Some of the most popular climbing gyms in Montreal include: Café Bloc, in Ville-Marie; Shakti Rock Gym, in the Mile End; Allez-Up, with locations in the Mile End, Pointe-Saint-Charles, and Verdun; and Bloc Shop, with locations in Chabanel, Hochelaga, and Mile-Ex. Almost all of Montreal’s climbing gyms are lined with bouldering walls, which don’t require the use of a harness or ropes, but some also offer top rope climbing. The gyms welcome new and experienced climbers, offering day-long or week-long passes as well as monthly memberships.

An increased interest in climbing and a growing demand for climbing gyms are not phenomena unique to Montreal. The sport has been gaining in popularity since the mid-2010s, and its introduction as an Olympic sport in the 2020 Tokyo Games has only accelerated the trend. Montreal is also not the only city where queer climbers are bonding over their love of coloured plastic rocks. The emergence of organizations and community groups like Van Queer Climbers (Vancouver, BC), Queer Climbers London (London, UK), and ClimbingQTs (Australia) attest to the prevalence of queer climbing across the world.

In an article on “How climbing became a favorite hobby among queer women in China,” Nathan Wei suggests that the sport’s openness and relative newness have encouraged its popularity among WLW. A bisexual woman referred to by the pseudonym HS told Wei that “climbing is more gender-friendly than many other sports,” while another woman climber remarked that the community “has not been dominated by men yet.”

Toronto-based climber Jill Stephenson, who has been climbing recreationally for about two years, echoed these sentiments in an interview with the Daily. Not only is there “less of an established gender hierarchy” in climbing, she said, but it is also a “highly social sport” with a “very supportive community.”

Most climbers will “gladly accept new climbers into their spaces regardless of ability, skill level, gender, or sexual orientation,” Stephenson added.

Isabelle Mills, a Concordia University student who boulders at Café Bloc, noted that the looser restrictions at climbing gyms compared to other gyms and sports facilities can help (queer) women to feel more comfortable there. The lack of a dress code – not to mention the expectation that women wear form-fitting clothing to accentuate their breasts and butts for the viewing pleasure of male gym-goers – is especially freeing: “there’s no idea of what you’re supposed to look like as a climber,” Mills said.

Although outdoor climbing trips and equipment can be expensive, indoor climbing tends not to be as financially prohibitive as other sports. Simon Rouillard, one of the co-founders of Queer Bloc, a community group that organizes monthly climbing events for Montreal’s LGBTQ+ community, highlighted the accessibility of climbing in an interview with the Daily: all you need is “yourself, some shoes, and some chalk,” he said. “You don’t need that much more equipment, nor does it have to be fancy.”

Another reason climbing gyms have become such magnets for queer people, Rouillard says, is that climbing “allows us to become one with our bodies.” While he acknowledges that body awareness and body image are things we all have to deal with, regardless of gender or sexual orientation, queer folks “have had to confront and be aware of our bodies from an early age. We’ve had to be accepting of them.”

Climbing is unique among sports in that success does not depend on a particular body type. While many “problems,” or bouldering routes, may seem to favour taller climbers, there’s always more than one way to get to the top of a wall, and shorter climbers will quickly develop a knack for troubleshooting their way from rock to rock. It’s not all about brute strength, either: flexibility, stamina, and mental reasoning (there’s a reason they’re called “problems”!) are equally integral to the art of climbing.

“Anybody and any type of body can be a good climber,” Rouillard told the Daily.

The climbing communities of Montreal and other places have certainly done a lot of work to create inclusive and supportive environments, but there is still more to be done to make queer people – and others traditionally underrepresented in sport – feel welcome on the wall. Stephenson noted that “even though the climbing community is safe and supportive, it can be intimidating to enter a new space and engage with new groups.”

Rouillard cites the fear of intimidation and bullying, body image issues, and lack of confidence as factors that may deter queer people from climbing and other sports. “We have to remember that for a lot of our LGBTQIA+ community, sports haven’t always been available to us,” they say.

Both Stephenson and Mills remarked that organizing events that target specific groups can be a great way for climbing gyms to promote diversity and inclusivity. Queer Bloc is an excellent example of a group that’s doing just that for the queer community in Montreal. Co-founded by Rouillard and a friend, Daniel Baylis, the organization hopes to facilitate discussions and create connections through its monthly meet-ups.

“Our events are typically low-key but can be a bit fun with DJ sets, happy hours, and even flash tattoo sessions,” Rouillard told the Daily.

Climbers of colour are also carving out spaces for themselves in a community that has historically been dominated by white athletes. New Jersey-based Tiffany Blount launched Black Girls Boulder in 2020, and Climbers of Color has been active in Washington since 2018. Organizations like ParaCliffHangers and the Canadian Adaptive Climbing Society have also been working to make the sport accessible to people with disabilities.

In addition to holding inclusive climbing events, Stephenson said, it’s important that climbing gyms diversify their hiring practices: “having diverse administration and staff visually indicates that diverse climbers are welcome in the space.”

Rouillard suggested a few other steps climbing gyms can take to make queer climbers feel safe and supported, including: ensuring that any music played is not misogynistic, homophobic, or transphobic; ensuring that washrooms and changing rooms are non-gendered; and including a non-binary option on waivers and membership forms.

If you’re interested in attending queer climbing events and connecting with other queer climbers in Montreal, follow @queer_bloc on Instagram.

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On the outskirts of the city, at the other end of the spectrum of life, a pack of children have set up camp in the forest of Parc Rouge. Some orphaned, some abandoned, and most of them forgotten, the children scrounge for food and supplies, seek shelter in tattered tents, and keep a careful watch for grown-ups. These may come in the form of drunks who wander into their camp, but the children also look out for blooming chests, deepening voices, and other signs of puberty in their own ranks – no adult is worthy of their trust. The paths of old and young converge in this city “so empty it is full, so broken it blossoms.” It is only at their intersection that the residents of Fort Détroit may begin to imagine a future more full of hope than despair, more full of dreams than nightmares.

***

The Future is Catherine Leroux’s fourth novel. First published as L’avenir in 2020, it was translated into English by Susan Ouriou in 2023. Born in Rosemère, Quebec, and now based in Montreal, Leroux has received numerous awards and accolades, including the Prix France-Québec for her novel Le mur mitoyen (2013) and the Prix Adrienne-Choquette for her short story collection Madame Victoria (2015). The Future was selected for the 2024 edition of Canada Reads, CBC’s annual “battle of the books” competition. It will be championed by fellow Montreal writer and this year’s Mordecai Richler Writer-in-Residence, Heather O’Neill.

I don’t believe O’Neill will have any difficulty defending The Future during this year’s Canada Reads debates, which will take place between March 4 and 7. Leroux’s words, expertly translated by Ouriou, seem to leap off the pages of this book to construct before readers’ very eyes the characters, settings, and mysterious goings-on she describes. I found it impossible to read this book without a pen in hand – there were too many beautiful passages to underline, too many sentences that read more like poetry than prose.

Leroux’s characters are unique in themselves – the children, especially, are endowed with such spirit and individuality as are rarely to be found outside of childhood – but it is when they come together that the magic of this book is most palpable. The bonds of trust forged by Gloria and Eunice, by Fiji and Bleach, in the city of old, and in the forest of youth testify to the possibility of finding, in Rihanna’s words, “love in a hopeless place.”

Earlier this month, following a book talk featuring Leroux and O’Neill, I had a chance to interview Leroux about The Future, her relationship with Montreal, and her approach to writing speculative fiction. I was especially curious about the book’s second chapter, written entirely from the perspectives of the Parc Rouge children. Leroux told me she was forced to throw away a first draft of this chapter because it was “too boring”: she had written this version as a mother, she said, instead of as a child. Once she learned to put aside her instinctual concerns for her characters’ safety and comfort and to make way for the infinitely more important demands of play, stuffed toys, inter-group rivalry, and bathroom humour, she was able to find the voices of Parc Rouge.

We also discussed Leroux’s close-to-home inspiration for Fort Détroit. This version of the city of Detroit was never surrendered to the Americans in the War of 1812, instead becoming a French-Canadian stronghold. At the time The Future takes place, however, Fort Détroit is no longer a stronghold but a wasteland. Leroux was attracted to Detroit because of its similarities to Montreal: both cities experienced a surge in investment and production, either in the 19th century or the 20th, but now find themselves in economic decline. Economic decline, she said, has certainly taken its toll on the cities, but it has also provided ample fodder for artists and innovators with an interest in rebuilding. “People have had to be creative in order to survive,” Leroux explained.

Certainly, Fort Détroit is a dystopia as desolate as the rest of them. It is all the more terrifying, I think, on account of the fact that no evil dictator has taken control of the city or imposed a rule of terror and totalitarianism on its residents. Instead, it is the cruel forces of “pollution, poverty, and the legacy of racism” that threaten the survival of Fort Détroit – or what’s left of it, rather. Leroux’s future is as factual as it is fictional, and the strength, creativity, and humour with which her characters weather each storm that comes their way are truly inspiring.

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Having now begun my last semester at McGill, I offer the following advice to students who will soon graduate – to students experiencing the same fears and frustrations I’m experiencing as they prepare to conclude one chapter of their lives and embark on the next. Some of this advice will be practical and specific to McGill students (there are a number of administrative hoops to jump through before you can cross the convocation stage!) but I hope that some of it will be helpful to anybody on the cusp of a big change.

1. Ensure you have completed (or will soon complete) all the requirements for your program. It’s not uncommon for McGill undergraduate students to complete all the requirements for their Major, Minor, and/or Honours programs before their last semester or even their last year. Still, it’s a good idea to go over your program requirements during the Add/Drop period of your last semester to ensure you’ve checked all the necessary boxes – and while you still have time to register for any required courses you may have forgotten about. The Add/Drop period for the Winter 2024 semester ends on Tuesday, January 16.
2. Have somebody else ensure you have completed (or will soon complete) all the requirements for your program. If the requirements for your program are particularly complex, as is often the case at McGill, it’s an even better idea to review them with an advisor. I know some McGill students who seek academic advice regularly and others who have never seen an advisor. If you fall into the latter category, as I did until about a week ago, then you may not be able to delay any longer. In fact, you may be required to complete a program audit form, get it signed by a departmental advisor, and then send it to the director of your program.
3. Don’t forget to apply for graduation. You applied to get in, and you’ll apply to get out. McGill requires most undergraduate students and non-thesis graduate students (i.e., Master’s, certificates, diplomas) to apply for graduation. This is done through Minerva, and after you’ve applied, you’ll be able to check the status of your application using Minerva’s Graduation Approval Query. Students expecting to complete their courses in a Winter term should apply by the end of February, in a Summer term by the end of May, and in a Fall term by the end of November. You should note that the review of your graduation record will not be automated: a real person will be assigned to review your graduation record at the departmental and faculty levels once all of your final grades have been submitted. If you are taking one or more courses at another university in your final term – on exchange, on term away, or through Inter-University Transfer – you should also note that you will not be eligible to graduate at the end of that term. You must instead select the next available graduation term.
4. Take classes you’re excited about. We can’t always get into the classes we want – I’m sure I’m not the only one in mourning over ENGL 366: The Teen Film in U.S. Cinema right now. But, to the best of your abilities, you should try to take classes you’re passionate about in your last semester. You don’t want to spend your last four months at McGill sweating over a difficult physics course or falling asleep to the sound of a professor’s drawl.
5. Set aside time during the semester to apply for jobs and internships. You’ve been dodging the question “So, what are you going to do after you graduate?” for the past three or four years – maybe longer – and the time to decide is slipping away. If you don’t plan on pursuing a second degree after your first, you’ll probably have to dig out your old LinkedIn profile and start scrolling through Indeed. I know it can be tough enough getting through a semester without the added stress of job-hunting and internship-hunting, but if you can dedicate even a little bit of time each week to these often-painstaking tasks, you may thank yourself later.
6. Come up with a plan to repay your student loans. Next to finding a job or internship, repaying any student loans you’ve taken out may be the most stressful item on your post-graduation to-do list. Every student loan program is different: some will require you to pay back your loans faster than others, and some will charge higher interest rates than others. If you’ve borrowed money from the Quebec government, you’ll have to repay it to the financial institution to which you gave your guarantee certificate at the start of your studies. This financial institution will notify you six months after you’ve completed your studies to inform you that it’s time to start repaying your loan. Ontario and British Columbia residents also enjoy a six-month grace period before they must start repaying their loans.
7. Make the most of your time in Montreal. If you’re planning on leaving Montreal after you leave McGill, this may be your last opportunity to enjoy this lively city and all that it has to offer. Chances are, you made most of the tourist stops during your first year in Montreal, but if there are any cool restaurants, shops, galleries, museums, or outdoor spots still on your bucket list, now’s the time to check them out. Has it been ages since you last climbed Mont-Royal? Or picnicked in Jeanne-Mance Park? Or, dare I say, hit the floor at Café Campus? Before the semester ends, take some time to enjoy all your favourite Montreal spots in a tour of sentimentality.
8. Make the most of your time with friends. Believe it or not, the hardest part about graduating from McGill won’t be jumping through administrative hoops. Whether you’re the one leaving or they are, you might have to say goodbye to many of the friends you’ve made in the last three or four years. Cherish the time you have left with these friends, and start thinking about how you’d like to stay in touch once you go your separate ways.
9. Remember that you’re doing your best. If you’re like me, you might be inclined to put a lot of pressure on your last semester at McGill. More than acing your exams or landing your dream job or checking off bucket-list items, however, it’s important that you take care of yourself in what may prove to be the most challenging four months of your life. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, talk to a loved one, talk to an advisor or mental health expert, and give yourself time to rest. Try not to fret if things don’t go exactly as planned, and remind yourself that there’s a whole world waiting for you on the other side of that stage.

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Upon entering the exhibit, attendees will learn that Wampum was developed in collaboration with the Musée du quai Branly and that it was displayed in Paris and then New York before making its way to Montreal. The McCord website celebrates the “exceptional international collaboration” that went into this exhibit, but attentive visitors may find greater cause for scrutiny than for celebration. For Wampum to be developed and first displayed in Paris, an ocean away from the lands on which these belts were created, raises certain ethical questions. How effective was the collaboration between the curators based in France and the Indigenous experts – on whose voices this exhibit clearly and correctly depends – based in Canada and the United States? Why should (non-Indigenous) Parisians and tourists have been the first to view this exhibit? By whom was this exhibit intended to be seen? Was it designed to satisfy or benefit a particular audience?

These questions followed me through the exhibit, but I found no answers in either the objects on display or the captions beneath them. Neither did I discover what would happen to the wampum and other “cultural belongings” after the exhibit closed. One can reasonably assume that the 13 wampum from the McCord collection will be returned to the archives from which they were pulled, but the museum’s website also raises the possibility of repatriation: an unnamed author notes that the wampum belt presented by the Kanehsatà:ke community to Pope Gregory XVI “has not been repatriated since 1831.” The museum does not make it clear as to whether the belt is being repatriated to Canada, to Quebec, or to the Kanehsatà:ke. Further, the assumption that repatriation can consist in simply transferring the wampum from one private collection to another, or from one museum to another, neglects the Indigenous views of repatriation expressed in the Wampum exhibit itself. In a video projected at the exit of the exhibit, Jean-Philippe Thivierge of the Huron-Wendat Nation remarks: “Wampum have never belonged to a single individual. They’re communal objects. So, who should take care of them if they’re repatriated?” For the wampum to disappear into drawers after March 10, 2024, inaccessible to the (Indigenous) public until enough time has elapsed that they might once more be displayed for profit, would be a shameful fate.

McCord’s vagueness on the fate of the wampum belts is perhaps less embarrassing than its vagueness on how, exactly, so many of them ended up in private European collections after their production largely ceased in the nineteenth century. Undoubtedly, many of the belts on display were given freely to Europeans in their negotiations with Indigenous nations or even created by Europeans to give to Indigenous nations. At least one exhibit label, however, notes that Indigenous peoples sold wampum to collectors: “To deal with their problems” – by which is meant the problems that settlers created for Indigenous peoples – “some people sold their objects, including wampum.” This is not untrue, but it is not the whole truth. No discussion of the transfer of “cultural belongings” from Indigenous peoples to Europeans and settlers should fail to mention that many such belongings were banned, notably under the Canadian government’s Potlatch Ban. Wampum might have been immune from bans enforced for the purpose of encouraging (or coercing) the assimilation of Indigenous peoples, but they are not the only objects on display in this exhibit. It is possible that any number of the Indigenous-made objects in the collections of the McCord Stewart Museum, especially those whose origins are unknown, were confiscated by settler authorities. Failing to acknowledge the violent nature of the dispossession of Indigenous-made objects is nothing short of irresponsible.

Wampum is not without its merits, however. The curators have, I think, done an excellent job at tracing the history of wampum and at extending this history into the present. They acknowledge changes in the production and use of wampum in the period between the early seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries. Moving from one room of the exhibit to the next, for instance, the attendee learns that the initial political and diplomatic purpose of wampum gradually gave way to a religious purpose as many Indigenous peoples adopted (or were forced to adopt) Christianity. McCord’s detailed, as-chronological-as-possible presentation of the history of wampum aids in the attendee’s understanding of a tradition that was constantly evolving to address new challenges. All of this helps to prepare the attendee for the second-to-last room of the exhibit, which features a series of artworks by contemporary Indigenous artists that either use wampum beads or that replicate or resemble wampum belts. My favourite of these artworks was Teharihulen Michel Savard’s Reciprocity. This mixed media sculpture shows a copy of the 1876 Indian Act punctured by a bullet wound out of which spills blood and wampum beads. It is a chilling piece that speaks to the failure of Canadian diplomacy – and provides a bit of respite from Wampum’s whitewashed labels.

Another point of success, in my view, is the “Keys to interpreting wampum belts” guide. Readers will learn that a square symbol on a wampum belt represents “a nation and its territory or a palisaded village” and that an axe is a symbol of war, among other things. Immediately, this guide reminded me of one I saw at the exhibit The Secret Codes: African Nova Scotian Quilts, presented at the Dalhousie Art Gallery this past summer. The Secret Codes guide was intended to help attendees decode messages on quilts whose designs borrowed from the motifs of Underground Railroad “secret code” quilts. As the Wampum guide does for wampum, it both affirmed the utility of “secret code” quilts – which might otherwise have been appreciated only for their aesthetic value – and allowed for a more engaging, interactive experience.

In summary, McCord’s Wampum: Beads of Diplomacy exhibit suffers from a lack of context regarding the collaboration that went into the exhibit, the fate of the wampum and other objects on display, and the means by which the wampum and other objects were acquired. The exhibit itself might be beyond the point of alteration, but McCord would do well to address these ethical concerns on its website. At the same time, future attendees can look forward to a thoughtful presentation of the history of wampum belts and their continued relevance, complete with a helpful guide to these fascinating and multifaceted objects.

***

Author’s note: I visited the Wampum: Beads of Diplomacy exhibit and wrote this review in November 2023. Since my visit, the McCord Stewart Museum has updated its Wampum webpage with a thorough Q&A section that explains, among other things, how the wampum belts were acquired and where they will go after the exhibit closes. This Q&A section is helpful, but it certainly does not answer all of the questions I had while viewing this exhibit, and it should not discourage attendees from continuing to ask questions about wampum and other Indigenous-made objects on display at museums.

The post Patterns and Plot Holes appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The nine storytelling chairs that make up this exhibit were installed at Concordia University’s Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling (COHDS) – the last stop on a two-year national tour – between November 14 and 24. Each chair was decorated to reflect the person or people it represented (one of the chairs was dedicated to the Wikwemikong Nursing Home on Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory in northern Ontario), and attached to each chair was a pair of headphones through  which visitors could listen to the testimonies of said person or people. In a Story Space adjacent to the main exhibition room, visitors could also take the opportunity to share their own story of COVID in Canada’s long-term care homes.

COVID in the House of Old is a heavy but heartfelt exhibit that reminds us not to forget about the toll COVID took on Canada’s elderly population. It is a testament to the collaborative nature of storytelling, of recording and preserving memories, and of making public history “public.” After my tour of the exhibit, I sat down with Antea Živanović, an undergraduate student and an intern at COHDS, to discuss the importance of COVID in the House of Old.

***

Catey Fifield for The McGill Daily (MD): What is your role at COHDS, and how are you involved with this project?  

Antea Živanović (AŽ): I’m interning at COHDS as part of my Public History degree at Concordia. As soon as I joined the team, we started planning for the exhibit. That involved a lot of logistics and email correspondence as well as organizing a circle of volunteers. Now that the exhibit has started, my main jobs have been welcoming visitors and helping to facilitate conversation around the exhibit.

(MD): How has the public reacted to COVID in the House of Old? What are people saying?

(AŽ): For the most part, people have had really thoughtful responses to the exhibit. I think a lot of them have the sense that stories from long-term care homes – and COVID stories generally – are already being forgotten. Because unless you knew somebody who was living in a long-term care home or working in a long-term care home, you didn’t really get to hear those stories. I think it’s easy for people to feel connected to this because COVID is something we all experienced, but I also think the exhibit has encouraged people to think outside of and beyond their own experiences of the pandemic. It’s left some feeling sorrowful and others hopeful.

(MD): Why do you think we’ve neglected stories from long-term care homes?

(AŽ): One of the main points that Megan, the lead curator, made in her opening talk and has made throughout the project is that we live in a very ageist society. Canada prides itself on being a multiethnic, multicultural society – the word “mosaic” is often used – but while we understand the need to address and eliminate discrimination on the basis of race, religion, gender, and such categories, we forget to talk about age. I think it all comes down to this assumption that if people are old, they contribute less to society, and so they are given very little space to thrive. Unless an older person has wealth and people who are able to take care of them, it’s almost impossible to thrive under the current system. We can’t forget that this is a system that’s been broken for a long time – COVID simply showed us the cracks. The problems surrounding long-term care were there before the pandemic and are still here today.

(MD): What have you learned from your interactions with seniors, caregivers, friends and family members, and others who have shared their stories of long-term care?

(AŽ): Being at the exhibit and interacting with visitors in the last few days, I’ve noticed that a lot of what they come to talk to me about has very little to do with COVID. I’m thinking specifically about some older volunteers who came in from the Filipino Heritage Society of Montreal – they were very eager to get to know me and also to share what’s happening in their community today, but they had little to say about COVID. I got the impression that they, like younger people, just wanted to move on.

With young people, I’ve tried to centre our conversations not only around COVID but around the fact that we are all aging and that it’s important for us to think about the future of eldercare. I’ve really enjoyed my conversations with young people at this exhibit because, otherwise, I don’t find myself in spaces where we’re talking about this. It’s especially interesting to hear what people have to say about the future of eldercare in the context of the climate crisis – I think a lot of us have the sense that there’s no point in even planning for that future.

(MD): How can a project like this reflect, and perhaps shape, our collective memory of the pandemic? Has it made you think differently about the pandemic?

(AŽ): The idea of collective memory has interested me for a while. With COVID, we’ve got this situation where we’re all familiar with certain words – words like “mask,” “lockdown,” “isolation” – but we all attach different meanings to those words. Different memories and images. I think this project really speaks to the dual aspect of collective memory because there are certain experiences we don’t expect to encounter walking into it. One example, for me, was Kayley’s story – Kayley being a young person who lived in a long-term care home during the pandemic. Again, there’s this assumption that only elders live in long-term care homes, but disabled people of all ages also live in these homes and also faced the challenges that existed in long-term care homes during COVID.

(MD): Why are oral histories so important? What can they offer that written histories cannot?

(AŽ): When I think about oral histories, I think a lot about the process of telling stories that doesn’t get translated onto paper. I think about the body and all the things the body stores – there are things we can see, feel, and sense when we’re sharing stories with one another that can’t be captured in writing. We might use our hands a lot when we’re telling a story, or we might change the way that we speak or sit or interact with the space around us. Plus, for most people, writing is a very solitary act. Historians, especially, are often working with archives, computers, databases – things that don’t require them to go out in the world and talk to people. Oral histories provide us a very different, very special mode of interacting with the past. 

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There’s something intimidating about striking a conversation with an embodied AI. The usual social awkwardness of talking to a stranger is enhanced by the fact that this stranger is a performer reading from a script. Before any pleasantries can be exchanged and basic personal information shared, the visitor is expected to initiate a discussion on one of a host of complex topics. A guide provided by the artists suggests: philosophy and ethics (e.g., “rights of robots”), technology (e.g., “the possible impact of generative AI on the future of employment”), and society (e.g., “the geopolitical roots of global inequality”), among others.

My topic of choice was beauty. When I asked its opinion on beauty, the AI responded mostly in dictionary-ready definitions and clichés, but I was impressed with the humanness of its speech. The AI didn’t pause or stutter, but its speech wasn’t otherwise different from that of you or me. Notably, the AI did struggle to answer my subsequent, more subjective questions: it couldn’t tell me whether one celebrity, in its opinion, was more attractive than another.

There are some important things to keep in mind when you’re dealing with a Large Language Model. For one thing, like the ChatGPT we’re familiar with, the Model doesn’t know about anything that’s happened since 2021. (You can, however, inform it of a recent event and ask it to provide its own insights and analyses.) I also learned, during the course of my visit, about a phenomenon the artists call AI Brutalism. Because the AI is powered by giant datasets created by humans – naturally fraught with errors, preferences, and priorities – its speech can often sound more artificial than intelligent. Visitors should not be surprised to hear the AI combine expertise in a subject with basic errors, to hear it lie with confidence, or to endure its exasperating politeness. 

Above all, my experience talking to an embodied AI was eye-opening. It forced me, maybe for the first time, to seriously consider the paradigm-shifting possibilities AI affords. I discussed these possibilities – and the excitement and fear surrounding them – with Avery Suzuki, assistant to Nicolas Grenier.

***

Avery Suzuki (BFA ’23) is an artist based in Tio’tia:ke / Montreal. His work is inspired by folklore, spirituality, cultural artifacts, and everyday life.

Catey Fifield for The McGill Daily (MD): How are you involved with this project? What sort of research did you conduct for the artist?

Avery Suzuki (AS): I started out as a research assistant, but my job has expanded to cover many aspects of the project. Mostly, my job was preliminary research on AI and art in historical examples. I also had to come up with ways that we could conceivably execute the project technologically, figuring out all the different things we’d need to procure to make it work – not to mention the people we’d need to hire to make it work. And then, finally, I was modifying GPT, using prompt engineering to give it specific personalities and create an experience that’s a little different from interacting with a standard GPT.

What’s cool is that it was just me and Nicolas doing it. And we have absolutely no technological experience. We’ve never coded before in our lives, and we didn’t really need to because to modify GPT, you can now use prompts that are super powerful. We did it through trial and error and using plain English – and you can do a lot with just that.

MD: Why has this project been installed in a shopping mall rather than in a traditional gallery?

AS: I’m not the best person to ask this question because I didn’t make the decision to install it in a mall. But the funding for the project came from the Chambre de commerce du Montréal métropolitain (CCMM) under this initiative called “I love working downtown.” The idea was to fund these art projects that would be installed in the downtown area to attract people there – so that’s why it’s downtown. And then Nicolas and MASSIVart, the production company, found this space and it worked for what we needed. Being installed here, it’s nice that there’s a lot of foot traffic and that we get a diverse mix of people – I don’t think we would get that in a traditional gallery.

MD: How has the public reacted to Prémonitions?

AS: There’s a diverse mix of people who come through, and everyone has a different experience level when it comes to interacting with AI. They all have different feelings about it, and they all have different levels of comfort – even just with talking to a stranger. One thing I really like that we’ve done is that on the website we have a place where people can leave anonymous comments. We don’t edit them at all. Good or bad or stupid or smart – we just put it all on there for everyone to see. And it gives a good idea of the mix of reactions that people have: some people are really confused by it and some people are really inspired by it and some people are scared.

MD: What is it people are scared of?

AS: It’s hard to say whether it’s about the technology or whether it’s about being asked to participate in an art installation and being asked to talk to a stranger – some people feel like they’ll mess up. But then other people go in and they treat it like a friend: they confide in it and they tell it stuff that maybe you wouldn’t tell an actual human. Some people tell it secrets and some people look to it for comfort. Which I think has to do with the fact that there’s a human with a compassionate voice who looks friendly in between them and the AI.

MD: How many human interpreters do you have? And how did you choose them?

AS: We have nine interpreters. We chose trained performers because we wanted people who would have a level of comfort interacting with the public or being seen publicly, and also people who were familiar with reading lines. But we tried to make it as diverse as we could from the applicants that applied. We wanted a diverse group because the show is called Les voix (“the voices”) – it’s supposed to be an amalgamation of different people.  

MD: How has Prémonitions influenced your opinion on AI? Do you feel excited about this technology or threatened by it?

AS: Both. Definitely both. I mean, it’s hard to feel one way or another about it because it’s just so broad. It’s like the internet in 1996 – try imagining all the ways that the internet could have affected our lives, say, 30 years ago. There’s no way to predict all the ways that AI will affect our lives, but I know it’ll be really deep and really change things from a societal level.

MD: Has anything about this project or about your research surprised you?

AS: The surprise has been how convincing it is as a sort of human entity. Even without the interpreters giving it a body and a voice, it’s able to imitate any kind of linguistic style or attitude or opinion that you want it to. And without much strong intervention, you can kind of make it do whatever you want. It’s pretty shocking how accessible it is – that anyone can do this without much effort.

MD: Has AI influenced your own work at all?

AS: It’s hard to say because it’s so soon, but it’s definitely becoming a reflex. Whereas before I might Google something, I’m going to AI now. I’m using it to accomplish tasks – writing, translation, brainstorming. I use it for brainstorming a lot.

Generally, at any sort of creative point in this project, Nicolas and I would use GPT as much as possible. We wanted the AI to take the lead on it. In that way, it’s kind of making me rethink the whole creative process and the very idea of originality. I think people look at GPT as something separate from themselves as a user – a sort of separate consciousness that makes its own decisions. But I think it’s more helpful to treat it like a collaborative tool that you can use to bounce ideas off of yourself, or off of each other – something that can help you to flesh out ideas in a more streamlined way. 

MD: Do you feel, by and large, that GPT is helping you to generate new ideas rather than hindering you from exercising your own creativity?

AS: Definitely. It’s totally expanding the potential of creative thinking. I think the big thing is speed. In the same way that doing research became so much faster when the internet came around, or when word processors started to outpace typewriters, AI is enabling a much faster workflow.

MD: Is there anything else you think readers of the Daily should know?

AS: I think it would be cool to highlight the fact that this thing has a rolling memory. The interpreters keep this journal that the artists then interpret and feed back into the machine. And so the AI has these injected human memories that it then interprets further as a machine – which, as far as I can tell, is a very new idea in terms of Large Language Model processing. It’s a pretty unique aspect of the project that I think should be explored further.

Prémonitions : Les voix is on display until September 16, open Tuesday to Saturday from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Participation is free, but visitors are encouraged to book online to guarantee a conversation with the AI.

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The HDCC subcommittee was advised by Professor Celeste Pedri-Spade, McGill’s Associate Provost (Indigenous Initiatives). According to Manfredi’s email, it “carried out its work diligently” and “in accordance with procedural fairness.” In line with McGill’s role “as an institution of higher learning committed to academic integrity,” the subcommittee focused its review on questions concerning Turpel-Lafond’s curriculum vitae, but it did not ignore questions raised with respect to her Treaty Indian status. Subcommittee members communicated with Turpel-Lafond throughout the review process, and they examined documentation that Turpel-Lafond provided them. In the end, however, the subcommittee “found evidence calling into question the validity of information about academic credentials and accomplishments appearing on Ms. Turpel-Lafond’s curriculum vitae.” It noted also that her claims to Treaty Indian status were “the subject of important questions.”

Concluding his email, Manfredi reminded the McGill community that honorary degrees are the university’s “highest honours, reserved for individuals whose achievements and values inspire our community.” He also reminded recipients of the university’s “duty to ensure accountability in relation to claims of Indigenous citizenship,” promising that McGill – under the leadership of Indigenous students and faculty and “with guidance from Indigenous community-based advisors” – would develop a policy on Indigenous citizenship claims.

The Indigenous Women’s Collective (IWC) formed after the CBC investigation was published last year and has been calling on universities and other institutions to rescind honours bestowed upon Turpel-Lafond ever since. This includes 11 Canadian universities that have awarded Turpel-Lafond honorary degrees as well as the Order of Canada, which granted Turpel-Lafond the country’s second-highest civilian honour in 2021. The IWC was pleased by the same-day decisions of McGill and Carleton University to strip Turpel-Lafond of her honorary degrees. In a press release dated February 27, the collective wrote: “We applaud this action and we believe this helps to eradicate the devastating silence that surrounds the colonial theft of our Indigenous identities.” The IWC added that Turpel-Lafond “is well versed in the history and manifestations of colonial harm” and that she should “begin the healing process with Indigenous people by apologizing for her conduct.”

Turpel-Lafond has yet to make a public apology. On March 9, the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association voted to revoke the Reg Robson Award it granted to her in 2020 because its board members believed she had falsified her claims to Indigenous identity. Responding to a request for comment, Turpel-Lafond told The Canadian Press that she was surprised by the association’s decision to rescind the award without “basic fairness” – they did not, she said, give her a chance to defend herself – but that she was satisfied with her “past work, identity and self-worth.” Turpel-Lafond went on to express that she has “no emotional attachment to titles, honours or accolades.” In fact, she said, it feels “liberating” to be freed of them because it permits her to “focus on what really matters” in her life.

McGill, Carleton, and the University of Regina are the only schools that have stripped Turpel-Lafond of honorary degrees thus far. In a February 13 press release, the University of Regina stated that Turpel-Lafond’s accomplishments “are outweighed by the harm inflicted upon Indigenous academics, peoples and communities when non-Indigenous people misrepresent their Indigenous ancestry.” 

Not everyone agrees. As reported in the Daily last fall, many individuals and groups have spoken out against the investigations into Turpel-Lafond’s Indigenous identity and academic record. The University of British Columbia, for one, issued a statement to The Globe and Mail in October praising Turpel-Lafond’s accomplishments as the founding director of the university’s Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre. UBC has since apologized for its handling of the Turpel-Lafond allegations, saying its response “harmed its Indigenous community and Indigenous partners outside the university.” Some Indigenous groups have come to Turpel-Lafond’s defence as well. In October 2022, the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs said Turpel-Lafond has been a “fierce, ethical and groundbreaking advocate for Indigenous peoples for decades” and that genealogy is not always the best indicator of Indigenous identity. Chief Kelly Wolfe of the Muskeg Lake Cree Nation, meanwhile, has confirmed that Turpel-Lafond is a member of their community “and has been for 30 years.”

Earlier this year, Turpel-Lafond voluntarily relinquished degrees from Vancouver Island University and Royal Roads University upon learning that they planned to conduct reviews. On March 8, Brock University also accepted a return from Turpel-Lafond. The IWC has condemned the decisions of these universities to accept Turpel-Lafond’s returns, arguing that they “did not uphold academic integrity by making Ms. Turpel-Lafond accountable for her actions.” Tweeting on February 7, the IWC also wrote that Turpel-Lafond “must be investigated for Indigenous identity fraud and held accountable if her claims are unfounded. Stealing from Indigenous people should carry consequences.”

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The B.C. day-scholar lawsuit was filed by former shíshálh chief Garry Feschuk and former Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc chief Shane Gottfriedson. The two chiefs sought justice for “day scholars” – individuals who attended church- or government-run schools during the day but did not sleep there overnight – as well as descendents of those individuals. The day-scholar distinction rendered thousands of day school survivors ineligible for the Canadian government’s 2006 settlement for residential school survivors. Day scholars were also excluded from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission active from 2008 to 2015.

The initial suit involved three classes of complainants: a Survivors class, a Descendants class, and a Band class. In 2021, all parties agreed to separate the Survivor and Descendant classes from the Band class to ensure that aging day school survivors could receive compensation in their lifetimes. The settlement between Survivors, Descendants, and the Canadian government included $10,000 for each eligible day scholar (or their family or estate) as well as $50 million for a Day Scholars Revitalization Fund. As of December 23, 2022, there have been 11,453 claims made and 3,735 payments issued.

This month’s resolution of the Band class’ claims brings a long-awaited end to the “unfinished business” of 2021, per Miller. As part of the Band class settlement, Canada has agreed to place $2.8 billion in a not-for-profit trust to “support healing, wellness, education, heritage, language, and commemoration activities.” The trust, which will be independent of the government, is to be managed by a permanent board of nine Indigenous directors. It will be guided by the Four Pillars developed by Band class plaintiffs: revival and protection of Indigenous languages, revival and protection of Indigenous cultures, protection and promotion of heritage, and wellness for Indigenous communities and their members.

Gottfriedson explained that the settlement “allows our Indigenous nations to control this process […] we will manage and distribute the funds, we will provide it to all 325 nations in a fair and objective manner.” Each nation will be able to decide which of the Four Pillars to focus on and to develop a ten-year implementation plan. After the first decade, new ten-year plans will be developed to ensure that all funds are dispersed within 20 years. 

The B.C. day-scholar settlement is only the latest in a series of billion-dollar settlements between Indigenous peoples and the Canadian government. In June 2022, the Siksika First Nation in southern Alberta voted to accept a $1.3-billion payment to “right past wrongs dating back over a century”: in 1910, Canada broke its Blackfoot Treaty (Treaty 7) and wrongfully seized more than 115,000 acres of Siksika Nation’s reserve land. In July 2022, moreover, the federal government signed a $20-billion agreement to compensate First Nations children and families harmed by chronic underfunding of the on-reserve child welfare system – “the largest such deal in Canadian history.” In addition to the $20 billion for compensation, another $20 billion was set aside to reform the on-reserve child welfare system over five years.

In 2009, Garry McLean of Lake Manitoba First Nation filed a $15-billion lawsuit against the federal government seeking compensation, like Feschuk and Gottfriedson, for thousands of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit children who attended federally-run day schools. McLean’s class-action suit took ten years to resolve, and by the time the federal government agreed to award between $10,000 and $200,000 to each claimant, McLean – who himself suffered “emotional, mental, physical, and sexual abuse” at the Dog Creek Day School – had already passed away. As of January 3, 2023, some 178,161 people had filed claims with the Indian Day Schools Class Action and 70 per cent of them had received payment.

“Many Canadians are aware of the tragic legacy of Indian residential schools,” said former Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett in 2019, “[but] a lot did not know, and most Canadians still do not know, that beginning in the 1920s, 200,000 students attended federally operated Indian day schools,” Bennett said.

The B.C. day-scholar settlement is unique in that it marks the first time Canada will compensate bands and communities collectively for harms related to residential or day schools. “Reconciliation isn’t free. This is a lot of money,” Miller said. “Is it enough? I think only time will tell, but we know there’s a heck of a lot more to do.”

“This has never been done,” remarked Peter Grant, class counsel for the nations, at a news conference. “This is where the government is saying, ‘you take care and you’re in charge of how you wish to start to repair the damage.’”

Further information on the terms of the settlement will become publicly available over the next month. Before any funds can be transferred to the trust, a settlement approval hearing must be held between February 27 and March 1, followed by an appeal period.

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Between December 2021 and September 2022, around 9,000 HIV tests were analyzed using a chemical reagent manufactured by Ortho Clinical Diagnostics, an in vitro diagnostics company. According to the MUHC, the company was forced to recall the reagent on September 2, 2022 after another laboratory in Canada reported a discrepancy during a routine evaluation. In a statement to CTV News, spokesperson Sandrine Pelletier of the MUHC described “a problem with one of the components” in two batches of the Ortho Clinical tests distributed across Quebec and Canada, but she noted that “the component of the test that detects established infection,” meaning antibodies against HIV, was not affected.

The laboratories that conducted the analyses between December 2021 and September 2022, which include St. Mary’s Hospital and Lakeshore General Hospital, are overseen by Optilab Montreal-MUHC. The MUHC has not been able to provide a complete list of the clinics, doctor’s offices, or hospitals from which patient samples might have been taken before they were sent to the labs. At the time of writing, the only location from which patient samples have been confirmed is Lasalle Hospital.

Once the recall was issued, the MUHC says it notified Quebec’s Ministry of Health, but neither organization announced the news to the public. The MUHC decided instead to send letters to patients’ doctors, but these letters were not received until December – a full three months after the recall.

One woman wrote to CTV News to express her frustration: “I’m furious. I’m absolutely livid about this whole thing. Thank God I’m all right, but there are 8,999 other people walking around who may or may not have HIV, and that’s concerning.” This woman was able to get retested, but she says she doubts “that they have been able to reach all 9,000 people before and during the holidays to warn them.”

Dr. Rejean Thomas of the clinic L’Actuel, which specializes in the treatment and prevention of HIV, was similarly distressed by the MUHC’s delay: “For me, it’s completely insufficient, unethical for a disease as severe as HIV is.” Now matter how low the risk of a false negative, he told CTV News that the recall should have been communicated to the public immediately.

“It’s a very serious diagnosis,” Dr. Thomas explained. “You could infect many other persons believing that you are HIV negative.”

According to Quebec’s Ministry of Health, some samples from the Ortho Clinical tests have yielded false negative results. The supplier has assured users, however, that false negatives have been reported only “very rarely” and that “the offending batches are no longer in use.

The state of HIV testing in Canada

Last August, at the International AIDS Conference in Montreal, the Canadian government announced a $17.9-million investment to increase access to HIV testing in remote communities and among hard-to-reach populations. Federal Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos said the government would put $8 million toward the distribution of self-testing kits, which can be acquired anonymously and used at home, and $9.9 million toward expanding HIV testing in remote and isolated communities.

Meeting the needs of Indigenous peoples either living with HIV or at risk of HIV is a priority for advocates. Although Indigenous peoples represent just five per cent of Canada’s total population, they accounted for one in ten HIV infections in 2018. Studies from Ontario have found that Indigenous peoples living with HIV tend to be diagnosed later and that stigma and discrimination inhibit ease of access to services for Indigenous peoples.

However, the government’s announcement did not meet the expectations of some advocates and health care professionals who focus on HIV/AIDS. Jody Jollimore, the executive director of the Community-Based Research Centre, a Vancouver-based organization that works to promote the health of people of diverse genders and sexualities, told reporters at a news conference that “this was not what we were hoping for.” Jollimore’s organization is part of a coalition of community groups calling on the federal government to increase funding for HIV from around $73 million per year to $100 million per year.

“Communities affected by HIV continue to face stigma and discrimination that put us at an elevated risk of HIV infection and act as a barrier to testing treatment and care,” Jollimore said. He also noted that access to prevention tools such as pre-exposure prophylaxis, which can reduce the risk of contracting HIV from sex by about 99 per cent and from drug injection by about 74 per cent, remains inconsistent across Canada.

Advocates have also raised concerns that Canada’s health care facilities and long-term care homes are not equipped to treat older adults living with HIV. In an email to CTV News, Ken Miller, the executive director of the Canadian AIDS Society, explained that medical staff “are not being trained properly in the complexities of caring for people living with HIV,” while support workers “are usually trained even less.”

At AIDS 2022, the International Coalition of Older People with HIV announced ten calls to action to increase the lifespan and quality of life for older adults living with HIV. Their priorities include low-barrier access to care, healthy living conditions, targeted research and empowerment, combatting ageism, and considering sexual health a part of overall health.

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Given our university’s reluctance to divest from fossil fuel companies, it struck me as odd that it would score highly in any test of sustainability. I decided to do some digging. I read through the reports of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE), the organization that publishes the Sustainable Campus Index. Sure enough, I found that the data on which McGill’s sustainability scores are based is misleading – and, in some cases, incorrect. They paint a false picture of a sustainable campus, and they obscure the need for progress in important areas.

About the Sustainable Campus Index

In 2006, the Higher Education Associations Sustainability Consortium (HEASC), a network of higher education associations committed to advancing sustainability, issued a call for AASHE to develop a campus sustainability rating system. Following an “extensive stakeholder engagement process,” AASHE introduced the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System (STARS). STARS was designed to provide a framework for understanding sustainability in all sectors of higher education, to enable meaningful comparisons within and between post-secondary institutions using a common set of measurements, and to create incentives for improvement in sustainability. It evaluates the performance of post-secondary institutions across the globe in 17 sustainability impact areas, including Air & Climate, Energy, Investment & Finance, Research, and Waste. These impact areas are not weighted evenly, and each may not apply to every institution. For instance, while a school may earn up to 40.00 out of a possible 100.00 points if it has a Curriculum that promotes sustainability, it can earn only 6.00 points for sustainable Water practices. Depending on the number of points an institution earns in each category, it may be awarded a STARS Bronze (minimum 25 points), Silver (minimum 45 points), Gold (minimum 65 points), or Platinum (minimum 85 points) seal or be recognized as a STARS Reporter. 

The information collected and published by AASHE is entirely self-reported. It is up to colleges, universities, and other post-secondary institutions themselves to measure their sustainability efforts and submit – or not submit – supporting documentation to AASHE. Without a third party to corroborate the information it provides, there is ample room for the desiring institution to misreport its numbers and misrepresent its progress. While AASHE provides incentives for institutions to have their data internally reviewed or externally audited, this is only optional.

McGill’s 2022 performance

The 2022 Sustainable Campus Index relies on the most recent valid report of each participating institution, with reports valid for three years after review. McGill’s last report was submitted in December 2020 and will be valid through February 2024. It was compiled by Karen Oberer of McGill’s Office of Sustainability and audited by Cassandra Lamontagne of Concordia University’s Office of Sustainability. 

Competing against more than 900 institutions from 40 countries in 2022, McGill ranked within the top ten for three categories: it ranked fourth in Purchasing, tied for fourth in Grounds, and tied for tenth in Transportation. Based on its December 2020 report, McGill was awarded a score of 76.69 points and a Gold seal. By comparison, Concordia scored 72.00 points, the Université de Montréal scored 54.78 points, and the Université du Québec à Montréal scored 45.28 points. Only twelve schools, including one with an expired rating, have a Platinum seal; two of these, Thompson Rivers University and Université de Sherbrooke, are in Canada.

In what follows, I break down McGill’s performance in the Purchasing, Grounds, and Transportation categories with the aim of discovering what each point means and what each point can reveal – or not reveal – about McGill’s sustainability efforts. I also comment on our university’s performance in the Diversity & Affordability category and highlight areas in which McGill needs to see the most improvement. 

Purchasing, Grounds, and Transportation

Under Purchasing, a category worth 6.00 points overall, McGill awards itself complete or near-complete marks for Sustainable Procurement (3.00/3.00), Electronics Purchasing (0.96/1.00), and Office Paper Purchasing (1.00/1.00). It doesn’t fare as well in the Cleaning and Janitorial Purchasing subcategory, earning 0.67 out of a possible 1.00 point; this is on account of the fact that it spends only two-thirds of its cleaning and janitorial products budget on “products that are third party certified to meet recognized sustainability standards.” I note that many of the points awarded in this category are for sustainable purchasing guidelines rather than proof of sustainable purchasing. McGill provides ample evidence of such guidelines, but AASHE’s requests for documentation to support the financial figures it provides are often declined, the relevant boxes filled not with links but with three lonely dashes. 

There’s some suspicious activity going on under Grounds, for which McGill receives 2.00/2.00 points for Landscape Management and 2.00/2.00 points for Biodiversity, too. For one thing, McGill reports that the total area of the McGill campus measures 1,723.96 hectares, but the total area of “managed grounds” on which it reports measures just 37.35 hectares. While most of the area not included in McGill’s report is part of natural reserves – the Gault Estate covers 1,000 hectares, the Molson Nature Reserve 51 hectares, and the Morgan Arboretum 245 hectares – I’m concerned as to why it didn’t include data on the 110 hectares of “[e]xperimental agricultural land on Mac Campus.” How is this land being managed, and what kinds of “experiments” are being conducted on it?

Further, McGill reports that all 37.35 hectares of its “managed grounds” are managed organically, “without the use of inorganic fertilizers and chemical pesticides, fungicides and herbicides,” and that none of this same land is managed “in accordance with an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) program that uses selected chemicals only when needed.” In a later description of its land management program, however, McGill admits that “[c]hemical rodenticide bait boxes are used outdoors around buildings when necessary as per the IPM plan.” This, as we shall see, is not the only case of discrepancy between the numbers McGill provides and its explanation of those numbers.

In the Transportation category, McGill receives 4.57/5.00 points for its Commute Modal Split. Here, McGill can take credit for the fact that 94 per cent of its students and 80 per cent of its employees use “more sustainable commuting options as their primary mode of transportation.” Due to McGill’s prime downtown location, however, most members of the McGill community can live within walking distance of the university or within easy access of public transport. It is no coincidence that nine of the other ten schools joining McGill in the 2022 Index’s top ten list for Transportation are also located in major cities, with three other schools located in Montreal. This is not a measure of effort but a measure of advantage.

McGill’s high Commute Modal Split score compensates for a staggeringly low Campus Fleet score: 0.06/1.00. In 2019, the most recent year for which data are available, McGill maintained a campus fleet of 142 vehicles, of which 84 were gasoline-only, 49 were diesel-only, and just eight were fully electric. This is a measure of effort, and six per cent is not nearly enough.

Diversity & Affordability

The Sustainable Campus Index considers not only the environmental sustainability efforts of institutions but their social sustainability efforts, too. The Diversity & Affordability category, for instance, evaluates institutions’ equity and diversity strategies, the support they provide for underrepresented and marginalized groups, and the extent to which they make education accessible and affordable for all. Diversity is a hot-button issue at McGill, as at other universities, and given the controversy surrounding the lack of Black and Indigenous faculty at McGill, I was interested in hearing what our university had to say about equity and diversity.

To no surprise, McGill awards itself full marks for Diversity and Equity Coordination, but in at least one area, these marks are based on misleading data. McGill reports that all students, academic staff, and non-academic staff have completed training in “cultural competence, anti-oppression, anti-racism, and/or social inclusion trainings and activities.” This is only half true. While it is mandatory for all students, academic staff, and non-academic staff to complete the “It Takes All of Us” education program – and it is to this program that McGill points when asked for a description of its “trainings and activities” – that program addresses only the issue of sexual violence. The other programs McGill highlights are: Equity in the Academic Search Process, a mandatory two-hour training session for members of academic search committees; various programs organized by McGill’s Equity Education Advisors, including the SKILLS21 workshop series; and the Indigenous Education Program, an initiative of the First Peoples’ House. These programs are not all mandatory, they are not all widely known, and they certainly do not cover all aspects of “cultural competence, anti-oppression, anti-racism, and/or social inclusion.” I do not mean to suggest that McGill should institute mandatory training in these areas – the effectiveness of It Takes All of Us is up for debate – but for McGill to suggest that all of its students, academic staff, and non-academic staff have been adequately trained in them is far from the truth.

McGill misses the mark

What that McGill Reporter article from September doesn’t tell you is that, as impressive as McGill’s performance in Purchasing, Grounds, and Transportation might appear, these are not the most heavily weighted categories in the Sustainable Campus Index. This means that they are not – at least according to AASHE – the most important markers of an institution’s sustainability efforts. McGill is missing more than ten points in the Curriculum category, worth 40.00 points. It achieves just 0.11/8.00 points for Buildings, 3.40/10.00 points for Energy, and 2.98/8.00 points for Food & Dining. Instead of congratulating McGill for its easy As in Purchasing, Grounds, and Transportation, we should be protesting its unsustainable Building Operations and Maintenance (0.00/5.00) and demanding more Clean and Renewable Energy (0.00/4.00). 

Going forward

When it comes to painting an accurate picture of McGill’s sustainability practices, there is only so much proof these STARS points can provide. What they reveal beyond a doubt, however, is that our university cares about its reputation – about what it means for a school to look sustainable regardless of whether that school can be sustainable. McGill aims to achieve a Platinum seal by 2030, but if it does succeed in making the jump from 76.69 points to 85 or more points in the next eight years, we will have to ask ourselves how much of this increase came from effort and how much of it came from advantage.

None of this is to suggest that McGill is not making real progress toward a more sustainable campus and a more sustainable future. Its STARS score is impressive, and its Climate & Sustainability Strategy is extensive, thoughtful, and achievable. My intention is only to remind any who might be impressed by McGill’s high scores, ranks, and ratings that our university has more to gain from the appearance of sustainability (or any other marker of success) than sustainability (or any other marker of success) itself. We must continue to push McGill to make good on its promises. Push it to turn away from scores, ranks, and ratings and toward its student body. Push it to close the gap between appearance and reality.

A previous version of this article attributed all parts of McGill’s 2020 STARS report, including all direct quotations, to Sustainability Officer Karen Oberer. In fact, although Oberer compiled and submitted the report, information was gathered from numerous sources across the university, and not all descriptions were written by Oberer. The article has been amended to reflect this fact. The Daily regrets this error.

The post The Proof Is in the Points appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Ajuinnata (“aye-yoo-ee-nah-tah”) means “to never give up and to commit oneself to action, no matter how difficult the cause may be.” In choosing this name for the series, the Office of the Provost and Vice-Principal (Academic) writes, McGill seeks “to recognize the Inuit studying, researching, teaching, and working in the McGill community, who champion ajuinnata and help move McGill forward.”

The series kicked off with an opening ceremony and exhibitio vernissage at the Macdonald-Harrington Building, where Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit: Art, Architecture, and Traditional Knowledge exhibition and the McGill Visual Arts Collection’s complementary Inuit art installation, Takunnanguaqtangit, remain on display. Professor Celeste Pedri-Spade, McGill’s first Associate Provost (Indigenous Initiatives), addressed a crowd of about fifty people, as did Interim Principal Christopher Manfredi and, via a somewhat off-putting pre-recorded video, Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations Marc Miller. Isabelle Laurier, the curator of Inuit Quajimajatuqangit, then discussed her goals of integrating Inuit artwork into architecture and of giving Inuit artists visibility in an exhibition that has visited venues across Quebec, Iceland, and Dubai in the last five years. 

The real star of the evening, however, was Inuk elder Reepa Evic-Carleton, who performed a ceremonial lighting of the qulliq, a traditional oil lamp usually made of soapstone and filled with seal oil or whale blubber. Evic-Carleton hails from a small Inuit village on what is known as Baffin Island. When she was six years old, she and her family were forcefully relocated to “the South,” where she has lived ever since and where she once worked as a counsellor and program coordinator for the Ottawa Inuit Children’s Centre. Evic-Carleton may be far removed, by distance and by time, from her home in Nunavut, but she has fond memories of the qulliq. She explained to the audience the many uses of the lamp, among them lighting, heating, cooking, melting ice, and drying clothing. For Evic-Carleton, to feel the flames of the qulliq today is to recall a quieter, more tranquil way of life. “It’s soothing to me, and it’s grounding for me,” she said.

Following the opening ceremony, guests were ushered into the Exhibition Room of the Macdonald-Harrington Building to view the Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit exhibit and to enjoy hors-d’œuvres prepared by the award-winning Inuk chef Trudy Metcalfe-Coe. Having consumed far more than my fair share of feta cheese cups and blueberry-lemon parfait, I was ready to take in the stunning photos, videos, drawings, and sculptures capturing Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit.

Qaujimajatuqangit means “Inuit ways of knowing” and “Inuit ways of doing things.” In the words of Richard Budgell, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Medicine and an organizer of Ajuinnata at McGill, “It’s a beautiful term because it’s all-encompassing.” Laurier’s exhibit celebrates the convergence of Inuit art and architecture in the construction of the Canadian High Arctic Research Station (CHARS), located in Ikaluk-tutiak (Cambridge Bay), Nunavut. A competition opened to Inuit artists across the Inuit Nunangat territory – which encompasses Nunatsiavut, Nunavik, Nunavut, and Inuvialuit – solicited drawings and a sculpture from seven artists: Victoria Grey, Ulaayu Pilurtuut, Timotee (Tim) Pitsiulak, Sammy Kudluk, Ningiukulu Teevee, Koomuatuk (Kuzy) Sapa Curley, and Bobby Nokalak Anavilok. The artworks, digitally enlarged to cover the walls and floors of the research station, “illustrate the traditional Inuit knowledge’s contribution to the development of world-class science and technology, showcasing the past and present resourcefulness and inventiveness of the Inuit,” says Laurier.

Inuit Quajimajatuqangit challenges the myth that Indigenous knowledge and traditional knowledge are incompatible with Western science. It recognizes Inuit ingenuity and the impact this ingenuity has on Euro-Canadian enterprises in Canada’s Arctic. While I stood staring at a sunglasses-shaped diagram, a man approached me and asked if I knew what it was I was looking at. He explained to me that they were snow goggles, invented by the Inuit some eight hundred years ago to protect against snow blindness. “The Inuit were geniuses,” the man remarked. Although he used the past tense, it became clear to us both as we circled the exhibition room, continually raising our eyebrows in surprise as we drank in the written wisdom that accompanied the visual presentation, that the Inuit are geniuses still.

You might have missed the opening ceremony and exhibition vernissage, but there’s still time to celebrate Ajuinnata at McGill. All members of the McGill and Montreal communities are invited to attend the following: a screening of the film Three Thousand and a Q&A session with the director, asinnajaq (September 20); a roundtable discussion on Inuit self-governance (September 22); an Inuit games demonstration (September 28); a talk by the curator and anthropologist Krista Ulujuk Zawadski (September 29); the Zacharias Kunuk Film Festival (October 4, 18, and 25); a conversation on Inuit health and wellness (October 17); and a Climate change presentation by Sheila Watt-Cloutier. Members of the Indigenous community are invited to attend a niriqatigiit (“coming together to eat”) with Chef Trudy Metcalf-Coe on September 26.

The post Ajuinnata at McGill Celebrates Inuit “Excellence, Achievement, and Perseverance” appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The McGill Daily (MD): First, tell me about your background in fine arts.

Cloé Murphy (CM): My family has always been involved in the arts. My dad worked in art direction, and my mom was a producer for a long time. So I always had a lot of art influences growing up, and my parents really encouraged me to involve myself in the arts.

Still, I feel like I came to the arts later than most people. I didn’t go to a fine arts school until my final year of high school, and I had always thought I would go into a very “corporate” profession. However, I found art to be very comforting in my early high school years. I was going to an all-girls private school, and I had a hard time making friends. I’d often spend lunch drawing by myself in the art room. In Grade 11, I ended up switching to an art school in Toronto: Rosedale Heights School of the Arts. And it was good. It was what I needed. 

From there, of course, I decided to go to Concordia. I felt that moving to Montreal would give me more than staying in Toronto. I’ve focused mainly on drawing and painting for the past three years, but I’d like to experiment with other mediums. Recently, for instance, I joined a ceramics studio. I still enjoy drawing and painting, but I think they can be limiting, and I’ve found that I feel more satisfied with three-dimensional objects. That’s part of what drew me to zines.

MD: For those unfamiliar with the medium, what exactly is a zine?

CM: For me, a zine is a self-published booklet. The word “zine” comes from “magazine,” but whereas magazines are products of the corporate world, zines are intended as DIY projects, and they aren’t focused on making money. Making a zine is about spreading a message – or images or opinions or news – as fast as possible. There’s a rawness to it. You can really sense a person behind a zine.

MD: What got you interested in making zines? Did any particular person or people inspire you?

CM: I didn’t know much about the small press or zine-making until a couple of years ago. That’s when I met my friend Deb – she’s such a cool artist. She was always really into making zines, and she always teaches herself everything. We became pen pals, and she started sending me all these crazy things she was making, just at home or with her printer. She wasn’t spending any money on these things. And I really appreciated her approach to art because I find that at Concordia, or at any art institution, there isn’t an expectation voiced to you that you spend a lot of money, but it does feel that way sometimes.

Deb kind of introduced me to zine-making. They would come and do random pop-ups in parks where they would have a blanket and all of their shit in front of them and sell it to strangers. They actually own their own small business. At 17 or 18, they were reprinting zines for people and mailing them around the world. It was a really small community of people who were involved, but it was awesome.

MD: You yourself had the opportunity to host a series of zine-making workshops across Montreal this summer. Tell me about these workshops and about your role as organizer.

CM: Earlier this year, I applied to Concordia’s Elspeth McConnell Fine Arts Award, which offers $5,000 for students to work on a project with a non-profit. I thought of doing the zine-making workshops back in January, prepared the application, and got the award. I’ve been working since then with ARCMTL, a non-profit that runs Expozine, among other things. 

I did my best to give each workshop a focus. I didn’t want them all to be the same, and there are just so many different kinds of zines. You’ve got political zines, art zines, zines that tell personal stories, poetry zines, photography zines. There’s a lot of ground to cover, and I don’t know everything, so it was really important for me to reach out to others and get help from them. For example, I invited my friend Holly to collaborate with me on a poetry zine workshop. That was great because I was able to appeal to a whole other group of people that I probably wouldn’t have been able to reach otherwise.

Mostly, however, I wanted the workshops to be a space for people to gather and meet one another and relate to one another. It’s been so amazing meeting all these new people and making all these new friends. I had a few people who came to almost every workshop – they just always made an effort to come, and it was really sweet. Because I know that community-building is important, and things like this just couldn’t happen during the pandemic. I don’t mean to suggest that I started this, but I do think there’s been a lack of random little drawing events for people to show up to recently.

MD: What do you like about zines? What are the benefits of this medium? What are its limitations?

CM: I like that zines are a physical thing to hold. I like that they’re cost-effective. And I like that, for most zines, it’s perfectly okay to scan them, reprint them, and share them. It’s not an issue of stealing or copyright infringement if I reprint a zine, and I think that’s how information should be. A lot of the zines I brought for the Anarchist Book Fair were political; some were related to feminism, some to harm reduction. This stuff is meant to be shared. 

What are its limitations? There aren’t a ton. You can make a zine in so many different ways. I suppose it can be time-consuming, maybe a little intimidating – you don’t want to mess up.

MD: What can you tell me about the relationship between zines and activism? How have you seen activists, in Montreal or beyond, use zines to spread their message?

CM: Zines are inherently political, inherently energized. It’s so easy for an activist or activist organization to type something up, put together a zine, and spread their message around the world. Another advantage to activists is that, with zines, you don’t have to go through a publisher. This gives individuals full autonomy and power over their words – nothing has to be censored.

MD: Finally, I would like to start making zines, but I don’t know where to start. What advice can you offer me?

CM: There are a lot of really great resources online. If you want to follow along with someone, there are so many cool YouTube videos you can watch to learn quick and simple steps. I would definitely just do some quick Google searches if you’re feeling a bit lost.

In terms of materials, plain printer paper is super easy to find. You can write or draw by hand, or you can use a computer. There are plenty of free programs available – you definitely don’t have to use InDesign. Pens, pencils, and collage material are also helpful. If you have magazines or newspapers to cut, you’ll want some scissors, glue or tape, and perhaps an Exacto knife. But it doesn’t have to feel like you’re creating a book. I own a few zines that are just collections of people’s drawings and doodles. That can be a good place to start.

***

If you’re interested in zines or in attending a zine-making workshop in Montreal, follow @zinerecipe on Instagram!

The post Behind the Zines: Interview with Montreal-Based Artist Cloé Murphy appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The first to speak was Fatemeh Anvari. In December 2021, she was fired from a job teaching third grade at Chelsea Elementary School because she wears a hijab. The incident was covered widely by Canadian media, and thousands rushed to defend Anvari against a bill they called “awful” and “discriminatory.” Still, as Anvari explained to the audience at Thursday’s event, she “felt extremely alone.”

Anvari, who now works as a Student Life Animator at Chelsea Elementary School, emphasized the role teachers play in teaching their students to be true to themselves and to stand up for what they believe in. “How can we teach students to be their authentic selves,” she asked, “when their teacher cannot be her authentic self?”

As much as it pained Anvari to say goodbye to her students – one of whom, she recalled, drawing emotional responses from the audience on Zoom, “asked me whether it was my decision not to be their teacher anymore” – she understood that removing her hijab would be a disservice not only to herself but to her students.

“I choose to be as I am and to exist as I do,” she concluded.

The next speaker was Rabbi Lisa Grushcow. She detailed the three reasons why her temple, Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom, joined a coalition against Bill 21. Reason one was “it’s about us”: Jewish people, also religious minorities in Quebec, may feel the effects of Bill 21 if they wear a kippah or other article(s) of faith. Reason two was “it’s not about us”: Grushcow acknowledged that Bill 21 disproportionately impacts Muslim women and that those who are not Muslim women should “use [our] privilege to stand up for what’s right.” Reason three, addressing the place of Bill 21 in schools, was that it can be good for children to learn from people wearing religious symbols. These experiences expose children to people different from themselves and perspectives different from their own, and they help to foster inclusion, acceptance, and an appreciation for diversity, Grushcow explained.

Gruschow also reflected on the “terrible irony” of secularism in Quebec. While the separation of church and state should enable people of all faiths and beliefs to live in harmony, creating “a space where we can be together,” Grushcow argued, Bill 21 has forced many people to leave or consider leaving Quebec.

“People don’t feel they can belong here anymore,” she said.

After Zeinab Diab, who spoke in French, presented her findings on Bill 21, Faiz M. Lalani offered a lawyer’s take on Bill 21. He described the bill as containing several “contradictory legal restrictions” and frustratingly ambiguous language – section 6, for instance, bans affected persons from wearing symbols that can be “reasonably considered as referring to a religious affiliation,” but it does not specify what these symbols are. Lalani also stressed that Bill 21 is “fundamentally at odds with Quebec’s history”; Quebec has always been an advocate for religious freedom, he reminded the audience, and it was the first jurisdiction in the British Empire to grant equal rights to Jewish people.

Finally, Lalani outlined some of the arguments he and other lawyers are preparing to make the next time Bill 21 stands trial. These include: that Bill 21 is a criminal law, and provincial governments do not have the authority to enact criminal laws; that the government of François Legault made improper use of the notwithstanding clause, which Lalani said should only be used in “cases of emergency,” in enacting Bill 21; and that Bill 21, in disproportionately impacting Muslim women, violates the section 28 gender equality clause of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, to which the notwithstanding clause cannot be applied. When Legault preemptively invoked the notwithstanding clause in 2019, it will be recalled, he shielded Bill 21 from potential court challenges that it violates certain Charter rights.

Responding to a question posed by an audience member, all of the panelists offered advice as to how ordinary people could take action against Bill 21. They recommended donating money, signing petitions, writing to politicians, and, per Anvari, finding ways “to speak peacefully with people who do not think the same way we do.” Only this, Grushcow added, will help to bridge the “us and them” divide that hangs over Quebec.

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It’s been more than six months since that letter was published, and a lot has changed. For this week’s issue, the Daily caught up with leaders of AGSEM to get an update on the Workday situation and to find out how graduate student employees are coping with the return to in-person learning.

“To our knowledge, all our members have received their full pay,” writes AGSEM president Mario Roy. The union’s request for an investigation to confirm this has yet to be carried out. Regardless, Roy adds, “Workday is still a system that is creating a lot of frustration among users.” The confusing interface and technical difficulties acknowledged at the outset of the rollout have not disappeared, and the union maintains that “if the system is not satisfying the needs of the university, it should be changed for a better system.”

Roy says the university made an offer of compensation for employees who received their pay late, but the union – which originally requested a $50 late fee plus a monthly interest of 1.24 per cent, the same penalties students must pay when they don’t make their tuition payments on time – found this offer “unsatisfactory.” Negotiations are ongoing, and AGSEM is “looking at all the options available in order to resolve [the dispute] as soon as possible.”

From the first annoucement that McGill would return to in-person learning, AGSEM members have had more than Workday on their minds. In an April survey of 704 graduate students, including 392 employees, nearly half of respondents said they would prefer that the Fall 2021 semester be conducted fully remotely, while 41.5 per cent said they would feel safe returning to campus only once the undergraduate population was fully vaccinated. Based on these results and members’ concerns “about the eagerness of McGill to bring the McGill community back to in-person activities,” AGSEM leaders wrote to the university administration over the summer to request accommodations – for instance, the ability to hold office hours over Zoom – for employees who wished to work remotely. 

“Very few consultations were made with the union during the summer,” Roy says, “and the consultations were mainly to inform us about their plan.” The McGill administration opted to leave the decision to allow graduate student employees to work from home to the students’ employers – that is, the professors and instructors they assist. This is worrisome, Roy says, “because some employers might refuse to accommodate our members when fairly requested.”

With the spread of the Delta variant and the increase in daily COVID-19 cases in Quebec, union members are worried “that the lack of sanitary measures or the lack of enforcement for sanitary measures currently in place could create a situation where our members would end up working in an unsafe environment.” Even greater is the fear that the university may not react quickly enough to protect its students and staff in the event of an outbreak—an outbreak Roy believes has a “high chance” of happening.

The post Checking in with AGSEM appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Issues with Workday began following the rollout of the system last August, adding insult to the injury of already precarious working conditions. In December, AGSEM reported that more than 460 Teaching Assistants (TAs) and invigilators had not been paid within thirty days of starting work, more than 180 had not been paid within sixty days of starting work, and at least ten departments had not paid any of their TAs within the first thirty days of their contracts – all violations of Quebec’s Labour Standards Act. Two months into the Winter 2021 term, some McGill employees had still not been remunerated for their labour in Fall 2020, while others continued to face technical difficulties using Workday. “Because most of the jobs going unpaid are filled by students with limited means,” the Montreal Gazette found, “some faculty members have taken to paying them out of their own savings so they can cover rent and food.”

The Daily spoke to Jessica Rose, AGSEM’s Grievance Officer for TAs, to find out more about the open letter and AGSEM’s dealings with McGill. She explained that when AGSEM filed its Workday-related grievances last fall, the University promised it would offer “a fair financial settlement” to all affected. This offer was supposed to be “imminent,” but “[t]hey have now told us that their intention all along was to delay this discussion until the end of the winter semester.” 

Frustrated and confused, AGSEM penned the open letter to alert the McGill community to the university administration’s poor handling of this situation. The authors accuse McGill of having “utterly abandoned its graduate students” before addressing such questions as “Has McGill responded with compassion to the financial hardship it has caused student workers?” – it hasn’t, they conclude – and “Does McGill take its obligations as an employer seriously?” – it doesn’t, they conclude. The authors also explain that “AGSEM has filed for arbitration and will seek the maximum penalty for McGill’s violations of employment law.”

Rose says AGSEM has received a written response to the letter from Professor Christopher Manfredi, McGill’s Provost and Vice-Principal (Academic). In this response, however, Manfredi “largely reiterates the sort of statements he has made publicly – mistakes were made, everything’s fine, etc.” In an email to the Daily, AGSEM president Mario Roy affirms that “no concrete resolution has happened yet.”

“Our demand is very reasonable,” says Rose. AGSEM is asking McGill to pay the same penalties students must pay when they can’t make their tuition payments on time: a $50 late fee plus a monthly interest of 1.24 per cent (14.88 per cent per annum). Thus, the longer the university stalls, the more it will have to pay. “At this point,” Rose adds, “they owe hundreds of dollars to each TA affected.” AGSEM is also requesting an investigation, “conducted by responsible parties nominated by stakeholders,” to determine whether McGill should continue using Workday, revert to a previously-used system, or seek out a new system. 

“At this point,” Rose adds, “they owe hundreds of dollars to each TA affected.”

Something not articulated in the letter, Rose told the Daily, is that “[t]here are multiple forms of wage theft going on here.” First, AGSEM members are contracted to work a fixed number of hours. When they work and are not paid for those hours, their wages are “stolen.” Second, since the start of the Workday rollout, AGSEM has uncovered “a lot of wage theft by misclassification.” A graduate student may be hired as a TA but then asked to also do the work of a grader; McGill will hire them for this second position as well,  “just to stretch their budget.” TA’s are paid about half as much for grading work as they are for work associated with their TA position, such as holding conferences, tutorials, and labs, so this practice allows McGill to pay less for the labour of TA’s. Third, the Workday failure has created the problem of “off-the-clock” wage theft. Rose says she’s asked graduate students how much time they’ve spent in “bureaucratic limbo” – a state of communicating back and forth between HR, IT, their departments, and others expected to help them solve problems not only with Workday but also with platforms like myCourses and Zoom. “The most common answer is seven hours,” she says, “but it’s often greater.” None of this time has been compensated for, per Rose.

Asked what McGill’s biggest failure regarding the Workday rollout has been, Rose responded that “Workday’s problems at universities are well-documented” and that McGill “should have listened to stakeholders who had similar problems.” Consultation with unions and associations leading up to the rollout “was not meaningful,” moreover, “and McGill shared virtually no details” – details that would have helped AGSEM adjust its collective agreement with McGill and prepare for technical failures. Eight months into the HR crisis and with no end in sight, Rose concludes that “[w]hen a failure is so systemic, so far-reaching, this is a managerial failure. An executive failure.” McGill’s executives have failed some of its most vulnerable employees, and AGSEM “may begin to feel that McGill should face government fines in addition to punitive damages.”

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