philip Sidney’s double-sestina poem “Ye Goat-Herd Gods”—Dolven’s case study for the lecture—challenges this inherently human pattern. As the two speakers, shepherds Strephon and Klaius, lament their love for an ambiguous and distant feminine figure, the poem begins to abandon the typical back-and-forth of human speech until the shepherds’ duet loses all essence of natural human behavior. While Strephon begins wailing “For she whose parts maintained a perfect music,” Klauis follows, echoing “For she, with whom compared, the Alps are valleys,” emphasizing the heavily formulated, yet related nature of their cries. With stark shifts between each shepherd’s longing confessions, Strephon’s and Klaius’ proclamations appear in sync, yet disconnected.  

Dolven highlighted that the shepherds repeatedly echo each other’s form, rhetoric, and figurative language, imbuing metaphors and figures of speech with multiple “stacked” meanings. Though literary theorists commonly argue that metaphors link, or condense, two disparate objects together through speech, Dolven argues that this constant echoing and build-up of multiple meanings deconstructs the metaphor’s linear connections, instead fusing them into a web of multiple meanings.

A recording of the lecture will be available soon on the Poetry Matters website, and Dolven intends to elaborate on these ideas as well as others in his upcoming project exploring poetry and simultaneity, tentatively titled All Together Now.

In addition to being a prominent literary theorist and critic, Dolven also writes poetry. His works have been featured in The New Yorker and/The Paris Review, and he also edits for Cabinet Magazine. Dolven’s poetry reading, focussing on attention and solidarity, was an effective counterpart to his denser, more theoretical lecture the day before. 

Discussing his forthcoming poetry collection, A New English Grammar, and Other Poems, Dolven explained his formula: Each poem begins with a grammar rule copied from a textbook, which he proceeds to break in the poem’s following lines. The rules encourage him to play with fun phrases that may make grammar purists uncomfortable, such as the line, “we’ve got any milk, but only any,” replacing the commonly used “some” with “any.” 

“[Grammar textbooks have] a bunch of sentences that have asterisks in front of them. That means this sentence is going to tell you something about how English works, but it’s wrong—don’t use it,” Dolven said during his presentation. “[I was] interested in what it would mean to try to make poems or make worlds within which this sort of strange, busted, broken language was, in fact, good currency.”

In addition to his grammar-defying poems, Dolven read several others that similarly break preconceptions, such as “State of Expectations,” a sweet lyric poem about an elephant, who, despite his title as “king of the beasts,” feels quietly insecure about living up to his status. On a heavier note, “Let the World Breathe for You” is a haunting pandemic poem about releasing self-ownership while living in an iron lung, a primitive respirator that helped save numerous polio victims in the 20th century. The poem asks readers to “sing poli-o, sing poli-oli-o,” using song to confront fear, much like the childhood tune “Ring Around the Rosie.”

Covering a wide range of literary terrain, from reading to theorizing about poetry, Dolven shared his love of literary experimentation with McGill’s faculty and students. His presentations proved that the rules and presumptions of grammar, conversation, and ultimately the human experience become meaningless—or rather, meaning-full—in the world of poetry.

Arts & Entertainment, Film and TV

‘Too Hot to Handle’ season three enforces unhealthy sexual values

by Anna Berglas, Contributor on

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The Netflix series Too Hot to Handle’s season three presents an even hotter, more dramatic mess than its previous seasons of scandal. The dating show brings 10 horny young adult participants on an erotic vacation, only to enforce sexual abstinence after the 12-hour mark. The show documents the contestants as they struggle to choose between winning the $200,000 prize money or giving into their sexual urges—and they often choose wrong. At best, Too Hot to Handle is unbelievable, and at worst, it’s exploitative. 

According to Deadline, Too Hot to Handle’s viewership decreased after the release of its second season, dropping from 51 million households to 29 million. This lapse in popularity may explain some of the show’s changes—for instance, a flash announcement revealing that money lost by rule-breaking can be won back by good behavior, and the surprise of some participants returning to the show even after being kicked off. Each episode is a rollercoaster with no clear destination, as viewers buckle in for a dizzying experience.

To criticize Too Hot to Handle for its absurdity would be superfluous; the show makes no effort to hide its selling points of voyeurism and drama-laden guilty-pleasure watching. There are many sexually suggestive scenes, often brought out by producer manipulation through sensual workshops like body painting.

But what does go beyond the garish is how Too Hot to Handle fetishizes its representations of queer relations. When Izzy and Georgia inaugurate the contest’s first rule-breaking with some kissing, the narrator phrases the act as an attention-seeking grab rather than portraying it as having any legitimate intimacy or emotional connection. The kiss is followed by a cringey montage of the male contestants voicing their appreciation at the idea of sapphic sexual acts. The gender binary is still rigidly enforced: Men pursue the women and manipulate their male competitors. The kiss shared between Izzy and Georgia is never acknowledged as part of the romantic conquests.

Though previous seasons have featured competitors open to polyamorous relations, this season’s participants act jealous and competitive toward one another, lending the episodes an air of toxicity. Viewers aren’t meant to sympathize with the contestants’ plights of sexless vacation; rather, the show’s selective editing and snarky narrator portrays them as entitled and arrogant. Edited and manipulated to showcase the worst of these contestants, the show makes naturally dislikeable personalities even more unsavoury.

This season stigmatizes sex even more than previous iterations. According to the rule-enforcer character, Lana, sexual acts are a barrier for emotional connection. Too Hot to Handle enforces heteronormativity and traditionalism by offering contestants as an example of what not to be, setting them up as detestable through edited interview clips and explicit narration mockery. The show delights in personal misery, preaching “deep emotional connection” to the contestants, who are simply not looking for that type of relationship. Given that the premise of the show is to lure in people interested in a month of sexual flings, the narrator’s demeaning attitude does not take into consideration the lack of interest participants have in long-term romance.

It is not unusual for viewers to detest the young singles as they prioritize immediate sexual gratification over financial success while manipulating those around them. However, the season’s drama-obsessed, insincere contestants are a regression from the show’s previous portrayals of individuals who were sex-positive. Still, the real blame lies with the show’s producers, as they manipulate and exploit the contestants to manufacture punchlines rather than meaningfully considering diverse forms of attraction.

Science & Technology

ROAAr symposium delves into the complicated relationships between scientists

by Madison Edward-Wright on

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The science behind friendship and how it develops between people has been a longstanding object of study. However, much less research has looked into the friendships between scientists themselves. The Rare & Special Collections, Osler, Art, and Archives (ROAAr) branch of the McGill Library held a symposium on Jan. 20 to explore exactly that. 

Stopes and Hewitt: A correspondence for the ages

Laura Jean Cameron, professor of Geography and Planning at Queen’s University, first met Ingrid Birker, manager of the Public Program at McGill’s Redpath Museum, when she reached out to her in hopes of gaining access to part of the Redpath’s fossil collection. Cameron had requested access to some Fern Ledges fossils housed at Redpath. These fossils had a history: They were important items in the friendship between Charles Gordon Hewitt, an entomologist, and Marie Stopes, a palaeobotanist and suffragette. 

Hewitt was first Stopes’ student at the University of Manchester, where in 1904 he attended her lectures on palaeobotany, the study of fossilized plants. When Hewitt moved to Canada in 1909 to become dominion entomologist, he and Stopes continued to communicate through letters. The two connected over the newly emerging field of ecology, but their friendship also inspired many of Stopes’ feminist writings. 

“The success of their friendship was […] one of the important contributions she may have wished to make for science,” Cameron said during her presentation. “In her writing on behalf of women’s suffrage […] Stopes expressed her belief that a friendship of equality between men and women was not only possible, but was an evolutionary imperative.” 

While Birker and Cameron acknowledged the other friendships that Stopes and Hewitt had with problematic figures in Canada such as Duncan Campbell Scott, the notorious deputy superintendent general of Indian affairs, and Helen MacMurchy, a staunch promoter of eugenics, the presenters glossed over Stopes’ involvement in the eugenics movement. Stopes was a vigorous supporter of birth control and family planning, but primarily because she believed these to be key tools in the practice of eugenics—which, for her, meant selective breeding to preserve the white race. 

Penfield and Cone: Advancement of science but the end of a friendship

Borrowing from his research for a larger exposé published by The Globe and Mail, journalist Eric Andrew-Gee examined the once prosperous, but ultimately volatile friendship between Wilder Penfield and William Cone. 

Penfield and Cone began working together at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital in 1924, where Penfield practiced surgery, primarily on the brain. When Penfield moved to Montreal in 1928 after being recruited by McGill University, he invited Cone to join him. The pair would eventually found the Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital (MNI) in 1934. 

“[Penfield and Cone] led a team together that made groundbreaking discoveries about memory, pleasure, anxiety, and learning,” Andrew-Gee explained. “They worked together in ‘double-harness,’ as they both liked to say, for 35 years.”

The friendship devolved, however, as Cone’s skills as a surgeon and dedication to the field of medicine surpassed Penfield’s, causing Penfield to grow jealous. Even worse, in 1953, Penfield was chosen over Cone for the directorship of the institute.

“By the 1950s, there were two camps at the [MNI],” Andrew-Gee said. “Cone’s people focussed on spinal surgery [while][…] Penfield’s focus[sed] on epilepsy.” 

Cone became extremely depressed not long after these events and eventually died by suicide in 1959, which greatly upset Penfield. Despite the tragic ending, Andrew-Gee concluded his talk by acknowledging the instrumental role friendship played in the lives of the two men and their scientific developments.

“Cone and Penfield had a deeply loving friendship, and together, sitting and talking over a microscope or the head of a patient, they helped give birth to the romantic mathematics of neuroscience,” Andrew-Gee said.

McGill, Montreal, News

Max Liboiron leads webinar on anti-colonial technology within universities

by Charlotte Power on

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On Jan. 20, Max Liboiron led a webinar on “Building feminist and anticolonial technologies in compromised spaces” as a part of the fourth season of the Feminist and Accessible Publishing and Communications Technologies Speaker and Workshop Series. Co-sponsored by Alex Ketchum, a faculty lecturer at the McGill Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies (IGSF), and Concordia University professor Damon Matthews, the webinar detailed how to navigate work in sites tainted by strong histories of colonialism—and ultimately, how to achieve structural change.

Liboiron, an associate professor in geography at Memorial University and formerly the school’s Associate Vice-President of Indigenous Research, is Métis and a leader in developing and promoting anticolonial research methods across disciplines. As the founder of the Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR), an interdisciplinary plastic pollution laboratory that operates out of Memorial University, Liboiron has shaped public policy on both plastics and Indigenous research.

During the webinar, Liboiron discussed the concept of “compromise”—not as a failure, as some proponents of institutional change might see it, but as a condition of doing ethical work within uneven power relations. They highlighted the necessity of establishing equitable research methods and policies within colonial systems and institutions.

According to Liboiron, even in the process of decolonization, individuals will inevitably reproduce parts of colonialism due to its pervasiveness. 

“When I’m talking about compromise and reproducing parts of the system that we are trying to change, it’s the condition of doing the thing. It is the condition for making change,” Liboiron said. “You don’t get to start from somewhere else, there isn’t somewhere else, this is the place, and that is the basis of your collaboration in the world.”

Liboiron also highlighted the role infrastructures play in upholding and defining colonial spaces and institutions. They explained that within the research sphere, structural power difference between Indigenous communities and universities is often downplayed; in practice, university researchers, rather than Indigenous people, often stand to gain the most from data collected on Indigenous communities. Thus, one of the key ways to decolonize research and combat unequal power dynamics, Liboiron explained, is to establish data agreements that empower Indigenous communities to own their own data. 

“Indigenous data sovereignty is about how and why they need to own and control their data,” Liboiron said. “A sovereignty model for a research collaboration with an Indigenous group can be that the Indigenous groups decide the priorities, the overarching ethics and goals of the research, but then I as the researcher ‘fuck off’ and do the work. That’s the recognition of unevenness and of owning your place in the uneven infrastructure.”

Ketchum, writing to The McGill Tribune by email after the talk, said she feels inspired by Liboiron’s recent book, Pollution is Colonialism, and is motivated to bring anticolonial scholarship into the classroom. 

“Dr. Liboiron thinks critically about university structures, lab structures, and research practices,” Ketchum said. “I’ve loved being able to assign Liboiron’s work in the GSFS feminist research methods courses that I teach, because their work helps students and researchers question what it means to do feminist and anticolonial research.”

Matthews, a professor, research chair of climate science and sustainability at Concordia, and director of the Leadership in Environmental and Digital Innovation for Sustainability (LEADS) program, hopes universities will use their influence to promote social and environmental sustainability.

“I really appreciate the idea that we can work toward achieving transformative change while also acknowledging the flawed nature of many of the institutions that we operate within,” Matthews said. “But, as institutions, few universities have succeeded in challenging the power structures that propagate the fundamental inequalities and injustices that could undermine our sustainability goals.”

Science & Technology

A mother’s fight to bring an understanding of autism outside of the clinic

by Zoe Karkossa on

More in Science & Technology:

From last century’s fears surrounding poor parenting to modern vaccine hesitancy, persistent misconceptions about the causes of autism have often resulted in the developmental condition being wrongfully associated with moral panic. During a recent talk hosted by McGill’s Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry for the Culture, Mind and Brain Program’s Speaker Series, Marga Vicedo, an associate professor at the University of Toronto studying the history of science, highlighted the story of one mother determined to understand her daughter’s experience with autism. 

Clara Park gave birth to Jessica, her third child, on July 20, 1958. After three years, Park realized that her daughter was different from the rest of her siblings. Seemingly uninterested in other children, Jessica was instead fascinated by numbers, art, and the aurora borealis.

As a stay-at-home mother, Park spent a great deal of time carefully observing her daughter and figuring out how to best support her, and was disappointed when her findings were dismissed by the child development experts she consulted. At the time, psychoanalysis would have interpreted  Park’s efforts to understand her daughter as evidence of refrigerator motherhood—an offensive term used to describe detached, uncaring mothers of autistic children.

“Rejecting the separation of thinking and feeling, Park aimed to show that objectivity and reason are not incompatible with love, and can be a valuable part of mothering,” Vicedo said. “[And] further, that intelligent love could be also a way to reach reliable knowledge.”

Despite the initial opposition, Park remained convinced that her efforts were not at odds with her mothering. She found fellowship in her beliefs through a correspondence with Bernard Rimland, a researcher who attributed autism to organic causes, and her collaboration with Marie Battle Singer, a psychoanalyst and fellow innovative thinker.

Contemporary clinical methods to treat autism were underdeveloped and prevalent therapies, including Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA), were often criticized as cruel and ineffective. Park reworked such programs by identifying useful principles and tailoring them to the domestic sphere in a pragmatic way. Inspired by certain elements of ABA, Park collaborated with her daughter to develop a practical system for behaviour modification. Incorporating Jessica’s love for numbers, Park and Jessica assigned points to specific behaviours and tracked them using a golf counter.

“Jessica set her goals, chose her rewards, and agreed to the penalties,” Vicedo said. “Their program did not try to eliminate autistic behaviour such as rocking or flapping, but focussed on behaviour that Jessica said she wanted to change, because they made her feel anxious or interfered with other things she wanted to do.”

Park’s impact extended far beyond her household. She presented her knowledge in ///The Siege///, the most comprehensive account of raising an autistic child at the time and an invaluable resource to parents and therapists. She also brought together a large circle of mothers of autistic children who supported each other and corresponded at length.

This vibrant community met regularly at conferences and shared their experiences with each other, discovering important insights along the way. The children were also invited to speak at the gatherings to share their stories and perspectives once they were old enough.

Park was a dedicated proponent of the value of maternal insight and the fight against mother-blaming. She recognized the value of what she called the “deep knowledge of the child in context,” which refers to personalized catering to a child’s needs using observation of children in a wide variety of situations and a full understanding of their history. To Park, this lived maternal experience was a unique tool that did not undermine clinical methods, but complemented them.

“Park was not only questioning widespread notions of good mothering, but also challenging a central tenet in scientific epistemology,” Vicedo said.

Park harnessed both her love and her will in order to better understand her daughter. Her work remains a significant achievement that is deeply relevant to the current era of misinformation surrounding autism. Jessica has grown to be an accomplished artist.

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