Latest News

Student Life

In the Neighbourhood: Little Burgundy edition

by Sophia White on

More in Student Life:

Little Burgundy is located in the Sud-Ouest borough of Montreal bordered by Griffintown, Pointe-Saint-Charles, and Saint-Henri. The area was once highly-industrial, and has since undergone several phases of gentrification. Little Burgundy now offers a mix of upscale restaurants and cafés, upscale antique stores, and boutiques. In the first installment of the “In the Neighbourhood” series, The McGill Tribune has compiled a list of suggestions for an excursion in Little Burgundy.

EAT

September Surf Café

Catch a break from Montreal’s winter weather and stop by September Surf Café, a minimalist, hip coffee shop that radiates coastal vibes. Founded by surf-enthusiasts eager to express their passion for the sport, the café is adjoined by a workshop dedicated to crafting boards. Diners can order from a selection of coffee, pastries, and light fare. With the recent edition of a bar, September Surf Café is also a great spot to unwind and grab a drink.

Patrice Pâtissier

This fresh, modern bakery serves gourmet pastries, coffee, and a variety of more substantial meal options for a sit-down late breakfast or lunch. Some of the locals’ favourites at Patrice Pâtissier include the banana bread, homemade scones, and the Breton cake kouign-amann. With such a widely-appealing selection, it is hard to go wrong at this top-rated dessert spot.

Liverpool House

Sister restaurant to Joe Beef and, more famously, Barack Obama and Justin Trudeau’s date-night spot Liverpool House is located in the heart of Little Burgundy. The restaurant is known for its oyster bar as well as its flavourful and eclectic shareable dishes. Liverpool House is a top-notch destination for fine dining with fewer lines that you might find down the street at Joe Beef.

SEE

L’Arsenal

This open-concept art exhibition space was recently converted from a 19th-century shipyard. L’Arsenal hosts a permanent collection of contemporary art, temporary exhibits, and a program called TD Cultural Tuesdays — a series of experimental events designed to encourage a dialogue between artists and audience members. Véronique Duplain’s Selfie Project, which consists of a series of creative photos that the artist took every day throughout the month of February, is currently on display.

Lachine Canal

Lachine is a popular tourist attraction, offering a scenic getaway from the busy city lifestyle to the serene waters of the canal. It stretches 14.5 kilometres from Old Port to Lake Saint-Louis, and there are plenty of parks, architectural sites, and skyline views to explore along the way. This spot is perfect for a midday break to walk or take a bike ride along the canal, or, once the weather gets a little warmer, kayak or canoe along the waterway.

St. Irenaeus Church

The historic church’s towering green domes are impossible to miss from the streets of Little Burgundy, and its interior architecture is equally stunning. Located a block away from the Lionel-Groulx metro station, St. Irenaeus is a must-see destination for architecture enthusiasts and history buffs alike.

DO

Stroll around Atwater Market

The year-round market buzzes with some of the best grocers, boulangeries, florists, and food stands in the city. Stop by Atwater to browse the selection of locally-produced food, people-watch, and chat with local shoppers.

Shop at Rowntree Antiques

Little Burgundy is known for its offbeat vintage stores, and Rowntree Antiques is one of the most popular. Rowntree sells unique European home decor and is a perfect stop for window shopping.

Catch a show at the Corona Theatre

The Corona Theatre has been a cultural hotspot in Little Burgundy since its opening, and it stands as one of the best concert venues in Montreal. The theatre was built in 1912 for silent films and has retained its vintage movie theatre ambiance. It is most popular for its concerts but also hosts occasional film screenings and burlesque performances.

Science & Technology

Absurd science names and where they come from

by Morgan Sweeney on

More in Science & Technology:

The naming of scientific discoveries can seem, at times, both absurd and random. For example, shmoos, the mating protrusions of yeast, are so named because they look like a 1970s cartoon character. Meanwhile, dominant male elephant seals are called beachmasters and Somniosus microcephalus, the Latin name for the Greenland Shark, literally translates to ‘sleepy small brain.’ Biology is also responsible for some of science’s most excessively dull names like ‘levator palpebrae superioris alaeque nasi,’ which means lifter of both the upper lip and of the wing of the nose.

Most of the time when someone discovers something new, they are free to choose any name so long as it fits within the structure of naming in the field. Some fields, like chemistry, have an official organization (such as the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, or IUPAC) that has final say on the formal names of discoveries. Other fields, like ecology, use a more systematic system. The binomial nomenclature, created by the botanist and zoologist Carl Linnaeus in the 1700s, gives each organism a distinct two-part name consisting of a genus and a species; which, for the less creative scientist, can be the same as in the case of Gorilla gorilla. Typically, the organism’s formal name is written in Latin. Some scientists use this rule to humourous effect.

In 2010, the ecologist Dennis Desjardin and his team called their newly-discovered fungus Spongiforma squarepantsii, in homage to the beloved cartoon character Spongebob Squarepants. In 1977, Arnold Menke named a newfound species of wasp Aha ha. The Australian ecologist David McAlpine named a type of fly This and hung up a poster on his office door with an illustration of the fly that said “Look at This!”

Sometimes, the same phenomena are given different names, illustrating how subjective the naming process is. In the late 1990s, a University of Texas Southwestern research team studying obesity discovered a new neurotransmitter and named it orexin, after the Greek word for appetite. At the same time, a team at Harvard found the same neurotransmitter in the hypothalamus and named it hypocretin because it resembled secretin, another hormone. Since they found it at the same time, there is no clear consensus over who deserves naming rights, and it is still referred to as orexin/hypocretin.

While scientists often use Latin in biology, Greek serves as inspiration for some chemists. Sir William Ramsay, a Scottish chemist in the late 1800s, used Greek words to name the noble gases he discovered. Xenon comes from ξένος (‘stranger’), or krypton from κρυπτός (‘hidden’), and neon from νέος (‘new’).

Physicists have also been known to partake in whimsical naming with terms like ‘spaghettification,’ which refers to the phenomenon wherein matter elongates as it draws near to a black hole. Plenty of marketing went into naming physics discoveries in the late 20th century. The God Particle, the Big Bang, and even dark matter were all re-namings of previous discoveries, marketed to keep funding flowing and members of the field on their toes. Sometimes, the birth of creative scientific terms can be unintentional: A simple misspelling of ‘shift’ led to the creation of the ‘chemical shit’ scale in chemistry.

In every field, proposed names must first be peer reviewed by the scientific community before being published. Nonetheless, there is plenty of room for creativity, and scientists have even approved names that draw on popular culture like Han solo, a trilobite, and Dracorex hogwartsia, a dinosaur. Knowing that these amusing names exist makes studying Transcription Factor II A that much more bland. But, to all the bored biochemistry students staring out of the window of Schulich, just remember: When you discover a molecule, you can name it something fun.

McGill, News

Student activists hang ‘Change the Name’ banner from the roof of Leacock

by Nina Russell on

More in McGill:

A group of approximately thirty McGill students gathered on the Leacock Pavillion on March 27 to watch an unknown individual unfurl a banner from the roof with the words ‘Change the Name.’ The banner hung for about 20 minutes, after which two members of McGill Security Services personnel removed it.

Students hung the banner weeks before Principal and Vice-Chancellor Suzanne Fortier is expected to make a decision as to whether to change the McGill men’s varsity team name. Fortier decided to delay her decision until April following a report from the Working Group on Principles on Renaming and Commemoration, which sought to provide steps for engaging in the renaming process.

Campus security cited the danger the banner might pose to those standing nearby as their reason for taking it down.

“Security Services personnel removed the banner from the Leacock Building on March 27 as a matter of standard practice; we did not receive a request to do so,” Associate Director of Campus Public Safety (Security Services) Christopher Carson wrote in an email to The McGill Tribune. “Whenever our agents become aware of a banner hung from a campus building, gate, tree etc., they remove it. Banners can be a public safety issue. Sandbags used to hold banners in place, for example, can endanger the people below. The message displayed on a banner is not a factor in such decisions.”

Co-Chair of the Indigenous Students Alliance (ISA) Vanessa Racine described Security’s removal of the banner as hypocritical due to their failure to take precautions while taking it down.

“What surprised me the most was how dangerously they took it down and seeing one of the pieces of the banner break on the floor as they carelessly dropped it,” Racine wrote in an email to the Tribune. “It was funny, really, to see security take it down in a somewhat unsafe manner.”

Racine also felt that, by removing the banner so quickly, security failed to show solidarity with Indigenous students.  

“Change the Name is a movement brought forth by Indigenous students, and taking down the banner so quickly kind of shows silencing of not just Indigenous voices, but also student voices,” Racine wrote. “I don’t believe that security thought that they were going up to the roof so they could silence voices, but they should have thought of those implications before taking it down so quickly. I don’t think it would have been a problem if it was up for a little longer.”

In addition to the banner drop, Indigenous student activists and their allies have enacted a number of other campaigns to pressure the administration to change the name, such as the ‘Vote No’ to Athletics Facility Improvement Fee. The fee failed with 58 per cent of voters voting no. SSMU Indigenous Affairs Commissioner and the founder of the ‘Change the Name’ campaign Tomas Jirousek spoke to the importance of continuing to challenge the administration with respect to important issues like this one.

“The Principal will be releasing her decision sometime in the coming weeks, and [the banner] certainly brings it back to the forefront in the minds of a lot of students,” Jirousek said. “It also shows that students are still paying attention to the issue. It’s not as if Indigenous students and our allies are meekly waiting for the decision, but we continue to engage with the discussion and continue to critically engage with the administration.”

Co-Chair of the ISA Ella Martindale remains hopeful that the administration will ensure that Fortier takes Indigenous voices into consideration when she makes her final decision.

“At this point I’m optimistic,” Martindale said. “I like to think the best of people, and [now that] she’s had 3 months of her own time to think about this decision, do her research, and think about Indigenous folks, [she will] comes to the right conclusion, which is to change the name.”

Montreal, News

Climate March organizers reflect on the future of climate activism

by Nina Russell on

More in Montreal:

In an attempt to utilize the momentum generated by the worldwide march for climate justice on March 15, the organizer of the Montreal contingent, La Planète s’invite à l’Université (LPSU), will hold two more marches in April and September. Additionally, LPSU representatives met with Quebec Minister of Environment Benoit Charette on March 22 to discuss climate change policy.  

“Essentially, the meeting today was a lot of empty promises as usual,” SSMU Sustainability Commissioner Alison Gu said. “We expected everything that they said, but they also told us that they were going to approve the Gazoduq pipeline […] which is going to transport liquified natural gas (LNG). The fact is that if we set up more infrastructure to be burning fossil fuels, which is what natural gas is, it’s purported to be [a] cleaner alternative to coal or oil. But, at the end of the day, a lot of the processes that you have to extract and transport LNG are the same or worse than current oil processes.”

Montreal’s protest was one of the largest of the 2,000 marches that took place across the world that day, with 1500 McGill students in attendance. Organizers at McGill began preparing for the demonstration three-and-a-half weeks beforehand. According to Christina Lau, who handled communications for the march, the demonstration was successful due to the dedication of its participants despite a tight time constraint.

“I definitely think [the march’s success was] because everyone in our group was so passionate and so hardworking,” Lau said. “Each of us was going to three or four meetings a week […] for hours to make sure everything was exactly how we wanted it to turn out. Montreal had the biggest march in North America, and I feel like that really speaks to how far we’re willing to go to get [action on climate change], and I think that, especially with the next few [marches] coming up, we will be able to prove to McGill how much students want to protect our planet and [see] concrete action.”

Juan Pablo Arellano, U2 Science, who acted as a point of communication between McGill security, the SPVM, and McGill’s climate demonstration, hopes that the results of the upcoming federal election in October will reflect the momentum of the protests.

“I want to do the best that we can to elect representatives that are aligned with our views and who are pro-climate mitigation, pro-sustainability, and anti-climate change,” Arellano said. “[I want to elect] someone who will try to shift policy to make Quebec more sustainable, more self-reliant, and less fossil-fuel dependent. ”

The impact of climate change on Indigenous communities was an important theme at the demonstration. Alex Allard-Gray, a McGill alumnus and member of the Listuguj Mi’gmaq First Nation, elaborated on how the government can mitigate the impact on Indigenous communities.

“I think the [government needs to make] policies that protect the environment and protect Indigenous lands from being the site of environmental abuse,” Gray in an interview with The McGill Tribune. “Our culture has already been assaulted in so many ways, as we can see in Canadian history, and this is just another way in which we are having our culture progressively taken away from us. We have to fight harder and harder to achieve what we [want].”

Joke, Laughing Matters

Title Club gives students titles of their choosing

by Calvin Trottier-Chi on

More in Joke:

The new Title Club joins 501 other student clubs registered with the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU). Students who attend one of their Executive Networking General Seminar meetings, which occur for 30 minutes on a daily basis, have the opportunity to come up with new titles to “DIY their own position.”

“We offer a tailored extracurricular experience that no other student club can provide,” Guiding Founder and Secretary General of Internal and External Managers Max Fischer said. “We believe in our members’ communication skills, leadership abilities, and results-driven, customer-centric synergy.”

When pressed on how the Title Club provides communication and leadership opportunities, members referred to the club’s 5,000 Facebook likes.

“Every member contributes to our readability by ‘liking’ posts, they are all our social media influencers and brand ambassadors,” Social Media Senior Strategist Victor Verbaler said. “We contribute as much to the average McGill student’s daily life as Building 21.”

The Title Club has faced organizational difficulties with new departments, but its members are confident they can still use the club to their advantage.

“I was only able to secure my internship because I had experience managing others,” Tommy Triharde, one of the club’s 30 vice-presidents, said. “I don’t get why people don’t spend five minutes of their day yelling out ideas and taking credit for them more often.”

Joke, Laughing Matters

Plumber’s Faucet alleges Suzanne Fortier is five owls in a trench coat

by Kate Addison on

More in Joke:

An article in The Plumber’s Faucet recently confirmed what McGill’s student body has long suspected: Principal and Vice-Chancellor Suzanne Fortier is not, in fact, a middle-aged woman with a passion for crystallography, but five owls stacked talon-to-beak in a medium-sized trench coat.

The allegations, brought forth in an article titled “10 Untold Truths about McGill University” by Steve Greenwood, a PhD student in the Arts Faculty, have ruffled feathers on campus. The piece not only alleges that the woman students affectionately call ‘Big Suze’ is actually a remarkably well-coordinated parliament of owls, but that these birds have turned the men’s varsity team mascot into a Horcrux.

Greenwood says he first became suspicious of Fortier when he overheard a faint hooting coming from her direction.

“When I discovered that she had 5 Horcruxes, I was suspicious,” Greenwood wrote in a message to The McGill Tribune. “A person really only needs one Horcrux.”

This fact led Greenwood to the conclusion that has rocked the McGill community: Fortier does not have one for herself, but rather each owl has its own Horcrux hidden somewhere on campus.

For those still unconvinced that Fortier is birds, observations of her behaviour back up this hypothesis. Eastern screech owls, Fortier’s suspected breed, are nocturnal and hide away in holes burrowed into the trunks of trees during the day, explaining why Fortier is only rarely sighted around campus.

Greenwood believes that her mannerisms are textbook owl behaviour.

“Fortier eats a higher-than-normal amount of worms and is always saying things like, ‘I’m actually five owls,’” Greenwood wrote.

One undergraduate student, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of repercussions in the way of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, stated that one evening, after returning from a particularly successful BdA outing, he and a few friends witnessed proof of Fortier’s true identity.

“It was messed up,” the student said. “Her head turned, like, all the way around, and she was looking at me with these crazy yellow eyes. I don’t know a ton about science [because] I’m an English major, but I do know that was no lady. It was just a bunch of owls.”

The news has led some to question whether five birds are enough to run one of the largest universities in Canada.

“Maybe it would be useful to bring in a sixth owl to help her out a bit,” Greenwood said.

Joke, Laughing Matters

I went to every single Montreal emergency room and this is a definitive list of them, ranked

by Nicholas Raffoul on

More in Joke:

According to the Health Ministry of Quebec, emergency room wait times in Montreal have increased from a median of 4.4 to 4.5 hours over the last year. With little hope that this number will decrease significantly over the next few years, The McGill Tribune has compiled a definitive list of the best and worst emergency rooms based on the following criteria: comfort of waiting area seats, availability of free snacks, free wifi, and waiting room aesthetics. Maximizing comfort and distractions from a horrible fall makes the excruciatingly long wait easier to bear. For the study, I visited each of the below emergency rooms and sat there for 48 hours.

Jewish General Hospital – ⅘

With high gray ceilings and only a 15-minute drive from McGill’s downtown campus, the Jewish General Hospital is a great option for your Blues-Pub-blackout-related needs. The cool atmosphere and somewhat comfy chairs distract you from your throbbing headache so successfully that you’ll forget why you’re even there in the first place!

St. Mary’s Hospital Centre – ⅖

St. Mary’s barely makes the cut—their waiting room is always cramped, does not have great refreshments, and has horrible carpeting. The subpar aesthetic makes for a strikingly painful wait when compounded with the pain of a protruding femur. It definitely doesn’t help that you’re sitting shoulder to shoulder with other patients.

Montreal’s Children Hospital – ⅘  

Although the Children’s Hospital was the most colourful of the bunch, the emergency room nurses didn’t appreciate a full-grown manchild walking in and demanding cherry cough syrup to treat their mono. The festive seating and plush toys really made the rejection a lot easier, though.

CHUM – ⅖

CHUM puts the CHUM in Chum bucket, due to its very long wait times and disappointing vending machine options. The nurses constantly deflected my concerns with a heavy Québécois accent, making it the most authentic Montreal emergency room experience. As the last emergency room I visited, they did not seem to care at all about the blood clot I had developed sitting on waiting room chairs for the last week.

Joke, Laughing Matters

Montreal Curling Club announces new sponsorship deal with Swiffer™

by Kaja Surborg on

More in Joke:

On March 25, Canada’s most decorated curling club, The Montreal Curling Club, announced their new sponsorship deal with the iconic household brand Swiffer™. Club President Joey Moore and Swiffer™ CFO Howard Tallman signed a five-year contract worth $1,000 at the club’s office in Côte-des-Neiges.

“We here at Swiffer™ are just so proud to support a long-standing tradition of excellence in Canadian curling at the Montreal Curling Club,” Swiffer™ marketing representative Cindy Schmidt said at a press conference that only reporters from CBC Radio 4 attended. “We hope we can provide the tools necessary for the athletes here at the Montreal Curling Club to reach their highest potential.”

Moore echoed Schmidt’s enthusiasm.

“This is huge for us here at Montreal Curling Club,” Moore said. “We’ve never had a sponsor who has been so dedicated to providing us with quality equipment so that we can be the best athletes possible. ”

The Canadian National Curling Championships are scheduled for Feb. 23 and 24, 2020 in Flin Flon, Manitoba. The Montreal Curling Club will be looking for a podium sweep in all events.

Several veterans will return to the sheet this year for the Montreal Curling Club at the national championships. Most notably, Michael Spiel, who looks like he definitely spends his summers fishing in Muskoka, is slated to compete. Spiel is a celebrated skip for Team Canada at the past three Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, Sochi, and Pyeongchang.

“I’ve been in the game a long time, you know,” Spiel said in an interview with the Waterloo Reporter. “This will probably be my last national championships, so I just really want to go out with a bang. I just want to make my wife, Karen, and my kids, Davey and Georgie, proud.”

According to a report released by Swiffer™ corporate headquarters this week, the brand estimates no boost in sales from this partnership. Tallman is simply a huge curling fan, and it has been a lifelong dream of his to meet an Olympic curling champion like Spiel.

“I’m honestly freaking out a little right now,” Tallman said afterwards at  press conference.“This was major, I’m not gonna lie to you. I’m just worried that I was so starstruck when I met him that I looked kind of dumb.”

With the partnership, the Montreal Curling Club hopes to reignite a culture for curling in Canada. The esteemed Canadian curling program has yet to recover from international humiliation at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics: A loss at the hands of the American team in the men’s curling event.

“We have an opportunity here to keep getting better so that, with the help of Swiffer™, we can become the best athletes in North America and crush the souls of the Americans at the next world championships,” Spiel said. “I just can’t wait to be really gracious in victory.”

Joke, Laughing Matters

Student eats magical samosa of truth, devastates journalistic career

by Simon Kidd on

More in Joke:

Mark Corey, U1 Political Science, claims to have ingested a magical samosa, rendering him incapable of telling and writing anything but the truth. According to Corey, the otherworldly nature of this samosa revealed itself in the form of severe stomach pains and acute gastrointestinal distress.

“It was as if my body wanted to reject the divinity of the samosa,” Corey said.

The student hobbled to the McGill Student Health Service Clinic in a futile attempt to obtain treatment, foolishly disregarding its 1.4 star rating on Google Maps. In an unsurprising  twist, no nurses were available to treat his ailment.

“I vomited into a wastebasket in the Brown building, not just due to my strict diet of cheap Lebanese food and canned chili, but because my body wanted to reject The Truth,”

After his harrowing experience, Corey said that his understanding of the complete objective truth crystalized.

“Suddenly a lot of the journalistic pieces I had been writing made zero sense whatsoever,” he said, still shivering from the aftershocks of his life-altering experience. “It was liberating…, but debilitating.”

As an editor for the McGill Weekly-Almost-Monthly (MWAM for short), Corey found that he could no longer write without getting his articles rejected by the paper.

“My problems began when I wrote an article on American politics’. It was rejected. Perhaps my prose had not met the stringent standards of MWAM?”

Disheartened, Corey attempted to write another article, entitled “Israel-Palestine: It’s Complicated.” MWAM promptly rejected the piece for not meeting their standards of objectivity and for promoting division.

Since then, Corey has been unable to fulfill his duties as editor at the paper. He was let go last week, effectively ending his short-lived journalistic career. Corey’s magic samosa snack had stolen his knack.

“My journalistic career was ruined because of one lousy, good for nothing magical samosa…. Now I can only write for the Tribune!”

Laughing Matters, Off the Board, Opinion

QUIZ: Do you have imposter syndrome or are you an imposter?

by Ariella Garmaise on

More in Laughing Matters:

In recent months, “imposter syndrome” has made headlines as the newest millennial affliction: The term has been featured in Time, Forbes, an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez interview, and even The McGill Tribune. Despite extensive news coverage, it can be difficult to decipher whether a lack of self-confidence is part of a wider psychological pandemic, or simply well-deserved doubt. To help those struggling, The McGill Tribune presents the definitive guide for distinguishing between having imposter syndrome and being an imposter.

  1. You’re preparing your resume for an interview. As you review your credentials, you are struck with panic because:

a.). There’s no way you have enough extra-curricular experience to work as an unpaid intern at a digital media agency.

b.) The company hires a lot of recent graduates, and someone might be able to verify that you were not, in fact, a McGill student between 2014 and 2018.  

 

  1. Congratulations! You got your dream job as a “Social Media and Content Vision Intern.” You pick up the phone and:

a.) Call your mom! She still wishes you had picked a different major and also applied to law school, but is proud nonetheless.

b.) Speak to a Bell customer service representative because you need to change your number. You previously used 514-938-9999 to answer as “Professor Anita Roth,” your “advisor” last summer, so you need a new line.

 

  1. It was a long week at work. While cleaning up your apartment, you notice the trash is overflowing with:

a.) Empty coffee cups, tissues, 5-hour Energy® Shots, and KD instant cups.

b.) Hair: Medium ash blonde, rich mahogany, jet black, even a Dollar Store neon wig.

 

  1. You’re out on a boat on the coast of San Remo with your similarly hot, blonde, and blue-blooded friend. When he rejects your advances, you:

a.) Are disappointed, but never thought that you had a chance with Jude Law anyway. This only confirms your deepest insecurities.

b.) Notice an oar sitting on the side of the boat, and, overcome with rage, beat Jude Law to death. A talented impressionist with a gift for forgery, you proceed to steal his identity and live lavishly travelling across Europe, no matter how hard Gwyneth Paltrow and Philip Seymour Hoffman try to stop you. You are Matt Damon, after all.

 

Mostly A’s: Congrats! You have imposter syndrome, and while this might be psychologically and interpersonally inhibiting, all of your behaviour is legal in the Province of Quebec. Cheer up, any Digital Media Company / Start-up / Content Creation Platform would be lucky to have you.

Mostly B’s: Forget imposter “syndrome,” you are the real deal. Perhaps if you adopt a baritone and stop conditioning your hair, HBO will one day make a documentary about you, too.

1 … 486 487 488 489 490 … 1,364

Read the latest issue

Read the latest issue